NEWS
February 16, 2012 | By Kim Geiger
A wealthy backer of GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum left his interviewer scratching her head Thursday when he suggested that in the olden days, birth control was less expensive because women just squeezed an aspirin between their knees to prevent them from having sex. Foster Friess, the retired mutual fund executive from Wyoming who has been basking in the spotlight recently thanks to his six-figure donations to a 'super PAC' backing Santorum,...
NEWS
February 13, 2012 | By Jeannine Stein, Los Angeles Times / For the Booster Shots blog
The death of Whitney Houston over the weekend is still being investigated, and it might take weeks to get toxicology reports back, the Los Angeles County Coroner's office said. That's not an unusual time frame for such a case, but why does it take so long? Several factors may be involved, experts said. The main issue may be a big backlog of cases, said Dr. Doug Rollins, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City: “Funding to most of these labs has been decreased,” he said, “so they don't have the staff to handle that large of a caseload.” Then there are the tests themselves.
NEWS
October 27, 2011 | By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times / for the Booster Shots blog
Patients with a genetic condition that increases their risk of colon and other cancers who took aspirin daily developed colon cancer less often than patients who took a placebo, researchers reported Thursday. The study, which was the first randomized controlled trial to look at the effect of aspirin on cancer rates, was published in the journal the Lancet. Professor John Burn, a geneticist at Newcastle University in England, led the research team. The group followed 861 people with Lynch syndrome, which increases the risk of developing colon and other cancers. Some of the patients took two 600 mg aspirins every day, others took a placebo.
NEWS
July 21, 2011 | By Marissa Cevallos, HealthKey / For the Booster Shots blog
For people who've suffered a heart attack or are at risk for one, low doses of aspirin are a commonly prescribed apple-a-day to ward off future heart attacks. But for some patients on the regimen, it's a treatment that should be taken ... seriously. In a new study, patients with a history of heart disease who had recently stopped low-dose aspirin were more likely to have a heart attack. European researchers tracked nearly 40,000 people with a history of heart disease, age 50 to 84, who had just started taking between 75 and 300 milligrams of aspirin per day. Within up to eight years of follow-up, some adhered to the treatment, while others stopped refilling their aspirin prescriptions.
NEWS
April 4, 2011 | By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times
Taking aspirin regularly can help reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke -- and now, we may be able to add pancreatic cancer to the list, researchers say. A study, presented at the American Assn. for Cancer Research meeting in Orlando, Fla., looked at 904 patients with pancreatic cancer and 1,224 cancer-free patients — all of whom were at least 55 years old. They found that people who took aspirin at least once a month were 26% less at risk of developing pancreatic cancer, and that those who took low doses of aspirin regularly to combat heart disease had a 35% lower risk of pancreatic cancer.
OPINION
March 3, 2011 | By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times
Daily use of aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, commonly known as NSAIDs, is associated with a 22% increase in the risk of erectile dysfunction, Kaiser researchers found in a study of more than 80,000 men in Southern California. The results were a surprise because erectile dysfunction, commonly abbreviated ED, is thought to be caused by inflammation, and the researchers expected that use of the drugs would alleviate the problem. Although the team controlled for a variety of other confounding factors, including age, smoking status, diabetes and other conditions, it is still possible that the men were taking the drugs to treat an underlying condition that was also causing the ED, the team wrote in report to be published in the April issue of the Journal of Urology.