Latest news with #PublicHealthInstitute
NDTV
6 days ago
- Health
- NDTV
Bengaluru's 'Empire Kababs' Flagged Unsafe By Food Safety Body
Bengaluru: Bengaluru's popular Empire restaurant chain has landed in soup after a lab report from the State Food Laboratory, Public Health Institute, declared that chicken kebabs served at its Gandhinagar outlet were unsafe for human consumption. The food safety alarm was raised following an inspection conducted by Food Safety Officer Ambarish Gowda, who collected 2 kilograms of chicken kebab samples (four packets of 500 grams each) from Empire's outlet near Anand Rao Circle on June 27. The samples were then sent for testing. The test results, dated July 11, revealed that the chicken kebabs did not meet the required safety standards outlined under the Food Product Standards & Food Additives Regulations, 2011. The food was then declared unsafe under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006. In response, BBMP's Food Safety and Drug Administration (North Zone) has issued a formal notice to the restaurant, giving them 30 days to respond. The restaurant has been informed that they may opt for retesting the second part of the food sample at CFTRI, Mysuru, but only at their own expense. "We have received a notice issued by FSSAI. We won't be commenting on the details of the issue, I can confirm that we have now stopped using food colouring in our kebabs," said Shakir, CEO of Empire chain of restaurants, when contacted by NDTV.
The Star
7 days ago
- Health
- The Star
NHMS 2025 survey to focus on elderly health, runs from July 22 to Sept 21
SEREMBAN: The Public Health Institute is conducting the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2025 from July 22 to Sept 21, focusing on the health of Malaysians aged 60 and above, Deputy Health Minister Datuk Lukanisman Awang Sauni says. He said NHMS 2025, which aims to assess the health status of senior citizens in Malaysia in line with the 'ageing well' concept, will cover approximately 16,700 randomly selected households nationwide. "The main modules in this NHMS cover three key domains, namely the mental health domain, which includes cognitive, dementia, and geriatric depression screenings. "The physical domain includes daily activities, instrumental activities of daily living, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol levels, other chronic diseases, sarcopenia, and frailty; while the social domain covers informal caregiver burden, social support, quality of life, and ageing well," he said in a statement here on Friday (July 25). He said 43 teams have been deployed to collect data through face-to-face interviews, self-administered questionnaires, and clinical assessments involving approximately 5,000 respondents. "…(clinical assessments) include blood pressure measurement, finger-prick blood sampling (to screen for cholesterol and blood sugar levels), and sarcopenia assessments, including handgrip strength, muscle mass percentage, and the 30-second chair stand test," he said. The findings from NHMS 2025 are expected to provide detailed insights into the health status of the elderly population in the country, enabling the Health Ministry to assess priority policies and national health programme strategies. Lukanisman also called on all parties, particularly government agencies, healthcare professionals, researchers, and community leaders, to collaborate in this mission to ensure that the elderly can lead healthy, meaningful, and productive lives. - Bernama
Global News
19-07-2025
- Health
- Global News
West Nile virus to spread to remote areas of Quebec due to climate change, study says
Quebec public health officials are warning of another potential consequence of climate change. A recent study by the Public Health Institute suggests warmer temperatures could lead to a surge in West Nile virus cases and that it could spread to more remote regions of the province for the first time. Get weekly health news Receive the latest medical news and health information delivered to you every Sunday. Sign up for weekly health newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy The virus is often found in Quebec's larger city centres, especially around Montreal. But by 2080, the virus could migrate, going as for as Gaspé and even north to the Abitibi region. As Global's Franca Mignacca reports, warming weather coupled with increased precipitation is expected to increase its spread, as well as other mosquito and tick-born diseases. For the full story, watch the video above.
