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President Obama to Senate Democrats: let's do lunch

"With Congressional recess protests against his health-care agenda ramping up and other pressing business to attend to, President Barack Obama summoned the Senate's Democrats to the White House today for a high-stakes working lunch," according to Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire.

4 Aug 2009

Compound from coral offers hope fpr neuropathic pain

A compound initially isolated from a soft coral (Capnella imbricata) collected at Green Island off Taiwan, could lead scientists to develop a new set of treatments for neuropathic pain - chronic pain that sometimes follows damage to the nervous system.

4 Aug 2009

Website helps caregivers navigate Medicare

The Department of Health and Human Services has created a web site called "Ask Medicare" to help caregivers navigate the often confusing Medicare system.

4 Aug 2009

Cooling unconscious cardiac arrest survivors increases survival, cost effective

Cooling unconscious cardiac arrest survivors can increase survival and has a cost effectiveness comparable to other widely accepted treatments in modern health care, researchers report in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

4 Aug 2009

New insight into human ciliopathy

In the September 1st issue of G&D, Dr. Karen Oegema (UCSD) and colleagues identify the molecular basis of the lethal developmental disorder, hydrolethalus syndrome, and reveal that hydrolethalus syndrome actually belongs to the emerging class of human ciliopathy diseases.

4 Aug 2009

Biological explanation for psychopathy

Professor Declan Murphy and colleagues Dr Michael Craig and Dr Marco Catani from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London have found differences in the brain which may provide a biological explanation for psychopathy. The results of their study are outlined in the paper 'Altered connections on the road to psychopathy', published in Molecular Psychiatry.

4 Aug 2009

Clinical trial to test gene therapy for Alzheimer’s disease

Researchers at the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of California San Diego are about to launch a Phase 2 clinical trial to test a gene therapy treatment for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) called CERE-110.

4 Aug 2009

Deet is neurotoxic

The active ingredient in many insect repellents, deet, has been found to be toxic to the central nervous system. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology say that more investigations are urgently needed to confirm or dismiss any potential neurotoxicity to humans, especially when deet-based repellents are used in combination with other neurotoxic insecticides.

4 Aug 2009

Mexico steps up efforts to attract medical tourists

Efforts to standardize quality measures for medical tourism are underway as Mexico tries to attract medical tourists. Such efforts come after the swine flu outbreak significantly hurt Mexico's tourism industry, which ranks third as the country's source of foreign income.

4 Aug 2009

Set-shifting and the on-line processing of relative clauses in Parkinson's Disease

The study of the neural basis of language has largely focused on regions in the cortex - the outer brain layers thought by many researchers to have expanded during human evolution.

4 Aug 2009

Senate Dems prepare contingency plans as finance negotiators grapple for a deal

"Senate Democrats may decide to pass a U.S. health-care overhaul without Republican support if some opposition lawmakers don't agree to a plan by mid-September," Senator Charles Schumer[ D-N.Y.] said" according to Bloomberg. Schumer said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., set a self-imposed deadline of Sept. 15 to lead a negotiating team, composed of three Republicans and three Democrats within his Finance Committee, to a bipartisan compromise.

4 Aug 2009

Rural hospital places critical bet on health IT

A small, rural hospital in Missouri is "rolling the dice" on electronic medical records, its CEO tells the Associated Press. The 47-bed hospitals borrowed nearly $1 million to implement an electronic records system, and that's on top of a $370,000 operating deficit and staff layoffs.

4 Aug 2009

Genetic risk, not anesthesia exposure, impacts cognitive performance

A recent study of more than 2,000 identical twins found that medical problems early in life, rather than the neurotoxic effects of anesthesia, are likely linked to an individual's risk for developing learning disabilities.

4 Aug 2009

Depression and inflammation linked to rheumatoid arthritis pain

Researchers at Nagoya City University and Nagoya University Graduate Schools of Medicine in Japan studied the interrelationship between levels of depression symptoms, C-reactive protein (CRP) level, and pain, confirming a significant positive association between depressive symptoms and CRP level in RA.

4 Aug 2009

No recess rest in health reform ad wars

Major groups are promising that the August recess will be filled with advertising wars trying to manage the message of the health care reform debate, Politico reports.

4 Aug 2009

Discovery of potential candidate protein for cancer vaccines

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have learned that some healthy people naturally developed an immune response against a protein that is made in excess levels in many cancers, including breast, lung, and head and neck cancers. The finding suggests that a vaccine against the protein might prevent malignancies in high-risk individuals.

4 Aug 2009

Health insurance chief lobbyist says "villain" comments hurt process

On a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, said the "Washington politics of 'find an enemy and go to war' is a major step backward," damaging the possibility of building consensus on health reform.

4 Aug 2009

Children's Autonomy and responsibility: an analysis of childrearing advice

Rutherford's analysis of back issues of the popular US magazine, Parents, maps how the portrayal of parental authority and children's autonomy has changed over the last century. Her findings are published online in Springer's journal Qualitative Sociology.

4 Aug 2009

Louisiana cuts rates for Medicaid providers

"Louisiana will start paying less money Tuesday to many private health care providers for taking care of Medicaid patients, a move the state health department estimates will save $86 million this year," The Associated Press/The Advocate reports.

4 Aug 2009

Many Americans find themselves flummoxed by health care reform

As legislators seek to sell what has so far been a largely Washington insider effort, many Americans are confused about what health care reform actually entails.

4 Aug 2009