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National News
Fertility experts announced this week that overweight women should not be allowed IVF on the NHS. Are there good medical reasons - or do we just not like the idea of fat people breeding? By Kira Cochrane
A Harley Street plastic surgeon claims to have reversed the ageing process by injecting himself with human growth hormone. Can it be true? Vivienne Parry is sceptical
Sweeping changes to the way human organs are stored and donated in most of the UK come into force on Friday, making the wishes of dead patients paramount for the first time.
Organ transplant Act gives new hope to dying patients - The Telegraph 31/08/06#
Almost half of GPs avoid discussing the issue of obesity with fat patients, according to a new survey.
Doctors in Hong Kong are trying to establish whether a 23-year-old Briton has the human form of BSE. Tests on the Londoner, who has not been identified, have proved inconclusive.
The government has missed its target on cutting deaths from drug abuse, according to figures published yesterday.
Taking a sample of a person's DNA for analysis without their consent will be illegal from tomorrow as part of a package of measures designed to regulate the use of human body parts.
As our fetishisation of weight loss grows, simply being skinny can make a woman famous
A hospital doctor who admitted suffocating a severely disabled baby 34 years ago is being investigated by murder squad detectives.
Women above the age of 75 have the highest suicide rates among the female population.
The controversial programme to upgrade the National Health Service's IT systems has suffered another blow after two MPs called for an overhaul of the project yesterday.
THERE HAS never been a more exciting time to consider a career in pharmacy. The profession is experiencing a period of unprecedented progress and development. The skills of pharmacists have never been in greater demand and our members now deliver the latest, cutting-edge treatments and medicines to millions of patients every day. In the pages of this supplement you will find many examples of successful pharmacy professionals who are working hard and taking advantage of the various opportunities that a career in pharmacy can offer.
A PLAN to hold details of every child in England on an electronic database were under threat last night after concerns were raised about its legality and security.
A £200 MILLION government deal that will mean a big expansion of private sector involvement in the health service could provoke a confrontation with the unions and the Labour Left, The Times has learnt.
PUZZLED by how to tackle increasing levels of obesity, the Government has asked the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to investigate.
Smoking responsible for one in five deaths among over 35s - The Times 31/08/06ALMOST one in five deaths in people over 35 is the result of smoking, a report claims.
Guest of psychiatrist died at drugs party - The Telegraph 31/08/06A psychiatrist who specialises in addiction therapy hosted a marathon drink and drugs party that ended with a guest dying from an overdose of ecstasy, it was claimed yesterday.
As anyone will know who has witnessed the death of a relative from multiple myeloma, it can be a grim way to go. Your very marrow is in revolt, as the cancer takes over the blood-making processes.
Older first-time mothers who may never have held a baby before having their own are turning into "nervous wrecks" during pregnancy, a survey reveals.
Acute coughs are costing the UK economy an estimated £979 million a year, the group representing respiratory specialists said today.
Sustained, vigorous exercise may be more effective than lower-intensity activity in helping children avoid obesity and stay fit, a new study shows.
Many NHS trusts have significant flaws in the service they provide for children, a report finds.
More than 100 jobs could be cut at two hospitals in Essex to help meet a £14m budget deficit, a health trust revealed on Wednesday.
A company operating out of South Africa is charging tens of thousands of pounds for stem cell treatments, using cells that should not be injected into people, putting the lives of their vulnerable and chronically ill patients at risk, BBC TWO's Newsnight programme has uncovered.
Relatives of a 61-year-old woman knocked down by a car six days ago, say they are angry she is still waiting for specialist surgery on her broken neck.
Polish people are being urged to give blood in their new home of Aberdeen - as a way of showing their thanks for Scotland’s warm welcome.
Scotland has the highest suicide rate in the UK, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.
International News
Doctors in Hong Kong are trying to establish whether a 23-year-old Briton has the human form of BSE. Tests on the Londoner, who has not been identified, have proved inconclusive.
WHILE achieving a toned and muscular physique is hard enough, maintaining it can become a chore. For the would-be Brad Pitts among us, help is at hand.
