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Two new experimental treatments against advanced melanoma have shown promise in keeping the deadly skin cancer at bay, according to research presented in the United States on Monday. The agents, known as Dabrafenib and Trametinib, are being developed by the British pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, and were tested in clinical trials against standard chemotherapy treatments. The trial on Trametinib...
June 4, 2012
CHICAGO - New research shows a sharp escalation in the weapons race against cancer. Scientists are reporting success with several high-tech approaches long dreamed of but not possible or proven to work until now. At a weekend conference of more than 30,000 cancer specialists in Chicago, researchers described new tools to make the immune system attack a broad range of cancers, new "smart bomb" drugs...
June 3, 2012
The unofficial start of summer may have arrived already, but for many families, what once were the lazy days of summer have become the crazy days. Parents and kids often find themselves racing to work, camps, swim meets and ballgames, plus answering cellphones, text messages and e-mails 24/7. So how can parents get more out of their time with their family? They should consider setting aside an hour...
May 30, 2012
The man's face was pasty, his eyes closed as he lay back in bed waiting for a wave of nausea to pass. Physician Elizabeth Ward bent over him after checking his temperature, blood pressure and oxygen levels and finding that all were normal. "Would you rather stay home or go to the hospital?" she asked Frank Blondin, 52, who suffers from severe rheumatoid arthritis and heart disease. He also had a nasty...
May 30, 2012
Taking a calcium supplement to help stop bones from thinning puts people at a greater heart attack risk, a report in the journal Heart said Wednesday. The study of about 24,000 people ages 35 to 64 found those who regularly took calcium supplements were 86% more likely to have a heart attack than those who didn't. Those who took only calcium supplements were twice as likely to have a heart attack as...
May 24, 2012
Read any good sunscreen labels lately? It's a smart idea, even though federal regulators have delayed new labeling rules intended to make labels more accurate and less misleading. Many manufacturers were not ready for the switch, and to head off a summer sunscreen shortage, the Food and Drug Administration gave them until December. But summer is days away, and peak sunscreen-buying season is now. Consumers...
May 23, 2012
Imagine yourself crouching a few feet behind a roaring Boeing 737 at takeoff. Or firing up a chain saw to cut down a mighty tree. Or listening to a raging thunderstorm for hours. That's roughly what race fans contend with, on a decibel level, at the Indianapolis 500. The sounds of the famous race will echo around Indianapolis next weekend, and hearing experts again are warning spectators, race workers...
May 22, 2012
What seemed like a routine play - an infielder being upended turning a double play - nearly cost Los Angeles Dodgers second baseman Mark Ellis his left leg last weekend. Ellis, 34, had emergency surgery Saturday to drain blood and other fluids that were affecting the leg's muscles, and manager Don Mattingly told news reporters that doctors told him they might have had to amputate the leg if the condition...
May 22, 2012
People undone by arachnophobia holding a huge, hairy tarantula in their bare hands? No worries, not after a single brief therapy session changed the brain's fear response in adults with the life-long, debilitating phobia of spiders. The "exposure therapy" experiment was small, done on 12 adults, who all held or petted the spider afterward, the study from the Northwestern University Feinberg School...
May 22, 2012
Doctors should no longer offer the PSA prostate cancer screening test to healthy men, because they're more likely to be harmed by the blood draw - and the chain of medical interventions that often follows - than be helped, says the final report from a government advisory panel that's already sparking controversy among medical groups. Even after studying more than 250,000 men for more than a decade,...
May 22, 2012
Hospice marketers, exploring possibilities for new revenue to help continue the industry's remarkable growth, are looking to exploit a provision in the 2010 health care law by persuading hospitals to send Medicare patients into end-of-life hospice care instead of readmitting them to the hospital. Such a move, the hospice marketers say, will enable hospitals to avoid paying the Medicare penalties required...
May 22, 2012
After learning she had advanced ovarian cancer, Susan Gubar felt the need to reassure her two grown daughters that not even death could separate them. Although she lacks conventional faith in religion or the afterlife, Gubar says, "I found myself earnestly promising one and then the other of my distressed daughters: 'I will love you beyond my death. I will love you from another space that you will...
