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BMA warns medical regulation proposals will muzzle doctors

A raft of proposals which together add up to the loss of professionally-led medical regulation have the potential to muzzle doctors in their role of speaking out for their patients, warns the British Medical Association (BMA) today.

21 Feb 2007

Clarient receives patent for "automated detection of objects in a biological sample"

Clarient, Inc. has announced that it has been granted a new U.S. patent related to the detection and quantification of rare tumor cells in blood and bone marrow.

21 Feb 2007

Anorexia nervosa may be genetic

A researcher in the United States says a ten year study into the eating disorder anorexia nervosa suggests that sufferers may have a genetic predisposition for it.

21 Feb 2007

Yearning and not depression the most common response after a loved one dies

A new study has found that after the death of a loved one from natural causes, the normal responses from most people are acceptance and yearning for the deceased.

21 Feb 2007

Health care professionals should focus on women's lifetime heart disease risk

The 2007 Guidelines for Preventing Cardiovascular Disease in Women -- published today in a special women's health issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association -- also include new directions for using aspirin, hormone therapy and vitamin and mineral supplements in heart disease and stroke prevention in women.

20 Feb 2007

New test identifies suitable lymphoma patients likely to respond to new therapy

Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have discovered a genetic signature identifying cases of lymphoma that are uniquely susceptible to a newly developed molecular targeted therapy. As a result, physicians organizing clinical trials of the new therapy will be able to enroll patients who'll be most likely to benefit from it.

20 Feb 2007

Cancer cells 100 times more likely to genetically mutate

When cells become cancerous, they also become 100 times more likely to genetically mutate than regular cells, researchers have found. The findings may explain why cells in a tumor have so many genetic mutations, but could also be bad news for cancer treatments that target a particular gene controlling cancer malignancy.

20 Feb 2007

Hormone prolactin key to repairing nerve cell damage

The mystery of why multiple sclerosis (MS) tends to go into remission while women are pregnant may be the secret to overcoming the devastating neurodegenerative disease, according to University of Calgary researchers who have shown that a pregnancy-related hormone is responsible for rebuilding the protective coating around nerve cells.

20 Feb 2007

Translationally controlled tumor protein key to organ growth

When amounts of a small protein called TCTP (translationally controlled tumor protein) are reduced in the cells of fruit flies, they are smaller than normal, indicating that the protein plays a major role in the growth and proliferation of cells, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in a report in current issue of the journal Nature.

20 Feb 2007

Tamoxifen offers long-term benefits for breast cancer prevention among women at high risk

The trials found that the breast cancer risk reduction persists long after women stop taking tamoxifen.

20 Feb 2007

Low levels of RANTES protein in the blood is a predictor of cardiac death

Researchers at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn have determined that low levels of a protein in the blood is a predictor of cardiac death in patients with coronary artery disease.

20 Feb 2007

Newborns with respiratory distress should be evaluated for primary ciliary dyskinesia

Reviewing published reports, Ferkol and Margaret Leigh, M.D., professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), found that neonatal respiratory distress was a common clinical symptom of PCD, a chronic airway disease that affects about 1 in 15,000 children.

20 Feb 2007

Expert questions validity of genetic testing patents

Molecular Pathologist-Attorney Roger D. Klein in a letter published in the February 15, 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine questioned the validity of patents often used to prevent clinical laboratories from performing certain genetic tests.

20 Feb 2007