Harvard Health Content API

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced its first proposed regulations for electronic cigarettes. They include a ban on sales to minors. But the FDA decided not to ban e-cigarette advertising, online sales or flavored products at this time. The new proposed rules also would provide the first federal rules covering cigars, pipe tobacco, nicotine gels and water-pipe (hookah) tobacco. E-cigarettes would be available to adults age 18 or older. People would have to show an ID to make the purchase. Vending machine sales would be allowed only in places that do not allow minors. Manufacturers of products that were not on the market by February 25, 2007, will have to apply for an FDA review. The industry and the public will have 75 days to comment on the proposed rules. Then the FDA will review those comments and issue final rules.

Marijuana use may increase heart problems in young adults, especially if they are already at risk, authors of a small study say. The study was based on reports to a drug-abuse surveillance program in France. Doctors are required to report drug-abuse cases linked with serious health problems. Researchers looked at data for 2006 through 2010. In those years, 35 reported cases involved heart or blood vessel problems among marijuana users. The average age was 34. Nine of the 35 died. Nearly half had high blood pressure, high cholesterol or some other factor that increased their risk of heart disease. During the study years, heart disease cases rose from 1.1% to 3.6% of all reported problems in marijuana users. The cases included 20 heart attacks or symptoms indicating a strong risk of immediate heart attack.

People with diabetes may have potentially dangerous heart rhythm changes if their blood sugar drops very low at night, a new study finds. The findings may help to explain other research that has shown links between very low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) and sudden death, especially at night. The new study included 25 people with type 2 diabetes. All of them had heart disease or a high risk of developing it. All had been taking insulin for their diabetes for at least 4 years. Everyone wore devices for 5 days to continuously monitor their blood sugar and heart activity. Overall, people in the group had hypoglycemia for 134 hours during the 5 days. When this occurred at night, people were 8 times as likely to have a slow heart beat called bradycardia as they were when blood sugar was normal. Abnormal heart rhythms also were more likely to occur at night if blood sugar was low.