Those trying to lose weight are generally told to avoid alcohol, due to its high calorie content. However scientists from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in the U.S have claimed that women who drink moderate amounts of wine are less likely to gain weight than those who stick to mineral water.

Studying data provided by over 19,000 women the scientists discovered over 13 years, all the women tended to gain weight but the 37% of respondents who said they never drank tended to gain the most weight.

The women’s weight also went up or down according to which alcohol they preferred, with those drinking red wine gaining the most weight and those choosing beer and spirits putting on the most.

The results from the study suggest that calories from alcohol are less detrimental to weight than those in other foods. It also could mean that our body’s mechanism for digesting alcohol is more complex than scientists previously realised.

Some researchers have posited the theory that people who regularly drink alcohol will see their liver’s develop a separate pathway to break down alcohol, turning excess energy into heat rather than fat.

The report has been published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. To celebrate its publication, I will be opening a bottle of Merlot, safe in the knowledge that with every slug I’m getting thinner.

Even the president of the U.S is not immune to the health problems that afflict most of us as we get older – apparently Barack Obama has slightly raised cholesterol.

Reporters were surprised when after taking the presidential motorcade to give a speech on Monday, the President chose to walk back to the White House through Layfayette Park in Washington. He told them that he was trying to walk of his cholesterol, which he attributed to the year spent campaigning.

He revealed that after having a physical exam on Sunday his doctor told him that the levels of the ‘bad’ cholesterol LDL in his blood had risen to the borderline level (meaning they were becoming a concern) since his last exam in 2007.

White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs said that the rise was a result of too many cheeseburgers and desserts. He joked with reporters that though they all thought Obama was very conscious about his health and ‘carried arugula in his pocket to snack on’, the president actually has a very sweet tooth.

He said that as Obama has access to kitchen staff and a pastry chef, sweet foods were more available so the president was more likely to indulge his love of desserts.

It is not known whether the president will be starting on statins to lower his cholesterol.

The physical also revealed that President Obama has still not managed to quit smoking, though he has previously spoken about his struggles to give up. Mr. Gibbs said that he was very aware of the example he sets to America’s youth and knows that his addiction is not a ‘good thing’ for either his children or those throughout the States to see.

An 85-year old man has had his dying wish granted to him – that the hearse bearing his coffin should display the sign, ‘Smoking Killed Me’.

Dick Whittamore wanted the bleak message to act as a warning to youngsters who might be tempted to take up the habit. As the hearse drove through Dover towards the cemetery, passers-by stopped to watch.

Mr Whittamore, who worked as an assistant theatre manager, for many years suffered from the lung disease emphysema. The illness is painful and sufferers experience difficulty breathing and is caused by the toxins in cigarette smoke.

Friends said that while working for the Hippodrome theatre, Mr. Whittaker proved himself an inspired publicist, hence the bold move to make people more aware of the dangers of cigerettes.  He was a heavy smoker when he was younger and was eager to prevent people making the same mistakes.

He designed the sign to look like the warnings displayed on cigarette packets and the funeral directors, Sullivan and Sons,  were instructed to also leave the sign on his grave for a week.

The stop-smoking charity Quit applauded Mr. Whittacker’s actions, saying that he sent out a strong message to others to prevent them suffering.

An American man who for 30 years sold diet pills he promised would lead to effortless weight loss has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

During his career, Frank Sarcona was served with orders from numerous judges across America but continued to pay for lurid adverts in newspapers and magazines claiming the pills would make fat just disappear.

Copy included promised like, “Blast up to 49 pounds off you in only 29 days!” and “Amazing Fat-Fighting Super Pill Devours Fat!” and while thousands desperate to lose weight believed the fabulous claims, they were based on nothing but lies.

Sentencing Sarcona, U.S District Judge said that the number of people taken in by the fraud was ‘astronomical’. District Attorney Kerry Baron described how Sarcona and his partner made over $10,000,000 from 130,000 people between 2000 and 2004. Some people were promised they would be part of a clinical study, while his adverts for the Lipoban Clinic featured a Mexican doctor unliscensed in the U.S.

