By Michael Smith , MedPage Today Staff Writer – Reviewed by Rubeen K. Israni, M.D., Fellow, Renal-Electrolyte and Hypertension Division, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

• Advise patients that this study found an inverse association between asthma and hay fever and all-cancer mortality.
• Note that the study analyzed a very large database of information, collected over 18 years of follow-up, but it is not a randomized trial.

By Harvard Health Publications
Coffee has been blamed for everything from moral turpitude to cancer. But none of the bad raps have stuck. Coffee may even be good for you.

Despite 20 years of reassuring research, many people still avoid coffee* because they worry about its health effects. Their concerns are understandable. Older studies had linked coffee to a range of health problems, including pancreatic cancer and heart disease. But this early research didn’t take into account the real culprit: cigarette smoking, which was once a common habit of many coffee drinkers. We now know that in moderation — that is, a few cups per day — coffee is a safe beverage. New research suggests it even offers some health benefits.

Summary and Comment
Obese children and teenagers often display insulin resistance and other markers of the metabolic syndrome. To evaluate how much weight loss is needed to reverse insulin resistance in obese children (BMI 97th percentile), investigators studied changes in insulin sensitivity and fat metabolism in 57 children (age range, 6-14 years) participating in a weight loss program over a 1-year period. The authors obtained insulin levels and free-fatty-acid and blood-glucose concentrations at baseline and 1 year; they then calculated an insulin sensitivity index (ISI) for each child. They also studied ISI values in 10 normal-weight children during a 3-month period.

A randomized study comparing the effects of a low-carbohydrate diet and a conventional diet on lipoprotein subfractions and C-reactive protein levels in patients with severe obesity.

By Jeff Minerd, MedPage Today Staff Writer Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco January 21, 2005, News Article: MSNBC
The federal guidelines on managing asthma during pregnancy were updated to include newly available medicines and a systematic review of safety data on asthma drugs in pregnant women. These are the first new guidelines in more than a decade from the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program, a coalition of health organizations overseen by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).