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Cutting-edge imaging research aims to map brain injuries

In the first study of its kind, researchers at Saint Louis University are recruiting patients for a clinical trial that will use cutting-edge imaging equipment to map the brain injuries of combat veterans and civilians, aiming to better understand the nature of their injuries.

5 Aug 2009

Structure of an entire HIV genome decoded

The structure of an entire HIV genome has been decoded for the first time by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The results have widespread implications for understanding the strategies that viruses, like the one that causes AIDS, use to infect humans.

5 Aug 2009

Aptamers offer unique therapeutic advantages

A novel class of drugs composed of single strands of DNA or RNA, called aptamers, can bind protein targets with a high strength and specificity and are currently in clinical development as treatments for a broad range of common diseases, as described in a comprehensive review article published online ahead of print in Oligonucleotides.

5 Aug 2009

Baucus: Bipartisan group of finance committee members reach Medpac agreement

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said that a bipartisan group of six Finance Committee senators have "coalesced" around language "that would give new weight to the recommendations of an entity currently known as the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, or MedPAC," Dow Jones reports.

5 Aug 2009

Obama: Healthcare reform bill to be passed by year end

During an Indiana speech on Wednesday, President Barack Obama said "there will be an overhaul of the health care system before the end of the year and said it doesn't have to be a bipartisan effort," according to The Associated Press. He also pledged that "successful conclusion of an ambitious health care overhaul that he has argued would stabilize the nation's fiscal health."

5 Aug 2009

Iowa funds swine vaccine research

A grant from a state economic development fund will help Iowa State University researchers develop and evaluate a vaccine designed to protect swine from novel H1N1 and other strains of influenza.

5 Aug 2009

$Questions raised about vertebroplasty for osteoporotic spinal compression fractures$

Questions raised about vertebroplasty for osteoporotic spinal compression fractures

A new study led by Mayo Clinic researchers has found that relief of pain from vertebral compression fractures, as well as improvement in pain-related dysfunction, were similar in patients treated with vertebroplasty and those treated with simulated vertebroplasty without cement injections. The article, “A Randomized Controlled Trial of Vertebroplasty for Osteoporotic Spine Fractures,” was released today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

5 Aug 2009

Protein DNA repair complex key to avoiding DNA repair mistakes

As the body creates antibodies to fight invaders, a three-protein DNA repair complex called MRN is crucial for a normal gene-shuffling process to proceed properly, University of Michigan research shows.

5 Aug 2009

Insurance agents look into the future and see uncertainty and "opportunity"

For the tens of thousands of individual insurance agents nationwide, the idea of a health system overhaul hits close to home – and work. The changes currently under consideration could radically alter how they do business. For example, there could be requirements that all individuals have coverage, that employers provide insurance for their workers and that insurers cover anyone - regardless of preexisting conditions. In addition, there could be a government-run public plan that might compete with insurance companies.

5 Aug 2009

Are insurers' profits as low as they Claim?

As the health care overhaul battle moves out of Washington and onto the airwaves and Main Streets during the August recess, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the trade association for the nation's health insurers, is fighting a familiar battle.

5 Aug 2009

Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) retains status as NCI-designated cancer center

The National Cancer Institute, the nation’s top cancer research organization, has renewed the Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio as one of its NCI-designated Cancer Centers for three years. The distinction comes with $5.4 million in new federal funding through 2012 to sustain and grow the cancer center’s rapidly expanding research programs, now consisting of 140 scientists at work on a multitude of cancer projects.

4 Aug 2009

New understanding on Gleevec's limitations

University of Michigan researchers have developed an animal model that provides strong evidence why imatinib, marketed as Gleevec, helps patients with chronic myeloid leukemia survive longer, but does not keep the disease from returning if treatment ends.

4 Aug 2009

Depression may make patients become 'couch potatoes'

Feelings of depression could be one reason patients fail to follow their doctors’ orders on exercising and eventually become less physically active, a new research review finds.

4 Aug 2009

President Obama to Senate Democrats: let's do lunch

"With Congressional recess protests against his health-care agenda ramping up and other pressing business to attend to, President Barack Obama summoned the Senate's Democrats to the White House today for a high-stakes working lunch," according to Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire.

4 Aug 2009

Compound from coral offers hope fpr neuropathic pain

A compound initially isolated from a soft coral (Capnella imbricata) collected at Green Island off Taiwan, could lead scientists to develop a new set of treatments for neuropathic pain - chronic pain that sometimes follows damage to the nervous system.

4 Aug 2009

Website helps caregivers navigate Medicare

The Department of Health and Human Services has created a web site called "Ask Medicare" to help caregivers navigate the often confusing Medicare system.

4 Aug 2009

Cooling unconscious cardiac arrest survivors increases survival, cost effective

Cooling unconscious cardiac arrest survivors can increase survival and has a cost effectiveness comparable to other widely accepted treatments in modern health care, researchers report in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

4 Aug 2009

Biological explanation for psychopathy

Professor Declan Murphy and colleagues Dr Michael Craig and Dr Marco Catani from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London have found differences in the brain which may provide a biological explanation for psychopathy. The results of their study are outlined in the paper 'Altered connections on the road to psychopathy', published in Molecular Psychiatry.

4 Aug 2009

Clinical trial to test gene therapy for Alzheimer’s disease

Researchers at the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of California San Diego are about to launch a Phase 2 clinical trial to test a gene therapy treatment for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) called CERE-110.

4 Aug 2009

Mexico steps up efforts to attract medical tourists

Efforts to standardize quality measures for medical tourism are underway as Mexico tries to attract medical tourists. Such efforts come after the swine flu outbreak significantly hurt Mexico's tourism industry, which ranks third as the country's source of foreign income.

4 Aug 2009