Health

The first plebiscite on the Obama health care law seems likely to be a low-turnout affair among an electorate dominated by Republican primary voters.

Among patients tested for strokes with a complex type of brain scan, radiation overdoses were more widespread than previously known, a New York Times examination has found.

US therapy system helping UK problem teenagers

US therapy system helping UK problem teenagers

Senior doctor Tony Strong, 37, works an 80-hour week, despite a recent European ruling that it should be no more than 48. In this diary, he exposes why the rules are bad for doctors and patients alike.

Critics call it a Band-Aid, but supporters say a suicide hot line is a gateway into government services.

Bystanders should focus on "hands only" chest compressions during CPR (a life saving procedure) and not bother with the mouth-to-mouth bit, says a leading expert who quoted two new studies from the USA and Europe. (CPR stands for cardiopulmonary resuscitation) You can read an editorial accompanying the study in the peer-reviewed academic journal, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)...

Approximately thirty million American women will gain from the new health reform law over the next ten years, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation based in New York. The authors state that the law will stabilize women's growing exposure to ever-increasing health costs, and even reverse it, by subsidizing health insurance for approximately 15 million women who currently have to no health insurance cover, while at the same time strengthening existing coverage for another 14.5 million women deemed underinsured...

The US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has approved vaccines for the 2010-2011 USA influenza season, protecting against three strains of influenza, including the H1N1 virus which caused the 2009 pandemic. In 2009, because the H1N1 virus appeared after seasonal vaccine production commenced, two separate vaccines were required to protect against the seasonal flu and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic flu virus. The FDA says that only one vaccine is needed for this year...

The latest salvo in the happiness debate has been fired, writes Jenny McCartney

The Lancet this week featured an Editorial discussing a recent report from the UK Vascular Society and Royal College of Physicians showing that the waiting time for vascular surgery after symptoms of stroke or transient ischemic attack is far too long. Guidelines set by the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) suggest no more than a 14 day wait between symptoms and operation. The 2007 National Stroke Strategy is targeting for there to be a 48 hour wait by 2017...

The US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has lifted a clinical hold on Geron's Investigational New Drug (IND) application - the Phase I clinical trial of GRNOPC1 in patients with acute spinal cord injury may now go ahead. GRNOPC1 is the first ever clinical trial of a human embryonic stem cell based therapy in humans. The Phase I trials aims to establish the safety of GRNOPC1 in patients with "complete" American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) Impairment Scale grade A subacute thoracic spinal cord injuries. Thomas B. Okarma, Ph.D., M.D...

The Director of Immunization, Department of Health, UK has written a letter to UK doctors warning about the risk of febrile convulsions in children aged under five years and seasonal influenza vaccines marketed by Pfizer Vaccines (Enzira® and CSL Biotherapies generic influenza vaccine). Professor D M Salisbury CB wrote that epidemiological data from Australia revealed a higher-than-expected increase in febrile convulsions in children related to the use of Fluvax (manufactured by CSL Biotherapies)...

Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB) and Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB (STO: SOBI) announced results from a Phase 1/2a open-label, dose-escalation, safety and pharmacokinetic study of the companies' long-lasting, fully-recombinant factor IX Fc fusion protein (rFIXFc) in hemophilia B patients. The data, which were presented at the World Federation of Hemophilia Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on July 11, 2010, showed that rFIXFc was well tolerated and demonstrated an approximately three-fold increase in half-life compared to historical data for existing therapies...

Academics at Northumbria University have demonstrated a link between teenage binge drinking and damage to prospective memory. Prospective memory is an important aspect of day-to-day memory function and is defined as the cognitive ability to remember to carry out an activity at some future point in time. Examples include remembering to attend an appointment at the dentist or to carry out a task such as remembering to pay a bill on time...

"In the coming decade, the health care and social assistance sector will be one of the leading sources of employment. It is going to be one of the most vital sectors in the economy and it is going to be a place of job growth," said Ithaca College sociologist Stephen Sweet. Since women make up a whopping 80 percent of the workforce in the health care industry, allowances will have to be made for their lifestyle needs...

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced that the European Medicines Agency's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has issued a positive opinion for Arixtra (fondaparinux),an anti-clotting drug (antithrombotic) for the treatment of adults with acute symptomatic spontaneous superficial-vein thrombosis (SVT) of the lower limbs without concomitant deep-vein thrombosis. "We are very glad that healthcare providers now have fondaparinux as a licensed treatment option for patients with superficial vein thrombosis...

Researchers from the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich have shown that the ADAM10 protein can inhibit the formation of beta-amyloid, which is responsible for Alzheimer's disease. ADAM10 acts like a pair of molecular scissors to cut the protein from which beta-amyloid is formed, effectively preventing the formation of beta-amyloid. This makes ADAM10 a key molecule in Alzheimer's therapy. The research team has just published detailed information on their findings in the online edition of the EMBO Journal...

Students on Lancaster University's Doctorate in Palliative Care have started the first course of its kind in the world. The doctorate has attracted 16 people from a range of backgrounds and countries, who are working in the field of palliative, hospice and end of life care...

Results from a new study suggest that oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may yield additional benefit of protecting against the formation and rupture of brain aneurysms in women. The findings from this first-of-its-kind study by a neurointerventional expert from Rush University Medical Center were presented at the Society of Neurointerventional Surgery (SNIS) 7th annual meeting. According to the lead author of the study, Dr...