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GOP lawmaker unveils draft bill on contraceptive coverage rule

The measure focuses on the potential tax implications of the Health and Human Services rule that contraceptives be counted -- without cost-sharing -- among the preventive health services that most employer-sponsored health plans offer.

12 Jul 2012

Viewpoints: Trouble keeping health costs down; Ignagni says law needs some revisions; Coverage is like clean water

Now that the Supreme Court has provided legal certainty on the recent healthcare reform law, the nation must turn its attention to affordability. While the law expands coverage to millions of Americans, a goal health plans have long supported, major provisions of the law need to be changed to avoid significant cost increases for consumers and employers.

12 Jul 2012

Secure protocol allows linking of patient records without revealing personal information

Monitoring the effectiveness of the HPV vaccine in Canada requires that data from multiple registries and other data sources be combined. Linking registries can be problematic, however, since they are often managed by unrelated organizations. Privacy legislation may also restrict the sharing of data for such linkages.

12 Jul 2012

Daily temperature linked to bipolar admissions

Results from a Taiwanese study suggest that high daily temperatures are associated with increased hospitalization rates for mood symptoms among patients with bipolar disorder, particularly women.

11 Jul 2012

Cochlear implants work well for Waardenburg children

Children with Waardenburg syndrome respond well to cochlear implantation and achieve equally good speech and hearing outcomes as nonsyndromic children undergoing the same procedure, report researchers.

11 Jul 2012

More selective colon cancer screening urged

Updated guidance from a US task force stresses the need for targeted, high-quality follow-up screening in patients who have undergone colonoscopy or polyp removal, in an effort to cut down on unnecessary repeat procedures

11 Jul 2012

Thrombopoietin mimetic offers aplastic anemia hope

Eltrombopag significantly improves blood counts in some patients with refractory severe aplastic anemia, suggests research published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

11 Jul 2012

Visual, auditory hallucinations often co-occur in psychosis patients

Visual hallucinations are common in patients with psychosis spectrum disorders and often co-occur with auditory hallucinations, researchers report.

11 Jul 2012

Substance use linked to poor memory, reasoning in BD

The presence of comorbid substance use disorder is associated with significantly poorer visual memory and conceptual reasoning skills in patients with bipolar disorder, US study results show.

11 Jul 2012

Corneal graft survival better after ALK than PK

Patients treated with anterior lamellar keratoplasty for tectonic indications have better physiologic graft survival outcomes than their counterparts treated with penetrating keratoplasty, despite the former procedure raising the risk for anatomic failure, report researchers.

11 Jul 2012

PCR assay ‘superior’ to culture for neonatal sepsis, meningitis

In neonates with probable sepsis or meningitis, a realtime polymerase chain reaction assay specific for a virulence gene in Streptococcus agalactiae is superior to standard bacterial culture identification, results of a pathology study show.

11 Jul 2012

Oligodendroglia cells: An interview with Jeffrey Rothstein

There are three principle cells in the brain: neurons and two types of glial cells. One type is called an astrocyte. These were well known to inactivate neurotransmitters like glutamate, and provide metabolic support to neurons.

11 Jul 2012

Research into “insulating” brain cells could help to cure neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have discovered that the central nervous system's oligodendroglia cells, long believed to simply insulate nerves as they "fire" signals, are unexpectedly also vital to the survival of neurons. Damage to these insulators appears to contribute to brain injury in neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease for the Yankee baseball great who died from the disease.

11 Jul 2012

Arrowhead initiates Adipotide Phase 1 trial in obesity

Arrowhead Research Corporation, a targeted therapeutics company, today announced that the first patient has been dosed in a Phase 1 clinical trial with Adipotide, a new class of treatment for obesity.

11 Jul 2012

Physicians need to know how chemical intolerance affects people: Study

Chemical intolerance contributes to the illnesses of 1 in 5 patients but the condition seldom figures in their diagnosis, according to clinical research directed by a UT Medicine San Antonio physician.

11 Jul 2012

First Edition: July 11, 2012

Today's headlines include reports about the scheduled House vote on repealing the health law as well as how stakeholders -- whether it be certain governors or wall street investors -- are responding to the Supreme Court's decision on the Medicaid expansion.

11 Jul 2012

New computer system for early diagnosis of AD

University of Granada researchers have developed a new computer system for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. This study has been recently presented at the World Conference of Computer Intelligence (WCCI2012) held in Brisbane (Australia) by Alberto Prieto, a researcher at the University of Granada Centro de Investigación en Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (CITIC-UGR).

11 Jul 2012

Blog posts respond to GHI office closure

In a joint message released by USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Ambassador Eric Goosby, CDC Director Thomas Frieden, and Global Health Initiative (GHI) Executive Director Lois Quam last Tuesday, the Obama administration announced the closure of the GHI office, writing that the office's work is being "elevated" to the State Department's new Office of Global Health Diplomacy.

11 Jul 2012

AFP examines rise in TB cases in Madagascar

Agence France-Presse examines a rise in tuberculosis (TB) cases in Madagascar, writing, "Last year alone, 26,700 people contracted TB, according to the health ministry, a jump of more than 16 percent compared with 2009, when a military coup precipitated an economic crisis as donors suspended aid to one of the world's poorest countries."

11 Jul 2012

Guardian columnist examines family planning in Nepal

In a Guardian opinion piece, part of the series "The politics of family planning," columnist Zoe Williams examines family planning Nepal. Noting her trip to the country with Save the Children, Williams discusses a number of barriers to family planning for Nepalese women -- including the practice of child marriage, stigma surrounding menstruation, and cultural beliefs about contraception -- and writes, "In Nepal, opportunities for women are not all they should be, and child pregnancy is a big issue."

11 Jul 2012