May 21, 2012
Diabetes and pre-diabetes have skyrocketed among the nation's young people, jumping from 9% of the adolescent population in 2000 to 23% in 2008, a study reports today. The findings, reported in the journal Pediatrics, are "very concerning," says lead author Ashleigh May, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "To get ahead of this problem, we have to be incredibly aggressive...
May 21, 2012
A 16-year-old boy recently lay in a medically induced coma in a hospital in this Atlanta suburb. The same situation befell a 16-year-old girl in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Elsewhere in Florida, a 19-year-old was sentenced in February to a year of house arrest and five years of probation for his part in a stunt that left two of his friends dead. They were all participants in car surfing, a thrill-seeking...
May 21, 2012
Coffee lovers are a loyal crowd. Most pour out their morning cup of java for the flavor, the aroma, and the accompanying jolt of energy, rather than the health perks. So they may not mind if doctors debate new research suggesting that coffee lovers live longer. According to an article in today's New England Journal of Medicine, those who drank coffee at the beginning of a 13-year study had a slightly...
May 17, 2012
Contrary to popular belief, many healthful foods are no more expensive than junk food, a large new government analysis shows. In fact, carrots, onions, pinto beans, lettuce, mashed potatoes, bananas and orange juice are all less expensive per portion than soft drinks, ice cream, chocolate candy, french fries, sweet rolls and deep-fat fried chicken patties, the report says. "We have all heard that eating...
May 17, 2012
A generation of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans exposed to explosions may be at risk for early-onset dementia, according to a new study that looked at the autopsied brains of four former combat service members and four athletes. Scientists said their work showed evidence of a progressive degenerative brain disorder known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disease found in recent years among...
May 17, 2012
Education may not only improve a person's finances, it is also linked to better health habits and a longer life. For instance, people who have a bachelor's degree or higher live about nine years longer than those who don't graduate from high school, according to an annual report, out today, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. Some of the health...
May 16, 2012
Eight-year-old Mohammed Rafiq was walking through a farmer's field when an explosive detonated beneath his feet, taking both of his legs. American military physicians at a nearby U.S. Army post took care of his wounds so he would live and were not expected to do more. Aid organizations for the disabled did not go to Zharai district because the traditional Taliban stronghold was mined heavily with improvised...
May 16, 2012
Bob Sessions has never had a drop of alcohol in his life. Yet at age 86, the teetotaler is eager to see if a natural compound found in red wine can combat disease. Sessions enrolls Wednesday in a first-of-a-kind government-sponsored study examining whether resveratrol can alter or delay the destruction of the brain in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. Sessions is one of 5.3 million...
May 15, 2012
Zhang Xinyou was one of the lucky ones. "If you don't do a liver transplant, you'll die," doctors told the cirrhosis sufferer, recalled his wife, Gao Li. Zhang, 59, got his liver, but where it came from is something he doesn't want to ask. "Most of the organs here come from executed prisoners," Gao, 57, says in hushed tones inside a transplant ward at the Tianjin First Center Hospital, the country's...
May 15, 2012
To sleep: perchance to sleepwalk, ah, that is not unusual after all, finds a study Monday in Neurology. About 30% of adults in the USA have experienced nighttime wanderings, and those with sleep apneas, psychiatric disorders, depression or obsessive-compulsive disorders are at higher risk, finds the study of 19,136 Americans ages 18 and older. Antidepressants, sleeping pills and certain other medications...
May 15, 2012
Yvonne Yacoub has been a nurse for half a century. In 50 years, she has seen her profession redefine itself to meet the challenges of change, yet continue to struggle with shortages of new practitioners. Yacoub, 72, who has worked at Cape Canaveral Hospital here for 36 years, is decades older than the 46-year-old average age of employed registered nurses. Some veteran nurses continue to work, but many...
May 14, 2012
Federal authorities charged 107 doctors, nurses and social workers in seven cities with Medicare fraud Wednesday in a nationwide crackdown on unrelated scams that allegedly bilked the taxpayer-funded program of $452 million. It's the highest dollar amount ever in a single Medicare bust, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said. Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder partnered in...
May 3, 2012
The first-ever country-by-country estimate of premature births finds that 15 million babies a year are born preterm - more than one in 10 live births. About 1 million of those babies die shortly after birth, and countless others suffer a significant, life-long physical, neurological or educational disability, says a report released Wednesday. The findings "dispel the notion that this is a rare problem,"...
May 3, 2012
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