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Take precautions during laser hair removal, researchers advise

By Marilynn Larkin (Reuters Health) – The smelly “burning hair” smoke released during laser hair removal could be a health hazard, especially for people with heavy exposure to it, researchers report. The smoke contains chemicals that irritate the airways and are known to cause cancer, Dr. Gary Chuang told Reuters Health by email. Chuang, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues also measured the concentrations of very fine particles in the plume that could be easily inhaled.

Drug-coated ring cuts HIV risk by more than half in some women

By Gene Emery (Reuters Health) – An experimental drug-infused ring inserted in the vagina once a month cut the odds of becoming infected with HIV by more than half among women who used the device consistently, in a study in four African countries where the risk of AIDS is high. “Use of the product was enough to demonstrate HIV protection of 27 percent” over placebo, chief author Dr. Jared Baeten, a professor of medicine and global health at the University of Washington in Seattle, told Reuters Health by phone. “And in some groups of women who appeared to use it better, such as women over age 21, the risk of HIV was reduced by more than half.” Such silicone rings, infused with a different drug, are already used for birth control.

Clinton charity, under pressure, will amend tax return errors

By Jonathan Allen NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation's flagship health project changed its mind again on Wednesday on the matter of its erroneous tax returns, saying it would refile them with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service after all. The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) said the decision to refile its 2012 and 2013 returns was in response to “recent media interest.” Its brief statement made no mention of Republican criticism earlier in the week, when CHAI said it had decided against refiling the returns, known as form 990s. “As previously stated, the minor errors on the 2012 and 2013 CHAI 990s are immaterial and do not require refiling, yet in response to recent media interest in the forms, CHAI has decided to refile the returns in order to be fully transparent,” CHAI spokeswoman Maura Daley said in the statement.

Celebrate Yourself: Study Links Poor Body Image to Weight Gain in Girls

Overweight female adolescents with a positive body image gain significantly less weight as they become young adults than those with negative feelings about their bodies, according to research from the University of Minnesota published this week. The 10-year-long study looked at the body mass index—a common tool recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that uses height and weight to determine whether someone is overweight or obese—and body satisfaction of about 500 boys and girls who were 14 and 15 years old in 1998 and 1999. Researchers analyzed the BMIs of the young adults again in 2009 and 2010.

Daily pot smoking on U.S. college campuses at 35-year high: study

The number of U.S. college students smoking marijuana every day or nearly every day is greater than it has been in 35 years, according to a study released on Tuesday. Nearly 6 percent of college students reported using pot daily or near-daily in 2014, up from 3.5 percent in 2007 but less than the 7.2 percent recorded in 1980, the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study found. “It's clear that for the past seven or eight years there has been an increase in marijuana use among the nation's college students,” said Lloyd Johnston, the study's principal author.

Judge rules Alzheimer’s project belongs to UC San Diego

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge has ruled that control of a landmark project on Alzheimer’s disease belongs to the University of California, San Diego — handing the school a major victory in its lawsuit against the University of Southern California.

Food ads during children’s TV don’t meet proposed guidelines

The proposal was not adopted, and it’s not surprising to see that most foods advertised on TV would not comply with it, said lead author Melanie D. Hingle of the University of Arizona in Tucson. “The take home message is really not about what would be or could be, but that this independent group of experts in different communities said these are guidelines that make sense nutritionally, and hardly any of these ads meet these guidelines,” Hingle told Reuters Health by phone. “Food ads that are out there right now are not passing any kind of muster,” she said. An Interagency Working Group on Foods Marketed to Children (IWG) including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Agriculture, Federal Trade Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration, issued a proposal for standards for the nutritional quality of foods advertised to children in 2011.

For some elderly, unclogging leg arteries doesn’t improve mobility

By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) – For nursing home residents, surgery to improve blood flow to the legs yields only limited improvements in mobility, according to a new study. Knowing that so-called lower extremity revascularization may not improve mobility allows doctors, patients and families to have more realistic discussions about outcomes of the operation, said Dr. Emily Finlayson, the study’s senior author from the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco. The nearly 11,000 nursing home residents in the study had a problem called peripheral artery disease, which results when arteries in the legs are clogged and blood flow is reduced. To treat the condition, the residents underwent lower extremity revascularization between 2005 and 2009, at an average age of 82.

S.African doctors perform world’s first penis transplant

South African doctors have successfully performed the world's first penis transplant on a young man who had his organ amputated after a botched circumcision ritual, a hospital said on Friday. The nine-hour transplant, which occurred in December last year, was part of a pilot study by Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town and the University of Stellenbosch to help scores of initiates who either die or lose their penises in botched circumcisions each year. For a young man of 18 or 19 years the loss of his penis can be deeply traumatic,” said Andre van der Merwe, head of the university's urology unit and who led the operation said in a statement. “There is a greater need in South Africa for this type of procedure than elsewhere in the world, as many young men lose their penises every year due to complications from traditional circumcision,” Van der Merwe said.