From BusinessWeek:

Scientists have found evidence that older men with higher levels of selenium are less likely to suffer from dysglycemia, or improper blood-sugar metabolism.

Tasnime Akbaraly, from the University of Montpellier in France, and colleagues studied 1,162 French adults for nine years, checking their levels of selenium and monitoring whether they developed blood-sugar problems.

According to their report, published online in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism, elderly men whose selenium concentrations were in the top one-third had a significantly lower risk.

From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

CDC has developed an issue brief that summarizes the most recent information about deaths and emergency department visits resulting from drug overdoses. This brief includes information on overdose trends, the most common drugs involved, and the regions and populations most severely affected. Recommendations on how health care providers, private insurance providers, and state and federal agencies can work to prevent unintentional drug overdoses are also included.

During 1999–2006, the number of poisoning deaths in the United States nearly doubled, largely as a result of deaths involving prescription opioid painkillers. CDC researchers found that, in 2006, the rate of poisoning involving opioid painkillers in Washington state was significantly higher than the national rate. Methadone was involved in almost two -thirds of these deaths.

While types of drugs involved in prescription drug overdose deaths can be determined from medical examiner and emergency department data, the patterns of prescription use leading up to these overdoses have not been described. To help in this effort, CDC Injury Center scientists are conducting a study is to compare the prescriptions used among people who died of drug overdoses with the prescription use of a control group of other users of controlled substance prescription drugs (CSPD). This project will link information from the New Mexico prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) and the New Mexico state medical examiner. Risk factors to be examined will include prescriptions for specific drugs, the number of prescriptions, providers, and pharmacies, and overlapping prescriptions. Study results are expected in 2010.