Mar. 23 - About 9.6 percent of the population in Aiken County is diabetic, said Darren Waters, clinical director of the Diabetes and Nutrition Teaching Center at Aiken Regional Medical Centers. "You're looking at over 15,000 folks that are diagnosed," he said. Aiken Regional is taking steps to prevent the disorder today by offering free glucose screenings for the public. The screenings will be held...
March 22, 2010
Mar. 22 - Berkeley's school district is reminding parents of roughly 9,000 students to get their measles vaccines after four cases of the potentially deadly disease were reported recently in the Bay Area. Parents last week received letters in English and Spanish and automated phone calls reminding them to get their kids vaccinated, said school district spokesman Mark Coplan. State law requires students...
March 22, 2010
Mar. 23 - In the region's race to establish a heart-transplant program, Florida Hospital is one step away from the finish line. Florida Hospital officials will announce today the addition to two world-class transplant physicians to lead a team of doctors and other specialists who will perform the first heart-transplant operation in Central Florida. "Florida Hospital has already had a successful kidney-transplant...
March 22, 2010
WASHINGTON - Family members of combat troops declared brain-dead will have an opportunity for a final reunion with their loved ones before life support is removed, according to new guidelines provided to battlefield doctors. The guidelines are aimed at helping doctors determine what to do when a combat casualty suffers brain death, a decision physicians were left to figure out before on a case-by-case...
March 22, 2010
Sunday, March 14, was a grueling day. After staying up until 1 a.m. for a dinner, I woke at 7:15 to catch a train to Washington, D.C., to report a story there. That's a short night anyway, but the switch to daylight saving chopped out another hour, and by the time I came back to New York in the evening to trade off kid duties with my husband, I was fading fast. Unfortunately, my baby and toddler, thrown...
March 22, 2010
The Food and Drug Administration advised U.S. doctors Monday to stop giving infants Rotarix, one of two available rotavirus vaccines, until the agency gathers more information about how DNA from a virus common in pigs got into it. One million U.S. babies have received Rotarix, a two-dose oral vaccine, since its approval in 2008, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said. "We do not feel that anyone who...
March 22, 2010
Has even the Last Supper been supersized? The food in famous paintings of the meal has grown by biblical proportions over the last millennium, researchers report in a medical journal Tuesday. Using a computer, they compared the size of the food to the size of the heads in 52 paintings of Jesus Christ and his disciples at their final meal before his death. If art imitates life, we're in trouble, the...
March 22, 2010
WASHINGTON - A requirement tucked into the nation's massive health care bill will make calorie counts impossible for thousands of restaurants to hide and difficult for consumers to ignore. More than 200,000 fast food and other chain restaurants will have to include calorie counts on menus, menu boards and even drive-thrus. The new law, which applies to any restaurant with 20 or more locations, directs...
March 22, 2010
A Nuclear Regulatory Commission rule allowing hospitals to discharge radioactive thyroid cancer patients to their homes and hotels poses a public health threat, a congressional report says today. The report, released by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, which oversees the commission, also found that insurers routinely use the rule to deny...
March 22, 2010
The United States drastically outspends other countries on health care, yet has worse overall outcomes and leaves millions at risk of losing their homes or even lives for lack of insurance. Championed by President Barack Obama and villified by Republicans, the health care reform bill that passed the Congress Sunday extends insurance to 95 percent of Americans by covering an additional 32 million people...
March 22, 2010
Berlin (dpa) - Memory is important to the elderly, especially those with mental or physical disabilities that might leave them feeling weak and helpless. By looking back on their life's accomplishments, they can regain some self-confidence, says Christine Sowinski of KDA, the German Curatorship for Elderly Assistance. Remembering happy times also boosts satisfaction with life and quality of living....
March 21, 2010
Mar. 22 - Prosecutors decided to cite HIV as a deadly weapon in charging a Houston man with aggravated sexual assault of a child last week - a first for Harris County. "The penal code says it can be anything that is capable, in its manner and use, of causing death or serious bodily injury," said Jessica McDonald, an appellate lawyer in the Harris County District Attorney's office. "I just don't think...
