Monthly Archives: June 2013

In addition to aiding with headaches, fever and body aches, aspirin has increasingly been found to have preventative health benefits. By thinning your blood and interfering with your body’s clotting mechanisms, regularly taking aspirin might help prevent heart attacks and strokes. Recently, a new study conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital indicates that individuals can also reduce their colon cancer risk by taking aspirin on a regular basis. Subjects in the study who took aspirin no less than twice weekly realized a 27% reduction in their colon cancer risk over the course of the study’s 28 years in comparison to subjects who didn’t take aspirin this often. Unfortunately, aspirin regimens appeared to have no effect on colon cancers with a BRAF mutation, which applies to up to 15% of colon cancer cases.

HPV rates have fallen dramatically in teenage girls since the introduction of the HPV vaccine in 2006, according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, the rates have fallen by over half – 56%, to be precise – for the four different strains of HPV covered by the vaccine, including HPV 6, HPV 11, HPV 16 and HPV 18. None of the researchers expected such a large drop so quickly, especially since only roughly 33% of teen girls received at least one HPV vaccine dose between 2007 and 2010. In order for the HPV vaccine to be fully effective, it must be applied three times over the course of half a year. The vaccine, along with prevention techniques such as sexual partner limiting and condom use could prove to be highly effective methods for ensuring that teenagers avoid getting the disease.