Saturday, April 26, 2014

4/26/14 Health News: Myths About Food Safety That Can Cost Your Life ♦ Who's Protecting Whom From Deadly Toxin? ♦ Sniffing Out Infection: Smell Test Speedier Than Urinalysis

Shocking Myths About Food Safety That Can Cost Your Life
There are 48 million new cases of foodborne illnesses every year in the United States. What's going on? Why are there so many cases of food poisoning each year? One cause is that people believe 'myths' about food poisoning that in reality hold no value Continue Reading

Who's Protecting Whom From Deadly Toxin?
Questions are swirling around a science journal's decision last year to publish a description of a newly discovered botulinum toxin while omitting key genetic details that researchers would normally disclose. The unusual case highlights important unresolved issues in how to balance scientific openness with the worry that biological information could potentially be misused. Continue Reading

Sniffing Out Infection: Smell Test Speedier Than Urinalysis
An "electronic nose" can sniff the difference between healthy urine specimens and those infected with Escherichia coli, according to a pilot study. "The electronic nose can identify not just the organism but the particular strain of organism. It has a specificity of almost 100%, which is very encouraging," said Emmanuel Johnson, MD, from the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital NHS Trust in the United Kingdom.

"We started with E coli because 80% of urinary tract infections in the community and 50% in hospitals are from E coli, but the potential is limitless," Dr. Johnson told Medscape Medical News. The results of the pilot study were presented here at the European Association of Urology (EAU) 29th Annual Congress. Continue Reading

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