(January 28, 2010 - Insidermedicine)

From Italy - People who smoke are also at risk from breathing their own secondhand smoke, according to a report published in the journal Environmental Health. Researchers studied the effects of second hand smoke on newsagents, following 15 active smokers who worked in their own newsstand and thereby were exposed only to their own smoke. They found that if someone was to smoke 14 cigarettes daily, inhaling their own secondhand smoke would be equivalent to smoking an extra 2.6 cigarettes.

From Australia - According to a report published in the Journal of The American Geriatrics Society, overweight adults over 70 years old actually have a reduced risk of death in a ten year period. Researchers examined over 9,000 men and women, aged 70-75 at the beginning of the study, for ten years. Results showed, surprisingly, that participants who had a BMI considered overweight had a 13% lower risk of death during the study than participants considered to be of normal weight.

And finally, from Seattle - According to a report published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, symptoms are largely ineffective in determining early ovarian cancer. Researchers compared over 800 patients with ovarian cancer to over 1300 healthy controls. They found that evaluating symptoms--including abdominal pain, frequent urination and bloating--would only be effective in detecting early stage ovarian cancer in about 1 in 100 women.