A company operating out of South Africa is charging tens of thousands of pounds for stem cell treatments, using cells that should not be injected into people, putting the lives of their vulnerable and chronically ill patients at risk, BBC TWO's Newsnight programme has uncovered.
Lung power normally declines as a person ages but being angry and hostile can speed up the process, researchers said on Thursday.
Electrical impulses delivered to two areas of the brain that control movement alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson's disease more effectively than drugs alone, according to a study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
People with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, are frequently not immunized against vaccine-preventable diseases, researchers report.
Quite often, people with heart failure have some degree of blockage of the coronary arteries. In such cases, those who undergo surgery to clear to arteries have markedly better survival than those treated with medication, researchers from Canada report.
The production of antibodies to certain foods is "strikingly increased" in the gut of many patients with rheumatoid arthritis, Norwegian researchers report. It may be that hypersensitivity to certain foods leads to a flare-up in the joints.
Women who accept their bodies, flaws and all, are more likely to eat healthily or intuitively, new research shows. This suggests that women's typical reasons for dieting -- dissatisfaction with their bodies -- may backfire.
Excessive exercise is one of the general warning signs of an eating disorder, but the problem may be particularly common among anorexic women who vomit or use laxatives to lose weight, a study shows.
Like a growing number of students in China, Pan Ou will spend her university vacation going under the knife in a plastic surgery procedure she hopes will boost her chances of getting a good job after graduation.
Hay fever sufferers may soon be able to get their allergy shots in the form of a pill, according to a European study.
Cancer-focused biotechnology firm Hana Biosciences said on Wednesday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had accepted Zensana Oral Spray for review.
New results indicate that 69 percent of Americans fail to wash their hands properly even though 68 percent of them say they believe that routine hand washing is the optimal method for thwarting disease transmission.
All tobacco brands have been increasing the nicotine dosage in each cigarette steadily during the last six years, says a report from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. The overall increase has been about 10% during 1998-2004. The higher the nicotine dose, the more hooked you get - it is much more difficult to quit.
A 23-year-old British tourist of Chinese origin has been hospitalized in Hong Kong with suspected vCJD, the human version of mad cow disease, say authorities. The man is at the Prince of Wales Hospital - the hospital has adopted infection control measures. He is said to be in a ‘critical condition’.
In a new approach to treating anthrax exposure, a team of scientists has created an inhibitor designed to tackle the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant strains. Reporting in this week's online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Toronto describe the new anthrax toxin inhibitor, which performed successfully in both laboratory and animal tests.
The XVI International AIDS Conference, which was held Aug. 13 through Aug. 18 in Toronto, was characterized by "guarded optimism," the Los Angeles Times reports. According to the Times, the "feeling of hope was palpable." Bill Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and former President Clinton, who attended and spoke at the conference, "expressed hope that the tide of the virus could be turned," the Times reports. Some of the most productive new HIV/AIDS treatment developments were presented and discussed at the conference, according to Charles Farthing, chief of medicine for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in Los Angeles
Are sunscreens always beneficial, or can they be detrimental to users? A research team led by UC Riverside chemists reports that unless people out in the sun apply sunscreen often, the sunscreen itself can become harmful to the skin.
A progressive neurodegenerative disorder that is often fatal within the first two decades of life may be treatable via a molecule already targeted by approved drugs, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other institutions report.
Researchers at The Forsyth Institute have confirmed in human gingival tissue that immune cells play a destructive role in periodontal disease. Although researchers had suspected the correlation between bone loss in periodontal (gum) disease and immune cells, this is the first time that this has been confirmed in human tissue samples. With this work, Forsyth scientists and colleagues hope to determine methods for intervening and halting bone loss and thus improving the health outcomes of the estimated 80 million Americans suffering from periodontal disease.
Whether or not a woman is obese will likely affect her outcome once she has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, according to a new study from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
UQ Professor Ian Frazer administered the first shots of the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil in Queensland this afternoon at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.
