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Additional research required to assess effectiveness of herbal remedies for insomnia

Approximately 1 in 3 Americans suffers from chronic sleep deprivation and another 10-15% of the population has chronic insomnia. Sleep disorders can profoundly affect a person's whole life and have been linked to a range of diseases, including obesity, depression, anxiety, and inflammatory disorders.

19 Jul 2012

First Edition: July 19, 2012

Today's headlines include a variety of stories exploring public opinions about the health law, the upcoming election and the Supreme Court.

19 Jul 2012

New hope for children with egg allergy

Doctors currently have only one recommendation for people allergic to eggs: avoid eggs completely. But researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine recently found promise in doing just the opposite. Eating small amounts of egg every day for many months lowered the threshold for allergic reactions in 75 percent of egg-allergic children; 28 percent were able to incorporate egg into their regular diets after two years on the treatment.

19 Jul 2012

AHF: U.S. defends Obama no-show at AIDS conference

On the heels of a White House defense of President Barack Obama's decision to skip the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington D.C. (Agence France-Presse: "US defends Obama no-show at AIDS Conference," By Kerry Sheridan, July 18, 2012) AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) released a TV ad featuring Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa warning of the consequences of a "global abandonment of AIDS."

19 Jul 2012

AOA honors Medical College of Georgia student with Kuckein Fellowship

A student at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Health Sciences University is among 47 recipients of the 2012 Carolyn L. Kuckein Student Research Fellowship from the national medical honor society Alpha Omega Alpha.

19 Jul 2012

Bryologs more potent than prostratin in treating HIV

Thanks to antiretrovirals, an AIDS diagnosis hasn't been a death sentence for nearly two decades. But highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, is also not a cure.

19 Jul 2012

EMA accepts Pfizer’s bazedoxifene/conjugated estrogens MAA for review

Pfizer Inc. today announced that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) accepted for review the Marketing Authorization Application (MAA) for bazedoxifene/conjugated estrogens (BZA/CE), a potential new medicine for postmenopausal women with a uterus for the treatment of estrogen deficiency symptoms and treatment of osteoporosis in women at risk of fracture.

19 Jul 2012

USA Today examines recent HIV breakthroughs

USA Today examines several scientific breakthroughs that researchers say "could be key to reducing new HIV infections." "Doctors are hopeful not because of a single discovery, but because of a string of breakthroughs over the past two or three years, says Diane Havlir, a professor at the University of California-San Francisco," the news service writes.

19 Jul 2012

Elsevier introduces Respiratory Medicine Case Reports journal

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and solutions, is pleased to announce the launch of Respiratory Medicine Case Reports, a new online open access journal on general respiratory medicine that is dedicated to publishing case reports.

19 Jul 2012

PATH Blog highlights efforts to reduce HIV in DRC

The PATH Blog reports on the organization's efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) "to reduce transmission of HIV, deliver integrated care and services for people affected by HIV/AIDS, and build up the country's health system to expand and improve services."

19 Jul 2012

Statistical method uses evolutionary information to enhance identification of disease-associated alleles

A book containing misprints may cause annoyance for the reader, but typos in an individual's genetic blueprint (DNA) can mean serious disease or even death. The search for genetic correlates for the wide range of diseases plaguing humankind has inspired a wealth of research falling under the heading of genome-wide association studies (GWAS).

19 Jul 2012

U.S. faces problems tracking cadaver tissue donation

In the United States, almost 1.5 million medical products are used each year for surgeries made with tissue taken from cadavers. For tissue to be safe, the donor must be carefully screened.

19 Jul 2012

A quarter of patients admitted to Scottish ICUs have alcohol problems

A quarter of patients admitted to Scottish intensive care units have alcohol problems and the majority of those have chronic alcohol disease, with particular problems among men and younger people.

19 Jul 2012

State officials stake out positions on implementing health law

Virginia's Republican attorney general, the first to file suit against the health law, takes a hardline position against expanding Medicaid, while Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell, a Republican, signals his state will pass on setting up a state-based health exchange. In Kentucky, Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, issues an executive order to authorize such an exchange.

19 Jul 2012

Huddersfield scientist receives Pain Relief Foundation grant for research into BH4 pathway

SOME victims of serious illness experience much less pain than other sufferers, thanks to a natural biochemical variation in the cells of their bodies. Now a scientist at the University of Huddersfield has been awarded research funding that will aid his project to learn more about this variation and therefore develop treatments that could lead to the relief of pain for all patients, with much less dependence on drugs that can have distressing side effects.

19 Jul 2012

Opponents see possible avenues to send health law back to court

But in related news, a federal judge in Nebraska rejected a suit filed by seven states to block the measure's contraception coverage mandate, saying the states did not have standing to file it because they failed to prove they would suffer "immediate harm."

19 Jul 2012

Adolescents and young adult cancer patients more likely to report unmet need

A cancer diagnosis for adolescents and young adults can be especially challenging, and new research shows the social, psychological and informational support these patients need might be going unmet.

19 Jul 2012

Better methods needed to diagnose and treat HIV, TB in children

Jennifer Furin, an infectious diseases physician and medical anthropologist who specializes in the management of tuberculosis (TB) and HIV in resource-poor settings, writes in a post in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog that "when it comes to the great advancements made in global HIV and TB care, children are being left behind."

19 Jul 2012

Geographic adjustments not optimal tools to tackle larger national policy goals

Changing the way that Medicare payments are adjusted to account for regional variations in the cost of providing care as recommended by a previous report from the Institute of Medicine would result in payment increases for some hospitals and practitioners and decreases for others, concludes the Phase II report from the IOM study.

19 Jul 2012

Escalating Miss. abortion fight could be blueprint for similar challenges

State health inspectors inspect Mississippi's only abortion clinic -- the first step towards shutting it down-- while a judge considers whether to let the law stand. Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists hone in on other states with single abortion providers to see if they can use similar approaches to shut them down, Politico Pro reports.

19 Jul 2012