HEALTH

MILPITAS, Calif. — LifeScan on Tuesday introduced Life First, a new North American campaign featuring music legend B.B. King and former “American Idol” contestant Crystal Bowersox in support of its OneTouch brand of blood-glucose monitoring systems.

The ads debut on national and regional television Tuesday and will be followed by online and print ads over the next several months. The introduction of the campaign coincides with National Diabetes Alert Day on March 22.

DEERFIELD, Ill. — The evolving role of the pharmacist and the growing impact of pharmacist interventions on clinical outcomes were discussed Tuesday by Walgreens chief medical officer Cheryl Pegus at the 11th annual Population Health and Care Coordination Colloquium in Philadelphia.

NEW YORK — While several drugs to treat Type 2 diabetes are on the market, researchers have found that the best first-line option is metformin.

Led by Wendy Bennett, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, researchers reviewed 140 trials and 26 observational studies of head-to-head comparisons of monotherapy or combination therapy that reported intermediate or long-term clinical outcomes or harms of six oral diabetes medications.

NEW YORK — The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus on Monday referred advertising for the dietary supplement Trigosamine Fast Acting (Trigo FA) to the Federal Trade Commission for further review following Patent Health’s failure to modify claims.

NEW YORK — Following reports of additional reactor failures at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility, natural health stores in Hawaii, Oregon and California rapidly are selling out of potassium iodide (KI) pills, a potassium supplement that can help protect the thyroid gland from radiation poisoning, FOXnews.com reported Tuesday.

MCHENRY, Ill. — Medela on Tuesday announced the launch of a new online Keep the Connection contest, giving moms a chance to win Medela breast-pumping and breast-feeding products.

WASHINGTON — A study published last week in Nutrition Journal found that dietary supplement usage and patient recommendations were common for physicians across several medical specialties, including dermatology, cardiology and orthopedics.

WASHINGTON — Members of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association last week elected Paul Sturman, president and general manager of Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, to chair the association’s board, the association announced Monday.