Currently, 70 percent of the 44.5 million adult smokers in the United States say they would like to quit, and about 40 percent make an attempt to quit each year. However, less than 15 percent of those quitters take advantage of therapeutic nicotine, which doubles a smoker's chances of quitting successfully. Following are misperceptions that may be derailing successful quitting and the truths that every reader of your Website [or Blog] should know.
Smoking increases the number of receptors in a smoker's brain that thrive on nicotine. Take that nicotine away, as with quitting, and the receptors "call out" for it, something the smoker feels as a craving. Cravings can be intense and last weeks longer than many smokers realize, sabotaging willpower. Therapeutic nicotine helps safely reduce cravings so a smoker can wean himself off nicotine gradually, giving his willpower a fighting chance.
The breakthrough came as Barry Thompson from Stephen Cohen's group at EMBL looked at a recently discovered signaling pathway called "Hippo."
HIV/AIDS advocates from the South African HIV/AIDS treatment advocacy group Treatment Action Campaign on Thursday protested South Africa's HIV/AIDS treatment program and called for Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to resign, Reuters reports (Quinn, Reuters, 8/24).
In the 1980s, the phrase "T cell count" burst into the world's medical vocabulary as thousands and then millions of patients died of AIDS. The public began to understand the crucial importance of T cells--cellular Pac-Men that roam the bloodstream gobbling up infection and guarding against future attacks.
A significant number of people world-wide suffer with chronic pain, which affects every aspect of their lives, and often results in depression.
Many people are afflicted with rare illnesses of unknown cause, and finding a common link to such under-studied or "orphaned" diseases as Bardet-Biedl, Alstrom and Meckel-Gruber syndromes can significantly advance the search for causes and treatment. Now, the same Johns Hopkins research team that first identified flaws in the work of tiny, hair-like structures on the surface of cells called cilia as such a common link has compiled - and made available on the World Wide Web - a database of all genes known to contribute to cilia operations in the body.
Charles Nemeroff has decided to resign as editor of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology after he co-authored a favorable article on a chest implant that treats depression and did not disclose his financial ties to Cyberonics, which manufactures the device, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The Portuguese government on Thursday approved the establishment of community sites where injection drug users can inject themselves under supervision, and new measures call for needle-exchange programs to be installed in prisons by 2008, AFP/Today Online reports.
The WHO Regional Office for Africa has developed a strategy to optimize child survival, growth and development, and reduce mortality among children less than five years of age, currently estimated at 4.6 million per year.
For decades, scientists have known that chronic exposure to high concentrations of the metal manganese can cause movement abnormalities resembling symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but apparently without the same neuron damage characteristic of Parkinson's patients.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa, Dr Luis Sambo, has proposed measures to check sickle-cell disease. The prevalence of sickle-cell trait ranges between 10% and 40% of the population in some parts of the African Region.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has described the shortage and high turnover of health workers in Africa as a "major threat" to the achievement of Africa's health goals and proposed two concrete measures to address the problem.
The "alarming trend in HIV incidence" in the African Region calls for urgent measures to further control the progress of the epidemic", says WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Luis Sambo, in a report Tuesday to the fifty-sixth session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa.
African countries have been urged to establish or strengthen their medicines regulatory authorities (MRAs) with a view to checking the proliferation of harmful, inefficacious, counterfeit and substandard medicines in the region.
Cheshire and Merseyside News
THE solicitor who represented Merseyside families involved in the Alder Hey organs scandal last night welcomed new rules that should stop such abuse ever happening again.
A £1m appeal to build a new cancer treatment centre at Leighton Hospital will be officially launched on Monday.
Cumbria and Lancashire News
THE MENINGITIS Trust is encouraging parents across Cumbria to have their babies and toddlers immunised against a life-threatening strain of the disease when a new vaccine is introduced next Monday.
Greater Manchester News
ONE in three people in Bolton will be obese in four years.
THE FAMILY of a toddler who died from meningitis has welcomed plans to vaccinate babies against the potentially fatal virus.
A BAN on smoking has been imposed at Mental Health Trust buildings across Bolton.
Scientists looking at mice may have discovered why certain people are hairier than others in what could provide clues as to the reason some men go bald prematurely.
