Although picked up by only one televised news station, the Food and Drug Administration’s new national campaign to raise awareness about risks associated with purchasing medication from online pharmacies was covered by most of the major print and online media outlets.

ABC World News (9/28, story 6, 2:15, Muir) reported, “Tonight, the FDA is warning that the vast majority, 97% of those online pharmacies, are not legal.” ABC (Avila) added, “It’s a moving target of as many as 40,000 active online pharmacies, a huge majority of them fly by night start-ups, that the FDA warned today sell at a cut-rate price but deliver expired, contaminated and fake drugs that could harm the consumer.” FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, MD, was shown saying, “You have no assurance of the safety, efficacy or quality of those products.”

The AP (9/28, Johnson) reported that the on Friday, the FDA announced it is launching a campaign to warn “consumers that the vast majority of Internet pharmacies are fraudulent and likely are selling counterfeit drugs that could harm them.” The agency’s said its BeSafeRx campaign aims to “alert the public to the danger, amid evidence that more people are shopping for their medicine online, looking for savings and convenience.”

Related Links:

— “FDA warning public of risks of online pharmacies, “Linda Johnson, Associated Press, September 28, 2012.

USA Today (10/1, Healy) reports on a study appearing in the November issue of Pediatrics, which found that on average, children are exposed to almost four hours of background television every day. The article observes that “the nearly four hours of background TV exposure ‘easily dwarfs’ the 80 minutes of active TV viewing the average child in this age group absorbs daily, says the study.” According to USA Today, Matthew Lapierre, one of the study authors, “suspects that the high rate of background TV among very young children may have to do with parents and caregivers leaving the television on, even when they’re not actively watching, to ‘break up the monotony’ of being with an infant or toddler for long stretches of the day.”

Related Links:

— “U.S. kids exposed to 4 hours of background TV daily, “Michelle Healy, USA Today, October 1, 2012.

HealthDay (9/28, Preidt) reports, “People with psychopathic traits — such as callousness, manipulation, sensation-seeking and antisocial behaviors — are not able to use their sense of smell as well as other people can,” according to a study published online Sept. 18 in Chemosensory Perception. Investigators examined nearly 80 individuals to see whether or not their olfactory function was poor. Participants were also assessed for psychotic behavior and whether they possessed the ability to empathize with the feelings of others. The researchers “found that the people with the most psychopathic traits were more likely to have trouble identifying or distinguishing between smells.”

Related Links:

— “Poor Sense of Smell Linked to Personality Disorder, “Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay, September 27, 2012.

WebMD (9/28, Goodman) reports, “Seniors who take certain kinds of drugs to treat anxiety or insomnia may be more likely to develop dementia than those who do not,” according to a study published online in the BMJ.

MedPage Today (9/28, Gever) reports, “Older patients who used benzodiazepine anti-anxiety drugs were at substantially higher risk of developing dementia than nonusers,” the study found. “Among 1,063 randomly selected individuals 65 and older in southwest France who agreed to participate in a long-term observational study, the risk of new-onset dementia during follow-up was 60% greater (adjusted odds ratio 1.60, 95% CO 1.08 to 2.38) for those who had used benzodiazepines relative to never-users.” The study authors concluded, “Considering the extent to which benzodiazepines are now prescribed, physicians and regulatory agencies should consider the increasing evidence of the potential adverse effects of this drug class for the general population.”

Related Links:

— “Insomnia, Anxiety Drugs May Raise Dementia Risk, “Brenda Goodman, WebMD Health News, September 27, 2012.

HealthDay (9/28, Preidt) says that “depictions of smoking in top-grossing, youth-rated movies increased in 2011, reversing a five-year decline, a new report” published September 27 in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention journal Preventing Chronic Disease. This finding “comes just a few months after the US Surgeon General’s office warned that seeing smoking in movies causes young people to start smoking.” According to the article, “the report found that four of the six major Hollywood studios featured more smoking in their youth-rated (G, PG and PG-13) movies in 2011.”

Related Links:

— “Smoking Scenes on Rise in Top-Grossing Youth-Rated Movies: CDC, “Robert Preidt, HealthDay, September 27, 2012.