Tag Archives: toolbox

Smokers with Mental Disorders, Drug and Alcohol Problems Need Doctors’ Help to Quit

Smokers who also have alcohol, drug and mental disorders would benefit greatly from smoking-cessation counseling from their primary care physicians and would be five times more successful at kicking the habit, a study by researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has found.

Smokers with these co-morbid conditions make up about 40 percent of the smoking population, have a more difficult time quitting and represent a significant burden on the health care system. If their primary care physicians could help them to quit smoking, it would not only improve their health of patients but would reduce tobacco-related health care costs, said Dr. Michael Ong, an assistant professor of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a researcher with UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. (more…)

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Making Blood-Sucking Deadly for Mosquitoes

*Inhibiting a molecular process cells use to direct proteins to their proper destinations causes more than 90 percent of affected mosquitoes to die within 48 hours of blood feeding, a UA team of biochemists found.*

Mosquitoes die soon after a blood meal if certain protein components are experimentally disrupted, a team of biochemists at the University of Arizona has discovered.

The approach could be used as an additional strategy in the worldwide effort to curb mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever, yellow fever and malaria. (more…)

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