Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:
No Tobacco Industry Conspiracy, Lawyer Says
Major U.S. tobacco companies did not conspire to deceive the public about smoking-related health dangers, a lawyer for the tobacco industry said Wednesday in his opening remarks of a civil racketeering trial.
Attorney Ted Wells said tobacco company executives did make some mistakes in how they addressed smoking-related health concerns. but insisted that there was no industry-wide conspiracy to mislead the public, the Associated Press reported.
He added that no one in the tobacco industry now disputes that smoking is addictive or that it harms health.
The U.S. government alleges that, starting in the 1960s, tobacco companies put hundreds of millions of dollars into organizations they created to dispute scientific data that linked smoking to cancer .
The government, which made its opening statement Tuesday, is seeking $280 billion in penalties from the tobacco industry.
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Health Canada to Ban Low-Carb Food Labels
Citing a lack of scientific evidence to support low-carbohydrate diet claims, Health Canada plans to ban food and drink labels that tout low carbohydrates.
The labeling rules will go into effect in December 2005 for large companies and in 2007 for smaller companies selling food products in Canada, the Toronto Star reported.
Even the use of carbohydrate-linked brand names and trademarks, such as Kraft's Carb-Well line, will be subject to the new regulations.
"There was -- and still is -- no reason from a nutrient point of view to be concerned with the amount of carbs that we eat," Health Canada spokeswoman Carole Saindon told the Star.
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Carbon Bicycle Handlebars Recalled
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on Wednesday announced the recall of carbon bicycle handlebars that may develop invisible cracks and break without warning.
The "Forte Flyte OS" and "Weyless CF200" carbon handlebars were made by Performance Inc. and Supergo Inc., of Chapel Hill, N.C. The Performance Forte Flyte OS handlebars were sold separately by mail order, Web sites, and at Performance and Supergo retail stores for about $169.
The Supergo Weyless handlebars were sold separately and as part of the 2004 Scattante SC-R bicycles, which sold for $3,295.
The recall affects about 300 handlebars. People should stop using them immediately and return them to their nearest Performance or Supergo stores for a replacement or refund.
For more information, contact Performance at 1-800-553-8324 or Supergo at 1-800-398-9702.
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Civil Rights Pioneer Has Dementia
Rosa Parks, 91, is suffering from dementia and shouldn't be required to testify in her lawsuit over a rap song named after the civil rights pioneer, her doctor has told a federal judge.
While her lawyers had said over the summer that Parks had been in frail health, this was the first time that her condition of severe memory impairment was described in detail, the Associated Press reported. The wire service said Parks has rarely been seen in public since she canceled a meeting with President Bush in 2001.
Parks' lawsuit claims she was defamed by a 1998 song by OutKast titled "Rosa Parks." The suit insists her name was used without permission for commercial reasons, the AP said.
Parks was 42 in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus. Her arrest sparked a year-long boycott of the bus system organized by a minister who was little-known at the time, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Parks has been dubbed the "mother of the civil rights movement."
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Low Testosterone May Lead to Alzheimer's
Decreased levels of the male hormone testosterone may lead to an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease in men, University of Southern California researchers have found.
The findings are published in a letter to the editor in the Sept. 22 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers equated the progressive loss of testosterone in older men to a similar change in menopausal women involving loss of the female hormone estrogen. But they said the purported links between estrogen loss and Alzheimer's have been much better researched and documented.
The USC scientists said confirming the link between testosterone depletion and Alzheimer's could help identify men most at risk. Their research found that the hormone appeared to serve two brain functions that relate to Alzheimer's -- protecting neurons from injury and reducing levels of beta-amyloid proteins that have been associated with the memory-robbing disease.
About 4 million Americans -- half of them men -- have Alzheimer's disease, the researchers said.
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Some People With Migraines at Risk for Brain Damage: Study
People who have frequent migraines are more likely to develop brain damage, new research has found.
The frequency of attacks indicates an increased risk for brain lesions, raising the possibility that in a handful of patients, migraines produce progressive changes in the brain, U.S. and Dutch researchers told a Migraine Trust International Symposium in London on Tuesday.
In 3 percent of cases analyzed, the headaches appeared to grow progressively worse and more frequent, to the point where patients had migraine pain almost every day, according to Prof. Richard Lipton of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. Up to now, migraines had been considered a chronic "episodic" disorder, according to an account of Lipton's speech in the The Scotsman newspaper.
He identified risk factors for progressive headaches, including more than four per month, obesity, and the need to take painkillers for head pain more than once a week.
Lipton collaborated with scientists at Leiden University in the Netherlands, the newspaper said.