Following a decade of steady growth, use of bisphosphonates—medications that are effective for treating osteoporosis—declined in the United States by more than 50% from 2008 to 2012.

The sudden drop seemed to occur after media reports highlighted safety concerns, such as the development of certain fractures that occurred rarely in long-term users, despite the fact that the US Food and Drug Administration and the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research did not recommend any specific safety restrictions on bisphosphonates. The findings are published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

Put down that honey. Fructose, often in the form of table sugar, is not less harmful than glucose, according to Wilhelm Krek, professor for cell biology at ETH Zurich's Institute for Molecular Health Sciences. 

Pet dogs may be humans' best friends in a new arena of life: cancer treatment, said University of Illinois veterinary clinical medicine professor Timothy Fan. Physiological similarities between dogs and humans, and conserved genetics between some dog and human cancers, can allow pet dogs to serve as useful models for studying new cancer drugs, he said.

In a meeting sponsored by the National Cancer Policy Forum of the National Academies' Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., Fan and 15 other experts in the field described the benefits of using pet dogs with naturally occurring (rather than laboratory-induced) tumors in early cancer drug trials.

It's been around for decades and it's probably in your diet soda - for a little while longer anyway. PepsiCo announced recently it was removing the artificial sweetener aspartame from its Diet Pepsi products in the U.S. starting in August.

The company cited consumer concerns about the chemical's safety.

So this week, Reactions answers the question, "Is aspartame safe?"

The prevalence of smoking among undergraduate nursing and physiotherapy students in Spain decreased from 29.3% in 2003 to 18.2% in 2013. Many of the students remained unaware of the link between smoking and diseases such as bladder cancer or the negative health effects of second-hand smoke, which points to a significant deficiency in undergraduate training.

The majority of nursing and physiotherapy students recognized that healthcare professionals were role models in society, noted Dr. Beatriz Ordás, lead author of the Journal of Advanced Nursing study.