Betsy McCaughey, Ph.D., Chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (RID) and a former Lt. Governor of New York State, is announcing a model MRSA screening bill and calling on state lawmakers to enact this lifesaving measure. In New York State, the bill will be carried by Assemblywoman Nettie Mayersohn of Flushing, New York. Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey have already enacted screening bills.
A person is 100 times more likely to get cancer at age 65 than at age 35. But new research reported Oct. 14 in the journal Nature Genetics identifies naturally occurring processes that allow many genes to both slow aging and protect against cancer in the much-studied C. elegans roundworm.
The first study to test GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) investigational RTS,S/AS02 malaria vaccine in African infants serves as the first proof of concept in this population that the vaccine has a promising safety and tolerability profile and reduces malaria parasite infection and clinical illness due to malaria, according to a paper published today online in The Lancet.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved doripenem injection, 500 mg intravenous infusion, for the treatment of complicated urinary tract and intra-abdominal infections. Doripenem injection, sold under the trade name Doribax, has been shown to be active against several strains of bacteria.
The International HapMap Consortium today published analyses of its second-generation map of human genetic variation, which contains three times more markers than the initial version unveiled in 2005. In two papers in the journal Nature, the consortium describes how the higher resolution map offers greater power to detect genetic variants involved in common diseases, explore the structure of human genetic variation and learn how environmental factors, such as infectious agents, have shaped the human genome.
A new Mayo Clinic study has found that relieving bowel obstructions with a minimally invasive procedure to place a self-expanding metal stent in the intestine is a safe and effective therapy for colon and rectal cancer patients.
Health insurance reform plans that build on a mix of private and public health insurance, where costs are shared among government, employers, and enrollees would have great potential to move the system to high performance and would be the most practical to implement according to a new report released today by The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System. Commissioners are a diverse group of leading health policy experts from government, private industry, health care delivery organizations, academia, and professional associations.
Researchers at the American University of Beirut Medical Center in Lebanon have found that administering a lidocaine lollipop as a single-agent anesthetic to patients undergoing an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy procedure eliminated the need for sedation in the majority of patients. The research appears in the October issue of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.
The outcome of hepatitis is either self recovery or its development into liver fibrosis or, further, liver cirrhosis. Liver fibrosis is the early pathological process of cirrhosis, which is considered a reversible, wound-healing response. Since no ideal drug is available for its therapy, liver fibrosis is currently considered to be a major worldwide health problem.
Researchers have discovered that the structure of human bones is vastly different than previously believed — findings which will have implications for how some debilitating bone disorders are treated.