March 21, 2010
In 1950, when Marybeth Solinski was born, a diagnosis of Down syndrome was practically a death sentence. Children with the condition often died before their 10th birthday. Yet Solinski, at 59, has outlived her parents. She has even joined AARP. Her longevity illustrates the dramatic progress for people with Down syndrome. Thanks to better medical care, the average life expectancy for a child with Down...
March 21, 2010
There's good and bad news on the "superbug" front. In community hospitals in the Southeast, an easily spread bacterium appears to have overtaken the widely feared MRSA as the most common hospital-acquired infection. But a pilot project in Ohio found that pushing hard on simple things such as hand washing and thorough cleaning can significantly lower rates. Known as Clostridium difficile, or "C. diff,"...
March 21, 2010
Most babies should take a daily vitamin D supplement, a new study shows. That will be a big change for most parents - and even many pediatricians. Only 1% to 13% of infants under 1 year now get a vitamin D supplement, available in inexpensive drops, according to a study published online today in Pediatrics. Those drops are needed, the study says, because only 5% to 37% of American infants met the standard...
March 21, 2010
The World Health Organisation said Thursday it was suspending the use of the Indian-developed Shan5 combination vaccine, which is used against infections such as diphtheria, tetanus and hepatitis B. "The manufacturer got some complaints that there was suspended white sediment in some of the vials," WHO spokeswoman Alison Brunier told AFP. As a result, the UN health agency decided to suspend the use...
March 17, 2010
A Nuclear Regulatory Commission rule allowing hospitals to discharge radioactive thyroid cancer patients to their homes and hotels poses a public health threat, a congressional report says today. The report, released by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, which oversees the commission, also found that insurers routinely use the rule to deny...
March 17, 2010
Some clinical trials financed by the US federal government and pharmaceutical labs exclude gay and lesbian participants, according to a study published Wednesday. "Most gay and lesbian patients are probably unaware that their sexual orientation is being used as a screening factor for clinical trial participation," said lead author Brian Egleston of Fox Chase Cancer Center, one of the biggest US cancer...
March 17, 2010
Researchers launched a clinical study Wednesday to test new treatments for aggressive breast cancer in a rare alliance between the US government and five major drug companies. The new drugs may help boost survival rates for women diagnosed with this type of breast cancer which does not respond to the standard treatments, the Biomarkers Consortium said in a statement. The trial, dubbed the I-SPY 2,...
March 17, 2010
Pregnant women may be far more at risk from swine flu than thought, according to a survey published on Friday that was carried out in Australia and New Zealand. An investigation carried out among American women between April and May last year, in the first month of the H1N1 virus' outbreak, suggested pregnant women were four times likelier to develop severe illness requiring hospitalisation compared...
March 17, 2010
During the past decade, the Environmental Protection Agency's commitment to keeping children safe from toxic chemicals has lapsed, and top officials routinely ignored scores of recommendations by the agency's own children's health advisory committee, according to a report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office. The consequences are substantial, health experts told lawmakers Wednesday,...
March 17, 2010
LOS ANGELES - Condoms might be the only thing porn actors are required to wear if the state's workplace safety board approves a petition mandating their use. In a hearing Thursday, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board will hear testimony from the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The advocacy group filed a petition in December to require condoms be used in porn....
March 17, 2010
The cost of cancer treatment is "skyrocketing" - both for individual patients and the nation, a new analysis shows. From 1990 to 2008, spending on cancer care soared by more than $63 billion. The increase was driven by the rising costs of sophisticated new drugs, robotic surgeries and radiation techniques, as well as the growing number of patients who are eligible to take them, says Peter Bach of New...
March 16, 2010
Mar. 17 - Drug addicts desperate to get pain medication have turned increasingly to forging prescriptions, local drug counselors said Tuesday, the day after a break-in at a south Colorado Springs doctors' office. "It has increased in recent years at such an alarming rate. It has become an epidemic," said Dr. Mary Zesiewicz, clinical psychiatrist at Lighthouse, Pikes Peak Mental Health's drug rehabilitation...
March 16, 2010
This is not a nation of teetotalers or regular exercisers, new government data show. The National Health Interview Survey, based on telephone interviews with 79,000 adults over three years, has found: *61% of people in the USA drink alcohol. These are adults who have had at least 12 drinks in their lifetime and at least one drink in the past year. *31% of people do enough regular leisure-time physical...
March 16, 2010