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Diabetes gene found in 40% of population

Researchers in Iceland say they have identified a single genetic change which could predispose close to 40 percent of the population to type-2 diabetes.

16 Jan 2006

Carry a condom in Columbia or else face a fine

In an attempt to curb AIDS/HIV infections, unwanted teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, the western Columbian town of Tula is considering insisting it's teenagers carry condoms with them.

16 Jan 2006

Ontario challenges opening of private health clinics

The announcement by Copeman Healthcare Inc. that it intends to open private health clinics in some parts of Canada is being challenged by the Ontario Health Coalition.

16 Jan 2006

FDA warns diet drugs contain Prozac and Librium

The FDA has issued a warning to consumers that diet pills from Brazil have been found to contain active drug ingredients which are possibly harmful.

16 Jan 2006

Donor rates in New Zealand hit an all time low

In a rather worrying trend it seems that figures recently released show that New Zealand has hit an all time low in the number of organ donors it has.

16 Jan 2006

Clinton's deal with drug companies will save millions of lives and millions of dollars

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton has struck a deal with nine drug companies to reduce the cost of the second-line AIDS drugs.

16 Jan 2006

Sickle cell corrected with gene copy

Scientists in the U.S. say they have found a way to use embryonic stem cells to correct the mutation that causes sickle cell disease in mice.

16 Jan 2006

The sweet answer to a poor memory

Sweet tooth types out there will be delighted to learn that those sweet and sugary drinks may improve the memory.

16 Jan 2006

Having kids bad for mental well being

A new study in the U.S. says that being a parent may not be as fulfilling an experience as might be expected and in fact parenthood does not appear to offer any mental health benefit for the individuals involved.

16 Jan 2006

18 in Turkey with bird flu

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) the number of people who have now fallen victim to the deadly bird flu virus in Turkey has risen to 18 from 15, and most of them are children.

16 Jan 2006

Major grant to study institutional care of disabled people in Europe

The Tizard Centre at the University of Kent has been awarded a 350,000 euro grant by the European Commission to find out how many disabled people are still cared for in institutions across Europe and what would be the costs of replacing institutions with services in the community.

11 Jan 2006

DinB DNA polymerase is a key player in DNA repair

A quarter century after they discovered it, researchers have identified the job of one of the most common DNA-damage response proteins. The enzyme has puzzled scientists because it is present in nearly every organism, which suggests that it is crucial to life, and yet, in laboratory experiments, its function has remained a mystery.

11 Jan 2006

Centrally coordinated control campaign crucial to battle bird flu

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) warned today that the highly pathogenic Avian Influenza virus H5N1 could become endemic in Turkey and poses a serious risk to neighbouring countries.

11 Jan 2006

St. Jude projects 90 percent cure rate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia

The cure rate for the once almost universally fatal childhood cancer acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) could reach 90 percent in the near future, thanks to improvements in diagnosis and treatment over the past four decades, according to investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

11 Jan 2006

Face perception is mediated by a distributed neural system in the human brain

New research indicates that an area of the brain thought to act in reward circuitry may represent a phase in visual processing during which sexual orientation modulates how we perceive individual faces. The findings are reported by Felicitas Kranz and Alumit Ishai of the University of Zurich.

11 Jan 2006

Protein finding could lead to new topical treatment for inflammatory diseases

A protein that undesirably shields a skin poxvirus from the immune system may become the key ingredient in a new topical treatment for inflammatory diseases, say medical researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

11 Jan 2006

Molecular mechanism involved with neural tube defects

Environmental and genetic factors lead to neural tube defects in 1 in every 1,000 births and cause 1 in 20 of every spontaneous abortion. One cause of these defects is the failure of cells within the neural tube to migrate to the middle of the developing neural tube.

11 Jan 2006