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Hong Kong battling with bird flu outbreak

An outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in poultry in Hong Kong food markets has led to the culling of live poultry across the city.

16 Jun 2008

Children need psychiatric help to kick mobile phone habit

A mental health institution in Spain is said to be treating two children for addiction to their mobile phones.

16 Jun 2008

Breastfeeding support lacking in U.S. hospitals and birth centers

Many birth facilities in the United States are not providing maternity care that is fully supportive of breastfeeding, according to a study in today's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR), a publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

15 Jun 2008

Roche chlamydia test approved in Europe

Roche has announced that its new test for detection of Chlamydia trachomatis has received CE Mark certification, allowing it to be sold for clinical use in the European Union.

15 Jun 2008

Pomegranate extract may provide humans with relief of chronic inflammatory conditions

Oral ingestion of pomegranate extract reduces the production of chemicals that cause inflammation suggests a study published in BioMed Central's open access Journal of Inflammation. The findings indicate that pomegranate extract may provide humans with relief of chronic inflammatory conditions.

15 Jun 2008

Evolution may have lumbered humans with allergy problems

Scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have discovered how evolution may have lumbered humans with allergy problems.

15 Jun 2008

Fluoride toothpaste too pricey for world's poorest people

Fluoride toothpaste is prohibitively expensive for the world's poorest people, according to a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Globalization and Health. Researchers revealed that the poorest populations of developing countries have the least access to affordable toothpaste.

15 Jun 2008

Biological medicine helps more people with rheumatoid arthritis

Patients who have recently developed rheumatoid arthritis respond better to treatment with biological medicine in combination with conventional pharmacological medicine. This according to results of the Swefot national clinical study, which is to be presented at an international rheumatology congress in Paris by scientists from Swedish Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital, who conducted the study in association with another 15 rheumatology units in Sweden.

15 Jun 2008

New medical equipment tested to extremes

New medical equipment recently delivered to the Antarctic station Concordia will help understand how our bodies physically adapt to this extreme environment - knowledge which could help prepare for a future human mission to Mars. ESA is currently looking for a candidate with a medical background to support projects at the research base.

15 Jun 2008

How to reduce obesity and cardiovascular disease risk

Changes in society are leading to a sedentary lifestyle and are causing a rise in the number of people with obesity and cardiovascular disease. This is consequently having a large impact on the health of the nation.

15 Jun 2008

EUROACTION Trial: A comprehensive approach to cardiovascular prevention

The single largest research project ever to be undertaken by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), EUROACTION, showed that a multidisciplinary, family based and nurse coordinated programme made a real difference in improving lifestyle and reducing cardiovascular risk among coronary patients and people with a high risk of developing Cardiovascular Disease (CVD).

15 Jun 2008

European researchers take lid off the genome

European researchers have made significant progress unravelling how genes are governed and why this sometimes goes wrong in disease.

15 Jun 2008

Transfer of learning traced to areas of the brain

Practice makes perfect, but a question that still remains a mystery is why it is so difficult to transfer learning from a trained to an untrained task? Why are we no better at remembering faces when we have been training our memory for words? Scientists at Umea University and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now show in the journal Science that the answer lies in the brain areas activated by each task.

15 Jun 2008

Integrated control of malaria and other vector diseases is crucial

Combating malaria and other so-called vector diseases with chemical controls is increasingly ineffective, besides being hazardous for humans and the environment. These chemical controls must therefore be eliminated. In order to combat the diseases that insects and ticks transmit, all possible strategies must be united.

15 Jun 2008

Asian women and incontinence

Urinary incontinence is an important health problem affecting an estimated 5 million women in the UK.

15 Jun 2008

New treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

A new treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) pioneered at the University of Sydney is having great success by targeting the beliefs behind the obsessive behaviour rather than the behaviour itself.

15 Jun 2008

Women, Latinos face higher brain aneurysm risk

A type of stroke that can strike at any age, and kills one-third of its victims, appears to be more common in women and Mexican-Americans than in non-Hispanic white men, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Stroke Program.

15 Jun 2008

Collaborative effort by FDA and EMEA expected to yield additional safety data when assessing new drugs

In the first use of a framework allowing submission of a single application to the two agencies, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) worked together to allow drug companies to submit the results of seven new tests that evaluate kidney damage during animal studies of new drugs. The tests measure the levels of seven key proteins or "biomarkers" found in urine that can provide additional information about drug-induced damage to kidney cells, also known as renal toxicity.

15 Jun 2008

Nanoparticles trigger built-in cell-death signal to overcome drug resistance

One of the most vexing problems in treating cancer is the propensity of tumors to develop resistance to a wide range of anticancer drugs. Over 70 percent of ovarian cancer patients, for example, have drug-resistant tumors at the time of their initial diagnosis, and virtually all patients who relapse have drug-resistant tumors.

15 Jun 2008

High-content screening as a universal tool for fingerprinting of vytotoxicity of nanoparticles

As researchers develop an ever-expanding toolkit of nanoparticles for use as drug and imaging agent delivery vehicles, there is a growing need to understand how a given nanoparticle's physical and chemical properties affect biological activity and toxicity.

15 Jun 2008