New York City

Survey: 100,000 give up smoking

The number of adult smokers in New York City dropped by more than 100,000 in a year, a decrease city officials attribute to sharply higher tobacco taxes, the city’s smoking ban in bars and cessation programs.

Telephone surveys commissioned by the city found that 19.3 percent of adults smoked in 2003, compared with 21.6 percent in 2002, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

Cigarette consumption also declined by 13 percent.

“From what we’ve seen, we believe New York City experienced the steepest decline anywhere in one year,” Health Commissioner Thomas R. Frieden told the Times.

In 2002, tax on cigarettes went from 8 cents a pack to $1.50 a pack; the following year, the city’s law banning smoking in bars took effect.

London

One in 10 schoolchildren too heavy, report finds

One of every 10 schoolchildren in the world is overweight, and about 45 million have an increased risk of developing diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses before the age of 20, said the first global assessment of child obesity.

The report, compiled by The International Obesity Task Force, estimates that at least 155 million children between the ages of 5 and 17, or about 10 percent of the total, are too heavy, while almost 45 million of them are obese.

The findings were submitted to the World Health Organization before next week’s critical vote by the world’s health ministers on whether to adopt a global strategy on diet, physical activity and health.

In South Africa, 25 percent of teenage girls are too fat — similar to the average in the United States, which has one of the world’s most serious obesity problems.

In Europe, childhood obesity has increased steadily, with the highest prevalence being in southern Europe, where 30 percent of schoolchildren are overweight.

Chicago

Vaccine eases racial gap for some diseases

A childhood vaccine against pneumonia, ear infections and meningitis has dramatically reduced such diseases in the United States and narrowed the racial gap among victims, a government study found.

Before the vaccine was introduced in 2000, the incidence of what are called invasive pneumococcal infections was 3.3 times higher in black children under 2 than in whites. In 2002, the incidence was just 1.6 times higher among black youngsters, according to researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The vaccine, called Prevnar, protects against infections caused by streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria. These include some types of middle-ear infections, blood poisoning, pneumonia and meningitis.

New Jersey

Stem-cell transplants in rats a success

Scientists have transplanted adult stem cells from the bone marrow of rats into the brains of rat embryos and found that thousands of the cells survive into adulthood, raising the possibility that someday developmental abnormalities could be prevented or treated in the womb.

Dr. Ira Black, chairman of the department of neuroscience at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, said the cells took on the properties of brain cells, migrating to specific regions and taking up characteristics of neighboring cells.

The findings were published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Over the past few years, scientists have debated the theory that bone marrow stem cells, plentiful throughout the human life cycle, could, with coaxing, become many types of brain cells. Many reports have disputed this, asserting bone marrow stem cells merely fuse to nearby brain cells.