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Marijuana use dramatically increases risk of dying from heart attacks and stroke, large study finds
Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN's Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being. Using marijuana doubles the risk of dying from heart disease, according to a new analysis of pooled medical data involving 200 million people mostly between the ages of 19 and 59. 'What was particularly striking was that the concerned patients hospitalized for these disorders were young (and thus, not likely to have their clinical features due to tobacco smoking) and with no history of cardiovascular disorder or cardiovascular risk factors,' said senior author Émilie Jouanjus, an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Toulouse, France, in an email. Compared to nonusers, those who used cannabis also had a 29% higher risk for heart attacks and a 20% higher risk for stroke, according to the study published Tuesday in the journal Heart. 'This is one of the largest studies to date on the connection between marijuana and heart disease, and it raises serious questions about the assumption that cannabis imposes little cardiovascular risk,' said pediatrician Dr. Lynn Silver, a clinical professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at University of California, San Francisco. 'Getting this right is critically important because cardiovascular disease is the top cause of death both in the United States and globally,' said Silver, who is also senior adviser at the Public Health Institute, a nonprofit public health organization that analyzes marijuana policy and legalization. Silver is the coauthor of an editorial published with the paper that calls for change in how cannabis is viewed by health professionals, regulatory bodies and the public at large. 'Clinicians need to screen people for cannabis use and educate them about its harms, the same way we do for tobacco, because in some population groups it's being used more widely than tobacco,' she said. 'Our regulatory system, which has been almost entirely focused on creating legal infrastructure and licensing legal, for-profit (cannabis) businesses, needs to focus much more strongly on health warnings that educate people about the real risks.' The new systematic review and meta-analysis analyzed medical information from large, observational studies conducted in Australia, Egypt, Canada, France, Sweden and the US between 2016 and 2023. Those studies did not ask people how they used cannabis — such as via smoking, vaping, dabbing, edibles, tinctures or topicals. (Dabbing involves vaporizing concentrated cannabis and inhaling the vapor.) However, 'based on epidemiological data, it is likely that cannabis was smoked in the vast majority of cases,' Jouanjus said. Smoking tobacco is a well-known cause of heart disease — both the smoke and the chemicals in tobacco damage blood vessels and increase clotting, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Therefore, it is not surprising that smoking, vaping or dabbing cannabis could do the same, Silver said: 'Any of the many ways of inhaling cannabis are going to have risks to the user, and there's also secondhand smoke risks, which are similar to tobacco.' The notion that smoking cannabis is less harmful because it's 'natural' is just wrong, Dr. Beth Cohen, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told CNN in a prior interview. 'When you burn something, whether it is tobacco or cannabis, it creates toxic compounds, carcinogens, and particulate matter that are harmful to health,' Cohen said in an email. However, edibles may also play a role in heart disease, according to a May 2025 study. People who consumed edibles laced with tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, showed signs of early cardiovascular disease similar to tobacco smokers. 'We found that vascular function was reduced by 42% in marijuana smokers and by 56% in THC-edible users compared to nonusers,' Dr. Leila Mohammadi, an assistant researcher in cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco, told CNN in a prior interview. None of the studies included in the new meta-analysis asked users about the potency of THC in the products they consume. Even if they had, that information would be quickly outdated, Silver said. 'The cannabis market is a moving target. It is getting more potent every day,' she said. 'What's being sold to people today in California is 510 times stronger than what it was in the 1970s. Concentrates can be 99% pure THC. Vapes are over 80% THC. 'A variety of chemically extracted cannabinoids can be almost pure THC, and all of these just have very different effects on people than smoking a joint in the 1970s.' Higher potency weed is contributing to a host of problems, including an increase in addiction — a July 2022 study found consuming high-potency weed was linked to a fourfold increased risk of dependence. In the United States, about 3 in 10 people who use marijuana have cannabis use disorder, the medical term for marijuana addiction, according to the CDC. 'We know that more potent cannabis makes people more likely to become addicted,' Silver said. 'We know that more potent cannabis makes people more likely to develop psychosis, seeing and hearing things that aren't there, or schizophrenia. Habitual users may also suffer from uncontrollable vomiting.' The rise in potency is one reason that the current study may not have captured the full extent of the risk of marijuana for heart disease, Jouanjus said: 'We are afraid that the association might be even stronger than that reported.' While science continues to study the risk, experts say it's time to think twice about the potential harms of cannabis use — especially if heart disease is a concern. 'If I was a 60-year-old person who had some heart disease risk, I would be very cautious about using cannabis,' Silver said. 'I've seen older people who are using cannabis for pain or for sleep, some of whom have significant cardiovascular risk, or who have had strokes or had heart attacks or had angina, and they have no awareness that this may be putting them at greater risk.'
