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American Medical Association officials outline provisions physicians would accept in electronic prescribing legislation

The American Medical Association on Friday discussed a set of standards that physicians would accept for any electronic prescribing requirement under Medicare, CongressDaily reports.

13 May 2008

Simple, painless hair test detects breast cancer

A test developed by Australian scientists which promises to be able to pick up breast cancer from a hair sample, could be commercially available later this year.

13 May 2008

Human aging gene found in flies

Scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have found a fast and effective way to investigate important aspects of human ageing.

11 May 2008

Fruit fly avoidance mechanism could lead to new ways to control pain in humans

At first, fruit flies eat like horses. Hatching inside over-ripe fruit where they were laid, they feed wildly in the sugar-rich environment until nature sends them an offer they can't refuse. To survive, they must leave the fruit, wander off and burrow into the earth where they avoid food as if it were poison. Only then can the larvae grow and hatch into flies that will take wing to lay their own eggs.

11 May 2008

Radioactive carbon-14 determines the number of fat cells remains constant in all body types

The radioactive carbon-14 produced by above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s and '60s has helped researchers determine that the number of fat cells in a human's body, whether lean or obese, is established during the teenage years. Changes in fat mass in adulthood can be attributed mainly to changes in fat cell volume, not an increase in the actual number of fat cells.

9 May 2008

U.S. Patent Office allows another significant VNUS patent

VNUS Medical Technologies, Inc. today announced that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has decided to allow a second continuation patent application related to the patents in the VNUS patent infringement lawsuit against suppliers of endovenous laser products. This comes on the heels of the Patent Office's decision last month to allow VNUS a separate patent application, also filed as a continuation of one of the patents in the lawsuit.

9 May 2008

Cytopia announces novel anti-cancer drug development collaboration

Cytopia Limited today announced that it has entered into an anti-cancer drug discovery and development collaboration with Cancer Therapeutics CRC Pty Ltd. This agreement leverages Cytopia's early stage drug discovery pipeline of kinase inhibitors, a class of targeted therapeutics that is one of the fastest growing segments of the cancer drug market.

9 May 2008

Discovery of new gene that causes cancer

Researchers at the OU Cancer Institute have identified a new gene that causes cancer. The ground-breaking research appears in Nature's cancer journal Oncogene.

8 May 2008

A new test could predict when to expect menopause

At a time when many women are holding back on starting a family until they feel both and emotionally financially secure, the question of just how fertile women are as they get older is of interest to many.

8 May 2008

Senate Finance Committee holds first in series of Congressional hearings on U.S. health system overhaul

The Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday hold the first of at least eight congressional hearings focusing on strategies to reform the U.S. health care system, featuring testimony by former HHS secretaries Tommy Thompson and Donna Shalala, CQ HealthBeat reports.

7 May 2008

Nanoworms developed to target tumors

Scientists at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and MIT have developed nanometer-sized "nanoworms" that can cruise through the bloodstream without significant interference from the body's immune defense system and-like tiny anti-cancer missiles-home in on tumors.

7 May 2008

Study suggests caution on a new anti-obesity drug in children

A new class of anti-obesity drugs that suppresses appetite by blocking cannabinoid receptors in the brain could also suppress the adaptive rewiring of the brain necessary for neural development in children, studies with mice have indicated.

7 May 2008

A stable post-divorce family environment helps minimize long-term harm to children

For children of divorce, what happens after their parents split up may be just as important to their long-term well-being as the divorce itself.

7 May 2008

A new search for causes of autism

Dr. Eric Fombonne, from the Research Institute of the MUHC at the Montreal Children's Hospital, is involved in a multi-site consortium to gather DNA samples from 2,000 autism patients and their families over the next three years.

7 May 2008

Discovery of DNA variations in chromosome 6 that gives rise to neuroblastoma

Using advanced gene-hunting technology, an international team of researchers has for the first time identified a chromosome region that is the source of genetic events that give rise to neuroblastoma, an often fatal childhood cancer.

7 May 2008

GenVec announces grant for respiratory syncytial virus vaccine program

GenVec, Inc. announced today that it has received an Advanced Technology Phase I Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of the National Institutes of Health, to support the Company's efforts to develop vaccines for the prevention of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

7 May 2008

Medical research is essential to improving the economy and bettering lives

Health care in the United States is expensive, but its funding is crucial because it also is a major contributor to the economy and can better lives, according to an essay appearing in the June 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). Because of the cost of health care, this is not time to shrink the budget at the National Institutes of Health, which funds medical research that leads to potentially curative therapy.

7 May 2008

House hearing to address concerns over Medicare durable medical equipment competitive bidding program

The House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee on Tuesday plans to hold a hearing on a Medicare competitive bidding program for durable medical equipment, CQ HealthBeat reports (Carey, CQ HealthBeat, 5/5).

6 May 2008

Nuclear radiation-blocking, anti-chemical, biological-protection fabric granted Australian patent

Ronald DeMeo, MD, MBA, president and chief executive officer with Radiation Shield Technologies (RST), today announced the company has been granted a new Australian patent for Demron, the world's first nuclear radiation-blocking, anti-chemical and biological-protection material.

6 May 2008

Location technologies are improving NHS care

Some of the UK's leading experts in location technologies confirmed this week that applications such as RFID in hospitals are already improving the efficiency and quality of patient care. But they also warn that compatibility problems between hardware and software applications, and a lack of joined up thinking from technology companies mean that the NHS is not benefiting as much as it could.

6 May 2008