France Bans Free Refills On Sweetened Drinks.

reports France has banned “free refills of sodas and other sugary drinks,” the country’s latest attempt to fight a “relentless rise in the national obesity rate.” The ban applies to “sodas, milk, sports drinks and ‘vegetable nectars and similar products, provided that these beverages contain added sugars or synthetic sweeteners.’” The law has had a mixed reception, with some people supporting the effort and others saying that the government “might as well put scales in front of each fast-food joint.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/world/europe/france-soda-refill-ban.html?_r=0

IV Glucose May Cut Labor Times in First-Time Moms Reduced labor time without increased complication rates

The Kaplan-Meier survival curve was also significant for the glucose group, meaning women in the intervention group delivered faster, Paré said at the presentation. In fact, the portion of patients who delivered within 2 hours and 20 minutes was 19% vs 8% in the control group. After 7.5 hours, three-quarters of the patients in the intervention group had delivered as opposed to 61% of the controls. When examining individual stages of labor, there was a trend towards significance for the group receiving glucose, though the results did not actually reach significance. http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/SMFM/62804?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2017-01-30&eun=g721819d0r&pos=2

Maternal, Fetal Death Rates Higher on Weekends But no "July effect" observed for obstetrics, researchers say

http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/SMFM/62805?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2017-01-30&eun=g721819d0r&pos=0

Skittles candy for cows

Red Skittles spilled onto a Wisconsin highway earlier this week were reportedly on their way to a farm to feed cattle, as an alternative to corn. Candy is said to be a way to "provide cheap carbs" to cows, but can also indirectly add to rising diabetes and obesity rates through consumption of the animals' resulting high-sugar byproducts. (CNN) http://www.medpagetoday.com/Endocrinology/GeneralEndocrinology/62783?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2017-01-28&eun=g721819d0r&pos=4

Curbing Antibiotics Tied to Britain's Drop in C.Diff Limiting fluoroquinolones urged as control cornerstone

Restricting the use of fluoroquinolone antibiotics was more effective than measures such as "deep cleans" of hospitals in reducing the incidence of Clostridium difficile (C. diff) in Oxfordshire and Leeds, England, researchers reported. Antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin killed non-resistant C. diff bugs in the gut, enabling drug-resistant C. diffi bugs to thrive and inviting the rapid growth of resistant C. difficile, according to Derrick Crook, MBBCh, of the University of Oxford, and colleagues. National prescribing of fluoroquinolone and cephalosporin was highly correlated with incidence of C. diff infections (cross-correlations >0.88), by contrast with total antibiotic prescribing (cross-correlations <0.59) by 2006, they wrote in Lancet Infectious Diseases. http://www.medpagetoday.com/gastroenterology/generalgastroenterology/62719?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2017-01-27&eun=g721819d0r&pos=11

6 Million Visits for ADHD by U.S. Kids Each Year Medications prescribed or continued in 80% of visits

Using ICD diagnoses codes, the researchers determined that about 29% of children who had ADHD office visits had any additional mental health disorder, including episodic mood disorder (7%); anxiety, dissociative, and somatoform disorder (7%); and disturbance of emotions specific to childhood and adolescence (4%). http://www.medpagetoday.com/psychiatry/adhd-add/62717?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2017-01-27&eun=g721819d0r&pos=8

Researchers Report Two Experiments Growing Human Replacement Organs In Animals.

“Biologists are reporting two significant advances” this week in “replacing a patient’s diseased organs with ones derived from that person’s own cells, and grown in an animal host.” One team of researchers, led by Jun Wu and Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte at the Salk Institute, “has shown for the first time that human stem cells can contribute to forming the tissues of a pig, despite the 90 million years of evolution between the two species.” Meanwhile, a second group, led by Tomoyuki Yamaguchi and Hideyuki Sato of the University of Tokyo and Hiromitsu Nakauchi of Stanford, “has reversed diabetes in mice by inserting pancreas glands composed of mouse cells that were grown in a rat.” One report was published in Cell and the other was published in Nature. The AP (1/26, Ritter) reports, “The Salk team is working on making humanized pancreases, hearts and livers in pigs. The animals would grow those organs in place of their own, and they’d be euthanized before the organ is removed.” Scientists “used human stem cells, which are capable of producing a wide variety of specialized cells. They injected pig embryos made in the lab with three to 10 of those cells apiece, and implanted the embryos into sows.” After about three weeks of development, “186 embryos were removed and examined.” The cells “generated the precursors of muscle, heart, pancreas, liver and spinal cord tissue in the embryos.” They said they would test “ways to focus human cells on making specific tissues while avoiding any contribution to the brain, sperm or eggs.” The AP adds, “Ethics experts were also impressed by the results.” http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_PIG_HUMAN_EMBRYOS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT