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Ariz. advocates ask for better pay for disabled caregivers, Va. disabled find new home

Arizona patient advocates are asking lawmakers to pay providers more who tend to the severely disabled. In the meantime, in Virginia, the older disabled find a new home.

23 Feb 2012

Experts discuss Universal Health Coverage at CFR roundtable

This post in the UHC Forward blog describes the second meeting of the Universal Health Coverage Roundtable Series, "Toward Sustainable Universal Health Coverage," which was hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on February 9.

23 Feb 2012

Micronutrients affect methylation, linked to changes in the immune system

The offspring of women who were given micronutrient supplements (minerals needed in small quantities, such as iron, iodine and vitamin A) before they became pregnant had gene modifications at birth as well as when they were tested at 9 months.

23 Feb 2012

South Asia makes little progress in meeting maternal, child mortality MDGs, U.N. report says

"South Asian nations are making the least progress in the Asia-Pacific region on meeting key development goals, which they pledged to achieve by 2015," Bindu Lohani, vice president for sustainable development at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), said on Friday at the launch of a U.N. progress report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Reuters reports.

23 Feb 2012

Scientists design compounds that act against myotonic dystrophy type 1 RNA

While RNA is an appealing drug target, small molecules that can actually affect its function have rarely been found. But now scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have for the first time designed a series of small molecules that act against an RNA defect directly responsible for the most common form of adult-onset muscular dystrophy.

23 Feb 2012

Viewpoints: Real 'doc fix,' Saint Santorum and why Supreme Court TV is 'a bad idea'

In last week's flurry of budget deals, Congress patched together yet another temporary fix for a flawed formula used to calculate the fees paid to doctors by Medicare. It will hold payments flat for the next 10 months instead of cutting them by 27 percent as the formula required, and the $18 billion to pay for it will be taken from other health care programs. But the fix only lasts until the end of the year. On Jan. 1, doctors will face another big cut unless Congress again steps in.

23 Feb 2012

Varenicline improves walking ability in patients with SCA3

A nicotinic drug approved for smoking cessation significantly improved the walking ability of patients suffering from an inherited form of ataxia, reports a new clinical study led by University of South Florida researchers.

23 Feb 2012

Cholera epidemic spreads in DRC; Efforts to combat disease remain underfunded, U.N. reports

"A cholera epidemic has spread to nine out of 11 provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations said on Tuesday," SAPA/News24 reports.

23 Feb 2012

Dems schedule own contraception hearing

House Democrats have scheduled their own hearing in response to last week's all-male panel organized by House Republicans on the Obama administration's contraception rule. The Dems have invited a young woman to testify, but say that GOP leaders won't allow them to televise it.

23 Feb 2012

USAID funding cookstove initiative in Haiti

In an effort "to establish a sustainable local market and industry for clean cooking solutions in Haiti," "USAID recently announced an award to Chemonics International to implement the three-year Improved Cooking Technology Project" to "establish a thriving local market -- on both the supply and demand sides -- as well as a sustainable industry for clean cooking solutions, including Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and more efficient biomass cookstoves," according to a USAID press release.

23 Feb 2012

Burma unable to expand HIV, TB treatment programs without more donor support, MSF report says

Approximately 85,000 HIV-positive people in Burma, also known as Myanmar, are in need of antiretroviral treatment (ART) and cannot access it "due to a lack of funding, despite renewed international engagement with the government amid a wave of political reform, according to a report released Wednesday" by the medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the Associated Press/CBS News reports.

23 Feb 2012

State roundup: Calif. HMO report cards, Ore. family planning bills challenged, Texas managed care

Gov. Corbett's new budget proposal would cost the city $42 million in mostly mental health and addiction treatment funding, but city officials say the impact will be worsened by ensuing needs for emergency shelter, child welfare, and other services. … The city Health Department faces an additional $7 million in state cuts. That would reduce the number of beds in the city nursing home and cost hospice beds for AIDS victims, officials said.

23 Feb 2012

New kind of on-off switch for cortisol release in the brain discovered

After we sense a threat, our brain center responsible for responding goes into gear, setting off a chain of biochemical reactions leading to the release of cortisol from the adrenal glands.

23 Feb 2012

Birth control mandate, abortion draw lines in presidential debate

Democrats successfully shifted a debate over religious liberty to birth control last week, but opponents of the contraception mandate are trying to shift it right back. The political debate over the birth-control mandate in the health care law is largely a fight over how to frame the issue.

23 Feb 2012

NK cells play an important role in rejection of porcine chondrocytes transplantation

Researchers from the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) have studied for the first time the response of human NK cells (Natural Killer) against porcine chondrocytes (cartilage cells).

23 Feb 2012

Surgical instruments, CT pan-scans under scrutiny

Filthy, dangerous medical implements have been showing up in hospitals and outpatient surgery centers with alarming regularity. In 2009, the Department of Veterans Affairs admitted that 10,737 veterans in Florida, Tennessee and Georgia were given endoscopies or colonoscopies between 2002 and 2009 with endoscopes that may have been improperly cleaned.

23 Feb 2012

Mount Sinai receives Le Foundation gift for psychiatric neuroimaging study

The Department of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine has received a $250,000 gift from The Iris & Junming Le Foundation to advance neuroimaging research conducted by young scientists in the early stages of their careers.

23 Feb 2012

Researchers discover how mTOR protein leads to cancer metastasis

Uncovering the network of genes regulated by a crucial molecule involved in cancer called mTOR, which controls protein production inside cells, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have discovered how a protein "master regulator" goes awry, leading to metastasis, the fatal step of cancer.

23 Feb 2012

Enrollment complete in Onyx Phase 3 ASPIRE trial for relapsed multiple myeloma

Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that it has reached the target enrollment in the ASPIRE trial, a Phase 3 international clinical trial evaluating carfilzomib in combination with lenalidomide (Revlimid) and low dose dexamethasone in patients with relapsed multiple myeloma.

23 Feb 2012

Study examines abdomyosarcoma growth in mouse models of muscular dystrophy

Inflammation, cell division and cell differentiation that occur during skeletal muscle regeneration may provide an ideal environment for the highly malignant tumor, rhabdomyosarcoma to arise. These are the findings from a Nationwide Children's Hospital study that examined rhabdomyosarcoma growth in mouse models of muscular dystrophy.

23 Feb 2012