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Majority of nurse practitioners recommend dietary supplements for overall health and wellness

Eighty-five percent of nurse practitioners agree that one of the roles of healthcare professionals is to provide their patients with information about dietary supplements, according to new research from the "Life...supplemented" 2009 Healthcare Professionals (HCP) Impact Study.

11 Mar 2010

Adherence to lipid-lowering guidelines may help reduce cardiovascular deaths

Only half of all patients at high risk of heart disease are given correct targets for lowering their cholesterol levels according to a study of 25,250 patients in Germany published online today (Thursday 11 March) in the European Heart Journal.

11 Mar 2010

XenaCare Holdings' Cobroxin to be available for purchase in Walgreens

XenaCare Holdings, Inc., a company specializing in the marketing and retail distribution of consumer healthcare products, has announced today that its over-the-counter (OTC) pain reliever, Cobroxin, will be available for purchase in Walgreens by May 1, 2010. Walgreens is considered one of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains with 7,162 drugstores located throughout the United States.

11 Mar 2010

New study shows e-prescriptions reduce medication errors

Is it time for all community-based doctors to turn to e-prescribing to cut down on the number of medication errors? According to Rainu Kaushal and colleagues from the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, electronic prescriptions can dramatically reduce prescribing errors - up to seven-fold.

11 Mar 2010

Cytokeratins 8 and 18 can strongly enhance breast cancer drug fulvestrant's anti-estrogenic activity

Women's responsiveness to the second-line breast cancer drug fulvestrant may depend on whether the cancer cells are expressing two key proteins, Indiana University Bloomington scientists report in this month's Cancer Biology & Therapy.

11 Mar 2010

FDA sponsoring workshops to increase rare disease treatment options

The Wall Street Journal: FDA is putting on workshops for pharmaceutical manufacturers to increase the pool of applicants for approved "orphan drugs," that treat rare diseases. Currently, there are about 7,000 so-called orphan diseases in the U.S. that have few or no FDA-approved treatments.

11 Mar 2010

Ampicillin activates torsinA, improves cell function to reduce movement disorders

Discovery of an antibiotic's capacity to improve cell function in laboratory tests is providing movement disorder researchers with leads to more desirable molecules with potentially similar traits, according to University of Alabama scientists co-authoring a paper publishing March 10 in the journal Disease Models & Mechanisms.

11 Mar 2010

Clinical trial shows eprotirome drug reduces blood cholesterol

A thyroid-hormone-like substance that works specifically on the liver reduces blood cholesterol with no serious side effects. This according to a clinical trial conducted by researchers from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet, amongst other centres, published today in the top-ranking scientific periodical The New England Journal of Medicine.

11 Mar 2010

Bavarian Nordic' Annual Report 2009

Today Bavarian Nordic published the company's Annual Report 2009. The report is available on the company's website: www.bavarian-nordic.com

10 Mar 2010

Stason Pharmaceuticals to market Unilife's Unitract 1mL safety syringe in Japan, China and Taiwan

Unilife Corporation today announced that it has signed an exclusive five-year agreement with Stason Pharmaceuticals Inc, a U.S.-based pharmaceutical company, to market the Unitract™ 1mL safety syringe in Japan, China and Taiwan. Stason's Taiwan-based strategic alliance affiliate, Standard Chem. and Pharm. Co., LTD, will act as the primary distributor of the product within these designated territories.

10 Mar 2010

$Long-term use of bisphosphonates may adversely affect bone quality and increase risk of atypical fractures$

Long-term use of bisphosphonates may adversely affect bone quality and increase risk of atypical fractures

Bisphosphonate treatments, proven to enhance bone density and reduce fracture incidence in post-menopausal women, may adversely affect bone quality and increase risk of atypical fractures of the femur when used for four or more years, according to preliminary research presented today at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS).

10 Mar 2010

Idera Pharmaceuticals announces net income of $3.9M for fourth-quarter 2009

Idera Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today reported financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2009.

10 Mar 2010

First Edition: March 10, 2010

Protests, million-dollar ad campaigns, deepening partisan fault lines and president's stepped-up health reform end game dominate today's health care headlines.

10 Mar 2010

Idahoans buckling under soaring health care costs: No help from Idaho State Senate

Idahoans buckling under soaring health care costs didn't get any help from the Idaho State Senate tonight. In fact, with the passage of the Idaho Health Freedom Act (House Bill 391), they may have just made matters worse.

10 Mar 2010

BIOCRATES Life Sciences, CHENOMX announce co-marketing agreement

Austrian biomarker developer BIOCRATES Life Sciences AG announced today that it entered a co-marketing agreement with Canadian-based CHENOMX Inc. Both enterprises focus on a new and highly promising technology aimed at generating a metabolic profile of the human organism that can be used to monitor the effects of disease, nutrition, toxins, environment, or drugs on an organism.

10 Mar 2010

Cellzome, GSK form second major alliance to develop new anti-inflammatory drugs

Cellzome today announced that it has formed a second strategic alliance with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). This new collaboration gives GSK exclusive access to Cellzome's proprietary Episphere(TM) technology in the emerging field of epigenetics as applied to immunoinflammatory disease. Epigenetic mechanisms play a key role in controlling immune cell differentiation and inflammatory gene expression during an excessive inflammatory response.

10 Mar 2010

Risk-free psychological treatment can be better alternative to drugs in treating women with low sexual desire

According to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, people who engage in regular sexual activity gain several health benefits, such as longer lives, healthier hearts, lower blood pressure, and lower risk of breast cancer. However, approximately 33 percent of women may not receive these benefits due to low sexual desire.

10 Mar 2010

U.N. official addresses increasing drug addiction in developing countries

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on Monday warned of an impending "health disaster facing developing countries if wealthy nations fail to control drugs," Agence France-Presse reports. During a speech delivered in Vienna, UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa pointed to "increasing use of heroin in East Africa, cocaine in West Africa, and synthetic drugs in the Middle East and South East Asia as warning signs" of a growing drug problem in impoverished nations (3/8).

10 Mar 2010

Lonza acquires access to PCA technology patent portfolio

Odyssey Thera, Inc., announced today the signing of an agreement with Lonza to make Odyssey Thera's proprietary Protein-fragment Complementation Assay (PCA) technology, as part of compound profiling services, available to life science and drug discovery researchers.

10 Mar 2010

False positives in screening tests

In many jurisdictions, tests for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are required screening for pregnant women. Some even suggest screening the entire population for HIV. The rationale is to administer powerful antiretroviral drugs to healthy individuals to "prevent transmission."

10 Mar 2010