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Renal specialist says Dr Patel’s patient was too frail for surgery

In the ongoing trial of Dr Jayant Patel, Dr Peter Miach, a renal specialist, gave evidence before the Supreme Court in Brisbane. Dr Miach said the patient James Phillips had too many other problems and he would not have recommended surgery for him in his frail state.

12 Apr 2010

Pfizer discloses payments to doctors

In Pennsylvania, the payments suggested that "[p]harmaceutical company money continued flowing to University of Pittsburgh Medical Center doctors last year, despite a restrictive two-year-old policy designed to limit drug company influence, and reflecting the struggle academic medical centers face in distancing doctors from drug companies," the Pittsburgh Business Times reports

12 Apr 2010

Remediable conditions influence health, development and growth of young children

Pediatric researchers from Boston Medical Center, in partnership with other Children's HealthWatch investigators in Minneapolis, Little Rock, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, have found that the cumulative effects of crowded and unstable housing and uncertain supplies of food and heat act together to decrease the chances of normal growth and development and good physical health among infants and toddlers.

12 Apr 2010

OptiMedica releases new details on femtosecond laser system for cataract surgery

OptiMedica Corp., a global ophthalmic device company, has released new details regarding the development of its proprietary femtosecond laser system for cataract surgery. The new system, which combines OptiMedica's breakthrough pattern scanning technology, an ultra-fast laser and integrated Optical Coherence Tomography imaging, is designed to dramatically improve the complex cataract procedure by replacing its most technically demanding and manual steps.

12 Apr 2010

New TIVR telephone system to teach pain management skills to patients with arthritis

Joan Broderick, Ph.D., Research Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stony Brook University, has received a $606,000 grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.

12 Apr 2010

Terrible tragedy for Alzheimer's suffering mother and family

In an bizarre situation a 31 year old Australian woman called Rebecca Doig, who gave birth to a healthy girl last week does not even remember giving birth to the child. The little girl called Emily has never been taken into her mother’s arms and it seems never will.

12 Apr 2010

Study pioneers phenotyping of human metabolome

The old excuse, "I am only overweight because of my genes," is suddenly gaining credibility as researchers uncover ever more evidence that the way our bodies digest and process nutrients in the food we eat is different for every person. The budding discipline of metabolomics strives to investigate these differences in a scientific manner.

12 Apr 2010

Mental health respite center for women and children to close next month

New Zealand - Newell House (opened in 1995) is a small five bed unit that cares for mentally ill women and children. However due to shortage of funds, the Trustees from Oxford Terrace Baptist Church have announced that the unit may close down permanently by the end of May this year.

12 Apr 2010

New push to encourage sperm donation

A critical shortage in the sperm available in IVF clinics has forced some of them to launch online advertising campaigns to encourage sperm donation. The campaign is targeting sports and finance websites which have a larger male readership. Ad tag lines like "you've got millions to spare, we only need one" and "a donation to us won't save a life; hopefully it will create one" are hoping to appeal to the generosity of the adult male.

12 Apr 2010

Ku protein employs unique mechanism for DNA repair: Researchers

Scientists have shown in multiple contexts that DNA damage over our lifetimes is a key mechanism behind the development of cancer and other age-related diseases. Not everyone gets these diseases, because the body has multiple mechanisms for repairing the damage caused to DNA by aging, the environment and other human behaviors - but the mechanisms behind certain kinds of DNA repair have not been well-understood.

12 Apr 2010

Study suggests new ways to improve anti-cancer chemotherapies

A study released this week suggests that anti-cancer chemotherapies which use nanoparticles to deliver drugs deep inside tumor tissue will be more effective if the particles are positively electrically charged because they are taken up to a greater extent by proliferating cells, according to a team of chemists and chemical engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

12 Apr 2010

GE Healthcare to present results of phase 2 study of flutemetamol at HAI Meeting

GE Healthcare will today present results from its multicenter phase 2 study of flutemetamol at the 4th annual Human Amyloid Imaging Meeting in Toronto, Canada. Flutemetamol is a positron emission tomography imaging agent in development by GE Healthcare, in the field of brain imaging.

12 Apr 2010

Elmendorf: Health reform will reduce deficit, warns of fiscal crisis

In remarks to reporters Thursday, Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf warned of a looming budget crisis that "cannot be solved through minor tinkering." The nation's "unsustainable" spending could increase the national debt from $7.5 trillion at the end of 2009 to 20.3 trillion in 2020, when the debt would total 90 percent of gross domestic product, Elmendorf noted (Allen, 4/8).

12 Apr 2010

IHME researchers advocate greater transparency in financial reporting

The commitment to health by country governments in the developing world has grown dramatically over the last two decades, according to a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and Harvard Medical School.

12 Apr 2010

Cempra to make poster presentations on CEM-101 and CEM-102 at ECCMID 2010

Cempra Pharmaceuticals today announced poster presentations on its novel antibiotic CEM-101, a next-generation macrolide, and CEM-102, the company's proprietary front-loading oral dosing regimen of sodium fusidate, at the 20th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Disease, April 10 to 13, 2010, in Vienna Austria.

12 Apr 2010

Replikin Counts of H5N1 and H1N1 strains on the rise

The most recent BioRadar analysis of the virus genomes of both H5N1, known for high lethality, and H1N1, known for high infectivity, indicates that the Replikin Counts of both strains are rising. Such Count increases in a specific strain have been invariably associated with clinical outbreaks of that strain.

12 Apr 2010

Scientists discover and block pathway responsible for link between stress, anxiety and depression

Scientists at The University of Western Ontario have discovered the biological link between stress, anxiety and depression. By identifying the connecting mechanism in the brain, this high impact research led by Stephen Ferguson of Robarts Research Institute shows exactly how stress and anxiety could lead to depression.

12 Apr 2010

Aetna faces Medicare sanctions

Health insurer Aetna announced Friday it will suspend "marketing to and enrollment of new members to its Medicare plans for the elderly because of sanctions imposed by the U.S. government," Reuters reports.

12 Apr 2010

Health reform effects on Tricare still being discussed

"Defense officials insist that the new national health care reform law has no direct effect on Tricare — but some analysts say indirect effects eventually may surface. ... military advocacy groups say the law's potential interaction with the complex family of Tricare plans over the longer term is vague, and could lead to future cost or coverage encroachment on the valuable benefit that serves 9.6 million beneficiaries."

9 Apr 2010

One in ten primary care physicians in the U.S. experience conflict with religiously-affiliated hospital: Report

Nearly one in ten primary care physicians in the United States has experienced a conflict with a religiously-affiliated hospital or practice over religious policies for patient care, researchers from the University of Chicago report in a paper published early online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

9 Apr 2010