Mr. Sarcona claims that despite his 62 charges of fraud and the lengthy jail term, he is the victim of the government, who do not share his belief in diet pills, describing himself as a ‘champion’ for dietary supplements.

Investigators previously convicted him for a massive fraud involving pills called ‘Slim America’, where the doctor touted as his spokesperson was actually revealed to be suffering from dementia in a nursing home.

Then, Sarcona was ordered to post a $5m bond, but it was never done. However eventually the millions he made was discovered in a Bahaman bank account and the money was returned to consumers.

We at the Online Clinic think the significant jail term is an excellent step towards cracking down on the criminals who raise hopes and create false beliefs in obese patients when they promise ‘magic’ solutions. No diet pill can melt fat away and with any slimming pill, diet and exercise will always be needed for the pill to work.

The UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency have successfully carried out a raid in Bristol, resulting in the seizure of a large load of counterfeit medications.

Police from the Safer Stronger Neighbourhood team supported their collegues at the MHRA and carried out the raids at three properties, in the Newtown, Redfield and Hotwells areas of the city.

In total, the team seized counterfeit medications worth £180,000. They included the erectile dysfunction medications Viagra, Levitra and Cialis, as well as the anti-anxiety medication Diezepam. The officers also discovered a large amount of cannabis plants at one of the properties, thought to have a street value of £40,000.

Further investigation also resulted in the seizure of 1000 tablets which officials believe to be counterfeit.

So far, a 23-year old man has been arrested on suspicious of cultivating cannabis. A 28-year old man has also been arrested on suspicious of supplying counterfeit medication.

A spokesperson for the Safer Neighbourhood team, police sergeant Jon Ames, said that the branch was committed to stamping out the trade in counterfeit medication and asked for the public to contact them if they had any further information about illegal activity.

The head of enforcement for the MHRA Mike Deats warned that people who purchased medication from any other sources other than a registered pharmacy were putting their health at risk, possibly taking doses that were too high or low or even imbibing dangerous substances.

He added that those dealing in counterfeit drugs didn’t care about consumer’s health and were only interested in making money.

We tend to think of junk food, obesity and high cholesterol as a problem of the modern age – but apparently the ancient priests of Egypt caused as much damage to their health as we do today/

According to Egyptologists and scientists writing in The Lancetthe priest’s diet, rich in fatty foods, alcohol and red meat, meant that they suffered from heart disease and tended to die early.

In ancient Egypt, the priests were expected to placehuge plates of food before the statues of the gods three times a day, in order to appease them.The gods were offering massive quantities of roasted birds, cakes, bread and oceans of beer and wine – but then the food would be divied up between the priests for them to take home to their families.  Much of the menu was extremely high in saturated fat.

The University of Manchester scientists combined translations of inscriptions on the temple walls with analysis of the priest’s mummified remains, to work out how bad their atheroscelerosis (or build up of fatty plaques in the arteries) was.

They showed that the priests were suffering from high cholesterol long before Macdonalds and fried chicken became such a problem. Of the 16 mummies they examined, 9 showed signs of atheroscelerosis. It is thought that for the peasants who made up the majority of the population, living off cereals and vegetables, high cholesterol was very far from being a problem.

Some unscrupulous priests could even be accused of deserving everything they got, after inscriptions indicated that they would take the food without even offering it to the gods.

Professor Tony Heagerty said that the findings showed that the modern plague of cholesterol is ‘nothing more than history revisiting us’, as unequivocally ‘atherosclerosis is a disease of ancient times.’

Good news for BioSante, a company conducting trials into a new treatment for female sexual dysfunction called Libigel. A data monitoring committee has recommended that the medication is suitable for continued trials after positive data on safety, taken from a phase III clinical trial, was released.

The review of the results involved the panel examining all the unblended adverse events in the safety study, including serious adverse events and cardiovascular and breast cancer events. So far, there have been no deaths, 6 patients developed cardiovascular problems and 4 breast cancer. The low rate of incidence means that the development programme has the go-ahead to continue.

