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| Smokers miss work more often, cost UK billions: study Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 07:22 PM PDT (Reuters) - Smokers miss an average of two or three more days of work each year than non-smokers, with this absenteeism costing the UK alone 1.4 billion pounds last year, according to a UK study. The report, which appeared in the journal Addiction, analysed 29 separate studies conducted between 1960 and 2011 in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the United States and Japan, with a total of over 71,000 public and private sector workers. ... Full Story | Top |
| AstraZeneca deepens collaboration with academia Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 05:09 PM PDT LONDON (Reuters) - British academic researchers have secured 7 million pounds ($11 million) of funding from the country's Medical Research Council (MRC) to investigate a range of potential new drugs made available free-of-charge by AstraZeneca. The move is the latest example of how the pharmaceutical industry is experimenting with new research models involving greater collaboration with external partners. The MRC money will pay for work on 15 research projects covering Alzheimer's, cancer and other diseases. ... Full Story | Top |
| BioCryst drops hep C drug on safety issues Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 03:24 PM PDT (Reuters) - BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc said it would withdraw an application to test its experimental hepatitis C drug in humans after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration expressed concern about its safety. The FDA had concerns about the preclinical toxicity profile of the drug candidate, BCX5191, the company said. The drug belongs to a new class of hepatitis C treatments, known as nucs, that is widely expected to be a game-changer in hepatitis C management but has been plagued by safety concerns. ... Full Story | Top |
| Hospitals battled to protect patients as Sandy raged Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 01:43 PM PDT  NEW YORK (Reuters) - At one New York hospital where backup generators failed, staff carried premature babies down more than a dozen flights of stairs in one of the more dramatic moments for healthcare workers during powerful storm Sandy. Record flooding and power outages across the northeastern United States made for a long night caring for the most critically ill, as several hundred patients were evacuated in New York City, day-time hospital staff slept overnight on vacant beds and less urgent procedures were postponed. ... Full Story | Top |
| Sugary drinks linked to higher stroke risk Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 01:16 PM PDT NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who imbibe sugary soft drinks almost every day are 83 percent more likely to have a certain type of stroke than women who rarely drink sodas and other sweetened beverages, according to a new study from Japan. Although the findings don't prove that sweet drinks are to blame for the higher stroke risk, other studies have shown links between high sugar intake and clogged arteries, said Dr. Adam Bernstein, a researcher at the Cleveland Clinic, who was not involved in the study. ... Full Story | Top |
| Smokers miss work more often, cost UK billions Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 01:15 PM PDT NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Smokers miss an average of two or three more days of work each year than non-smokers, according to a new analysis of 29 past studies. Based on that finding, absenteeism due to smoking cost the UK alone 1.4 billion pounds - or $2.25 billion - last year, researchers calculated. "Clearly the most important message for any individual's health is, รข€˜Quit smoking,' but I think that message is pretty well out there," said Douglas Levy, a tobacco and public health researcher from the Harvard Medical School in Boston who wasn't involved in the new study. ... Full Story | Top |
| Three more deaths from meningitis outbreak linked to injections Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 12:02 PM PDT  (Reuters) - Three more patients have died after contracting fungal meningitis from potentially tainted steroid injections supplied by a Massachusetts company, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday, bringing the death toll from the outbreak to 28 nationwide. Two of the new deaths were in Michigan, which now has reported seven fatalities, and one in Tennessee which has confirmed 11 deaths, the CDC said. The two states have been the hardest hit by the outbreak, first discovered in Tennessee late last month. ... Full Story | Top |
| Kids who smoke menthol more likely to get hooked Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 11:33 AM PDT NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Kids who experiment with menthol cigarettes are more likely to become habitual smokers than their peers who start out with the regular variety, new research findings suggest. In a study of tens of thousands of U.S. students, researchers found that kids who were dabbling with menthol cigarettes were 80 percent more likely to become regular smokers over the next few years, versus those experimenting with regular cigarettes. Menthol is added to cigarettes to give them a minty "refreshing" flavor. ... Full Story | Top |
| Burundi gets $2 billion aid pledge, U.N. says Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 10:46 AM PDT GENEVA (Reuters) - Donors have pledged more than $2 billion for Burundi's 2012-2015 development strategy to help the central African nation rebuild after civil war, the United Nations said on Tuesday. "We ended up with more than $2 billion registered commitments at the conference," Pamphile Muderega of the National Aid Coordination Committee said in a statement. "This represents a doubling of our already optimistic expectations," he said. The statement was issued by the U.N. ... Full Story | Top |
| Should schools close during bad flu outbreaks? Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 10:43 AM PDT NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new U.S. government study suggests that during a serious flu epidemic, closing schools can keep people - especially kids - out of the ER. Now, researchers say, the big questions include, When is it best to close schools? And what are the downsides? The study, reported in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, looked at what happened in two Texas communities during the H1N1 "swine" flu epidemic of 2009. In one community, schools were closed as a precaution; in the other, they weren't. ... Full Story | Top |
| Europe rights court condemns Poland in abortion rape case Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 10:06 AM PDT STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday condemned Poland for the inhumane and degrading treatment of a 14-year-old rape victim whom the authorities tried to stop having an abortion. The girl's right to a private and family life had been flouted in 2008, the court ruled, saying she had been arbitrarily detained after being briefly placed in a home to separate her from her mother, who favored an abortion. ... Full Story | Top |
| Sandy curtails nuclear plants, oldest under alert Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 09:43 AM PDT  NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hurricane Sandy slowed or shut a half-dozen U.S. nuclear power plants, while the nation's oldest facility declared a rare "alert" after the record storm surge pushed flood waters high enough to endanger a key cooling system. Exelon Corp's 43-year-old Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey remains on "alert" status, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said early Tuesday. It is only the third time this year that the second-lowest of four emergency action levels was triggered. ... Full Story | Top |
| Singapore firm starts new Alzheimer's drug trials Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 08:46 AM PDT LONDON (Reuters) - TauRx Therapeutics, a privately held biotech company based in Singapore, has launched two late-stage clinical studies testing a new kind of experimental drug against Alzheimer's. Its LMTX drug aims to attack the memory-robbing disease by blocking the build-up of a protein called tau that forms twisted fibers and tangles inside brain cells. Many scientists believe tau is an important cause of Alzheimer's, alongside another protein known as amyloid that has been the main focus of drug development efforts to date. ... Full Story | Top |
| Bayer to buy U.S. vitamin maker Schiff for $1.2 billion Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 04:37 AM PDT  FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany's Bayer is to buy U.S. vitamins maker Schiff Nutrition International for an agreed $1.2 billion as it seeks stable sources of growth to complement its more volatile prescription drugs business. Many pharmaceutical companies are keen to expand in non-prescription drugs as a steadier, albeit less profitable, counterweight to prescription medicines, where there are risks of, for example, clinical trial failures and patent expiries. ... Full Story | Top |
| Breast-cancer checks save lives despite over diagnosis Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012 03:33 AM PDT LONDON (Reuters) - Breast-cancer screening saves lives even though it also picks up cases in some women that would never have caused them a problem, according to a review published in The Lancet medical journal. The independent review, commissioned by the charity Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and Britain's Department of Health, follows fierce international debate about the benefits of routine screening and recent research that has argued it does more harm than good. ... Full Story | Top |
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