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Can you forget a language you once knew?

Learning a foreign language late in life can be rewarding but hard work. One of the challenges is a lack of familiarity with unfamiliar sounds.

14 Jun 2007

Drug giant donates bird flu vaccine to WHO stockpile

Europe's largest drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has promised to donate 50 million doses of its "pre-pandemic" bird flu vaccine for humans to a global stockpile for distribution in the world's poorest countries.

14 Jun 2007

Zimulti (rimonabant) gets the thumbs down from FDA advisory panel

An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. have unanimously voted that the federal agency should refuse approval for a new weight loss drug.

14 Jun 2007

New target for Type 2 diabetes

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered a potential new target for treating type 2 diabetes, according to a new study that appeared online this week in Nature.

14 Jun 2007

CPAP is the best treatment for sleep apnea

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a major public health problem that, if untreated, can be deadly.

14 Jun 2007

Patient care improves when medical residents work fewer hours

When medical residents work shorter hours, fewer patients are transferred to intensive care and there are not as many interventions by pharmacists to avoid errors in medication, according to a Yale School of Medicine study in Annals of Internal Medicine.

14 Jun 2007

MEPs show strong support for the decriminalisation of cannabis across Europe

A wide-ranging survey of Members of the European Parliament - including Britain's representatives - has revealed strong support for the decriminalisation of cannabis across Europe.

14 Jun 2007

Self-healing materials that mimic human skin

The next generation of self-healing materials, invented by researchers at the University of Illinois, mimics human skin by healing itself time after time.

14 Jun 2007

Scientists observe cell migration

Johns Hopkins researchers have found a way to directly observe cell migration -- in real time and in living tissue. In a report in Developmental Cell, the scientists say their advance could lead to strategies for controlling both normal growth and the spread of cancer, processes that depend on the programmed, organized movement of cells across space.

14 Jun 2007

Nurses who work the night shift more likely to have poor sleep habits

Nurses who work the night shift are more likely to have poor sleep habits, a practice that can increase the likelihood of committing serious errors that can put the safety of themselves as well as their patients at risk, according to research presented at SLEEP 2007, the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).

14 Jun 2007

Diets rich in fruits and vegetables best for breast cancer survival

A new study in the "Journal of Clinical Oncology" reinforces existing evidence showing that women with breast cancer can greatly reduce their risk of recurrence by eating a healthy plant-based diet rich in fruits and vegetables and making other healthy lifestyle choices, according to nutrition experts with The Cancer Project.

14 Jun 2007

Newly found antibodies may be body's natural defense against Alzheimer's

In an important advance in the battle against Alzheimer's disease, physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center have identified naturally occurring antibodies in human blood that may help to defend against this form of dementia as well as other neurodegenerative diseases.

14 Jun 2007

Mild cognitive disorder often an early symptom of Alzheimer's disease

Using new MRI techniques to analyze tissue composition and structure in the brain, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the National Institute on Aging successfully detected mild cognitive disorder (MCI), a condition in which patients suffer mild memory problems and is often an early symptom of Alzheimer's disease (AD).

14 Jun 2007

Neurocrine Biosciences announces resubmission of NDA for Indiplon capsules

Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. has announced that they have resubmitted its New Drug Application (NDA) for indiplon 5 mg and 10 mg capsules for the treatment of insomnia in both adult and elderly patients to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

14 Jun 2007

Injected neural stem cells reduce Parkinson's symptoms in primates

Primates with severe Parkinson's disease were able to walk, move, and eat better, and had diminished tremors after being injected with human neural stem cells, a research team from Yale, Harvard, the University of Colorado, and the Burnham Institute report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

14 Jun 2007

Myelin and Huntington's disease

Last month, Dr. George Bartzokis, director of the UCLA Memory Disorders and Alzheimer's Disease Clinic, suggested in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia that the breakdown of a type of myelin that develops late in life promotes the buildup of toxic amyloid plaques long associated with Alzheimer's disease.

14 Jun 2007