CNN
17-06-2025
- Health
- CNN
Marijuana use doubles risk of dying from heart disease, large study finds
Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN's Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being. Using marijuana doubles the risk of dying from heart disease, according to a new analysis of pooled medical data involving 200 million people mostly between the ages of 19 and 59. 'What was particularly striking was that the concerned patients hospitalized for these disorders were young (and thus, not likely to have their clinical features due to tobacco smoking) and with no history of cardiovascular disorder or cardiovascular risk factors,' said senior author Émilie Jouanjus, an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Toulouse, France, in an email. Compared to nonusers, those who used cannabis also had a 29% higher risk for heart attacks and a 20% higher risk for stroke, according to the study published Tuesday in the journal Heart. 'This is one of the largest studies to date on the connection between marijuana and heart disease, and it raises serious questions about the assumption that cannabis imposes little cardiovascular risk,' said pediatrician Dr. Lynn Silver, a clinical professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at University of California, San Francisco. 'Getting this right is critically important because cardiovascular disease is the top cause of death both in the United States and globally,' said Silver, who is also senior adviser at the Public Health Institute, a nonprofit public health organization that analyzes marijuana policy and legalization. Silver is the coauthor of an editorial published with the paper that calls for change in how cannabis is viewed by health professionals, regulatory bodies and the public at large. 'Clinicians need to screen people for cannabis use and educate them about its harms, the same way we do for tobacco, because in some population groups it's being used more widely than tobacco,' she said. 'Our regulatory system, which has been almost entirely focused on creating legal infrastructure and licensing legal, for-profit (cannabis) businesses, needs to focus much more strongly on health warnings that educate people about the real risks.' The new systematic review and meta-analysis analyzed medical information from large, observational studies conducted in Australia, Egypt, Canada, France, Sweden and the US between 2016 and 2023. Those studies did not ask people how they used cannabis — such as via smoking, vaping, dabbing, edibles, tinctures or topicals. (Dabbing involves vaporizing concentrated cannabis and inhaling the vapor.) However, 'based on epidemiological data, it is likely that cannabis was smoked in the vast majority of cases,' Jouanjus said. Smoking tobacco is a well-known cause of heart disease — both the smoke and the chemicals in tobacco damage blood vessels and increase clotting, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Therefore, it is not surprising that smoking, vaping or dabbing cannabis could do the same, Silver said: 'Any of the many ways of inhaling cannabis are going to have risks to the user, and there's also secondhand smoke risks, which are similar to tobacco.' The notion that smoking cannabis is less harmful because it's 'natural' is just wrong, Dr. Beth Cohen, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told CNN in a prior interview. 'When you burn something, whether it is tobacco or cannabis, it creates toxic compounds, carcinogens, and particulate matter that are harmful to health,' Cohen said in an email. However, edibles may also play a role in heart disease, according to a May 2025 study. People who consumed edibles laced with tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, showed signs of early cardiovascular disease similar to tobacco smokers. 'We found that vascular function was reduced by 42% in marijuana smokers and by 56% in THC-edible users compared to nonusers,' Dr. Leila Mohammadi, an assistant researcher in cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco, told CNN in a prior interview. None of the studies included in the new meta-analysis asked users about the potency of THC in the products they consume. Even if they had, that information would be quickly outdated, Silver said. 'The cannabis market is a moving target. It is getting more potent every day,' she said. 'What's being sold to people today in California is 510 times stronger than what it was in the 1970s. Concentrates can be 99% pure THC. Vapes are over 80% THC. 'A variety of chemically extracted cannabinoids can be almost pure THC, and all of these just have very different effects on people than smoking a joint in the 1970s.' Higher potency weed is contributing to a host of problems, including an increase in addiction — a July 2022 study found consuming high-potency weed was linked to a fourfold increased risk of dependence. In the United States, about 3 in 10 people who use marijuana have cannabis use disorder, the medical term for marijuana addiction, according to the CDC. 'We know that more potent cannabis makes people more likely to become addicted,' Silver said. 'We know that more potent cannabis makes people more likely to develop psychosis, seeing and hearing things that aren't there, or schizophrenia. Habitual users may also suffer from uncontrollable vomiting.' The rise in potency is one reason that the current study may not have captured the full extent of the risk of marijuana for heart disease, Jouanjus said: 'We are afraid that the association might be even stronger than that reported.' While science continues to study the risk, experts say it's time to think twice about the potential harms of cannabis use — especially if heart disease is a concern. 'If I was a 60-year-old person who had some heart disease risk, I would be very cautious about using cannabis,' Silver said. 'I've seen older people who are using cannabis for pain or for sleep, some of whom have significant cardiovascular risk, or who have had strokes or had heart attacks or had angina, and they have no awareness that this may be putting them at greater risk.'