A spokeswoman for BioSante said that their product was the lead pharmaceutical product in development in the US for FSD in surgically menopausal women and added that that they believed that the treatment, a form of testosterone patch, would be the first product to get approval from the FDA for the treatment of the condition.

They will be facing competition from the makers of Flibanserin, a pill which has had extremely promising results in pre-and-post menopausal women suffering from Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder.

The company hope to submit Libigel to the FDA for a new drug application in mid-2011. After the results were announced, shares in the company went up by 5%.

The U.S Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) panel has partly ruled against a claim by Viagra manufacturers Pfizer that the Chinese herb yin yang huo, also known as horny goat weed, infringed on their patent rights for the medication.

The judges said that an element of the patent for Viagra was invalid as the medication is not sufficiently different from the traditional Chinese herb.

The ruling is a blow for Pfizer as it will affect an ongoing patent dispute they have with Eli Lilly over the rival company’s Cialis, which has been ongoing since 2002. Pfizer claimed that their method for treating erectile dysfunction was a new invention, but the similarity the blue pill has to horny goat weed means that a precedent has been set that this is not the case.

The USPTO found that both horny goat weed and Viagra act through the same mechanism, the inhibition of the enzyme phosphodieterase-5, or PDE-5. They ruled that ‘the patent claim was the logical step up from using the herb’.

A Pfizer spokesperson has said that the other aspects of the patent remain valid and said that it would not have an impact on Pfizer’s other claims over sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra. The firm has not commented on how the decision could impact on the 5-year lawsuit against Eli Lilley.

The company has until the 12^th of April to either seek a rehearing from the UPSPTO or appeal the decision through the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the body specialising in patent law.

New legislation in Scotland may give the state unprecedented influence over people’s diets, as part of the war against the country's growing obesity epidemic.

Holyrood’s SNP administration has asked chefs to reduce the calories in their meals, but claim that failure to follow these recommendations will lead to legislation being enforced if ‘sufficient’ progress is not made.

This new strategy of intervention has come about as a result of the state’s claim that the general population is unwilling to make the changes necessary for good health, of their own free will.

Minister’s have estimated that if current trends continued, 40 percent of the population could be classed as obese by 2030, at a cost of £3 billion a year to the already fragile economy.

Michelin-starred chef Martin Wishart has publically announced his refusal to change the menu of his award winning restaurant, citing the freedom of choice of his customers as paramount.

Within the proposed strategy there were also calls for the sale of sweets near tills to be banned and a restriction on promotions, such as two for one offers, to health foods only.

The strategy has been agreed by Scotland’s 32 councils and the Scottish Executive, but early indications suggest that it may take up to 30 years to make progress!

Health officials have said that a change in strategy in fighting HIV could be the key to beating the spread of the life-threatening illness.

They have suggested that testing most of the world’s populations for HIV, or ‘blanket testing’, could see the virus dying out within 40 years.

The plan could see people offered twice-yearly tests for the sexually transmitted infection, with those testing positive immediately put on anti-viral treatment for the rest of their lives. The suggestion comes after clinical trials showed that blanket prescription of ARVs, or antiretroviral drugs, could stop transmission of HIV and halve the number of cases of AIDS-related tuberculosis within 10 years.

Treating patients with ARVs within a year of their diagnosis can not only prevent the HIV from becoming full-blown AIDS, but can reduce the transmission of the virus tenfold, which eventually could force the virus to die out.

Scientists are planning to launch large-scale trials of the new strategy in Africa and the US, results of which will decide whether the plan will be adopted as public health policy. It is thought that in South Africa alone, the cost to implement the program would be between $3bn and $4bn per annum.

Speaking to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Brian Williams of the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis said that he believed that when all costs were factored in, the cost of the antiretroviral drugs would be considerably less than the cost of treating HIV-positive patients for the diseases they eventually develop, only for the patients to eventually die.

He said, “The only thing that’s more expensive is not doing this”, pointing out that young adults in the prime of their life were dying at the moment when they could be contributing to society.