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The President and White House officials try to debunk end-of-life care rumors

The Hill: "Democrats seem to have a new strategy for fighting the 'death panel' charges about healthcare reform legislation.

17 Aug 2009

Medicine lessons from the Arabic world

You've heard of Louis Pasteur and George Washington Carver, no doubt. And probably Joseph Priestley, one of the founders of modern chemistry. Names like Antoine Lavoisier, John Dalton, and Amadeo Avogadro may even bring a twinkle of recognition to the eye for their famous roles in establishing chemistry as a modern science.

17 Aug 2009

Children, adolescents and headache

Family quarrels and a lack of free time can promote headaches in children. This is what Jennifer Gassmann and her coauthors concluded in their study on risk factors, which appears in the current issue of the Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2009; 106[31-32]: 509-16).

17 Aug 2009

New addition to the forensic toolkit

In an advance toward the first portable device for detecting human bodies buried in disasters and at crime scenes, scientists today report early results from a project to establish the chemical fingerprint of death.

17 Aug 2009

Biologist demystifies Acinetobacter baumannii

Tao Weitao, a researcher in the College of Sciences' Department of Biology at the University of Texas at San Antonio is making great strides in a project that was funded one year ago by the San Antonio Area Foundation. The professor in the South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases is researching Acinetobacter baumannii, a soil-dwelling bacterium that threatens the health of military personnel in the Middle East and can also infect their family members once the soldiers have returned home following battle.

17 Aug 2009

FDA approves Extavia for multiple sclerosis

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Extavia(R) (interferon beta-1b), the first in a new planned portfolio of multiple sclerosis (MS) medicines from Novartis to help patients manage this devastating disease.

17 Aug 2009

Cord Blood America shows significantly improved balance sheet

Cord Blood America, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: CBAI), the umbilical cord blood stem cell preservation company focused on bringing the life saving potential of stem cells to families nationwide and internationally, said today that its 10Q filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission for the second quarter of 2009 shows a significantly improved balance sheet.

17 Aug 2009

Sonosite acquires Cardiodynamics

SonoSite, Inc. (NASDAQ:SONO) today announced that on August 14, 2009, it completed the acquisition of CardioDynamics International Corporation (NASDAQ:CDIC), a leader in impedance cardiography (ICG) for noninvasive hemodynamic assessment.

17 Aug 2009

New consortium to tackle African sleeping sickness and Leishmaniasis

A new consortium has been formed to boost drug development for the treatment of two deadly diseases, African sleeping sickness and Leishmaniasis, which affect millions of people worldwide.

17 Aug 2009

Infant sleep environments depicted in magazines targeted to women of childbearing age

More than one third of photos in women's magazines depicted babies in unsafe sleep positions, according to a new study in Pediatrics. Additionally, the study found that two-thirds of sleep environments depicted in these magazines were also unsafe.

17 Aug 2009

Disabled woman assaulted at health care town hall meeting

After releasing our article on Friday discussing how violence at health care town hall meetings could escalate, we attended a health care protest at Senator Dianne Feinstein's office in West Los Angeles, where we met a disabled woman, Kimberly King.

17 Aug 2009

Mother's immune system may block fetal treatments for blood diseases

Pediatric researchers have resolved an apparent contradiction in the field of prenatal cell transplantation - a medical approach that holds future promise in correcting sickle cell disease and other serious congenital blood disorders. In a new study in animals, the researchers showed that the mother's immune response interferes with the offspring's earlier ability to tolerate transplanted donor cells.

17 Aug 2009

Aeterna Zentaris announces results from trials of Cetrorelix in benign prostatic hyperplasia

AEterna Zentaris Inc. today reported Phase 3 results for its North American efficacy trial Z-033 and the safety trial Z-041 in benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), with its lead endocrinology compound for urology, cetrorelix pamoate. As announced on March 6, 2009, sanofi-aventis U.S. LLC entered into an agreement with AEterna Zentaris for the development, registration and marketing of cetrorelix in BPH for the U.S. market.

17 Aug 2009

Astronauts test nutritional supplement formulas in space

After nearly four years of joint research of Houston-based AmeriSciences and NASA / Johnson Space Center (JSC), a senior NASA medical officer has confirmed that two of the resulting nutritional supplement formulas were used and tested in space by the astronauts of mission STS-125 of May 11, 2009 and the mission STS-127 of July 15, 2009 and are now in use and testing aboard the International Space Station.

17 Aug 2009

Ad audit: Club for growth's anti-government message

An anti-tax group goes after health care proposals in Congress, alleging they would lead to health care rationing and crushing government deficits. But the campaign includes some dubious comparisons with the British health system, and the group’s recommended solutions are open to question.

17 Aug 2009

Cognitive behavioral therapy improves sleep and pain in osteoarthritis

A study in the Aug. 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine shows that the use of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is an effective treatment for older patients with osteoarthritis and comorbid insomnia.

16 Aug 2009

Discovery of inherited gene variants that account for 37 percent of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have identified inherited variations in two genes that account for 37 percent of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), including a gene that may help predict drug response.

16 Aug 2009

Abuse, self-neglect places seniors at increased risk for premature death

Older adults who are subjected to abuse or self-neglect face a greater risk of premature death than other seniors, according to a study published in the medical journal JAMA.

16 Aug 2009

New target for Alzheimer's disease

For close to a decade, pharmaceutical researchers have been in hot pursuit of compounds to activate a key nicotine receptor that plays a role in cognitive processes. Triggering it, they hope, might prevent or even reverse the devastation wrought by Alzheimer’s disease.

16 Aug 2009

Obama administration officials soften stance on public plan

Associated Press: "President Barack Obama's administration signaled on Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run health insurance as part of his ambitious health care proposal.

16 Aug 2009