HEALTH

PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa. — Pollen.com and Weather Trends International last month teamed together on a new forecast tool for allergy sufferers: a 28-day weather forecast by zip code to help people with allergies better plan when pollen levels are likely to be high in their area.

CATANZARO, Italy — A new study revealed that a single gene mutation might be the cause of Type 2 diabetes.

Alarming statistics are as common in the healthcare world as healthcare workers themselves, but some of the latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are particularly dramatic: Nearly 26 million Americans have diabetes, the agency said in late January, and an estimated 79 million U.S. adults — representing more than one-third of all adults in the country — have prediabetes.

March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. In support of that, Boehringer Ingelheim’s Dulcolax brand this year has partnered with the Colon Cancer Alliance. Following is CCA’s CEO Andrew Spiegel on that partnership:

DSN: How has Dulcolax partnered with CCA?

HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. — Similasan this past fall added Computer Eye Relief to its lineup of homeopathic eye care products. The active ingredients in Similasan Computer Eye Relief eye drops stimulate the eye’s natural ability to relieve eyestrain due to intense computer work, high TV consumption, significant amounts of reading or writing and driving at night.

As Drug Store News suggested last month, legislation under consideration in Tennessee and Kentucky that would make the popular decongestant pseudoephedrine only available by prescription has, in fact, sparked interest in neighboring states. Arkansas shares a border with Kentucky, where a PSE prescription-only bill was filed in January, and Mississippi, one of two states that already has passed PSE prescription-only legislation.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Among people who use dietary supplements, the most popular products in 2010 were fish oil, multivitamins, vitamin D, calcium and Co Q-10, according to a ConsumerLab.com survey.

Women were much more likely than men to have taken vitamin D, calcium or probiotics. Men were more likely than women to have taken Co Q-10, herbs and extracts, glucosamine/chondroitin, vitamin E, resveratrol, amino acids, and nutrition drinks and powders.

NEW YORK — Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered that potassium levels in the blood may explain a racial disparity among Type 2 diabetes patients.

According to a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, among 12,000 participants, more than 2,000 African-Americans in the study had lower average serum potassium levels than the more than 9,000 whites in the study. They also were twice as likely to develop Type 2 diabetes.