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The Food and Drug Administration said yesterday that it had confirmed the presence of E. coli 0157, a deadly strain of bacteria, in samples of Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough produced at the company's plant in Danville, Va.

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    The research, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, included more than 500,000 people who had completed in 1995 or 1996 diet questionnaires for whom information about pancreatic cancer was available about six years later.

    The research results showed that people consuming large amounts of saturated fat were 36 percent more likely to suffer from the disease. And the link between fat intake and cancer was strongest for saturated fat from animal food sources, which was associated with a 43 percent increase in cancer risk.

Doug

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The CDC says in its June 26 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that young adults represented 4.4% of the 1.1 million people living with the human immunodeficiency virus in 2006.

That would amount to 48,400 young people with HIV.

Doug

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A Tennessee hospital has confirmed that it performed a liver transplant for Jobs, putting him among the lucky 6,500 or so Americans each year who get these operations. Nearly 16,000 others are waiting now for such a chance.

No one can buy a transplant — that's against federal law. And no one is suggesting that Jobs or the Memphis doctors who treated him bent any rules to show him favor. The hospital said he was the sickest person waiting for a liver when one became available.

However, people who understand how the transplant system works, and who have the money to make the most of what they learn, have a leg up on getting the body part they need.

Doug

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If a genetic condition leads to cancer there is new hope in a class of drugs called PARP inhibitors.

Poly (ADP-Ribose) Polymerase (PARP) is a protein cells use to repair genetic injuries naturally. But cancer cells also use this protein to repair their own DNA damage. Inhibiting this action allows chemotherapy and radiation to do its job against cancers resulting from genetic mutation.

In a study causing much excitement in the cancer-fighting world (CBS called this the “holy grail” of cancer research, thus the French Taunter above) scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research in Sutton, England gave 19 patients with advanced cancers caused by mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes a PARP inhibitor and over half saw their tumors shrink or stop growing.

Doug

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The failure of doctors and medical facilities to follow-up and give people test results is "relatively common," the researchers wrote, even when the results are abnormal and potentially troublesome, and affects one of every 14 tests.      

Doug

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A hospital team that performed the procedure botched it on 92 of 116 occasions and continued the treatment for a year even though monitoring equipment was broken, The New York Times said. The Philadelphia Inquirer said treatment errors occurred in 92 of 114 cases.

The cases involved brachytherapy, in which implanted radioactive seeds are used to kill cancer cells. Most veterans got significantly less than the prescribed dose while others received excessive radiation to nearby tissue and organs.

Doug

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A chemical found in green tea appears to slow the progression of prostate cancer, a study has suggested.

Green tea has been linked to a positive effect on a wide range of conditions, including heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

The research, in the US journal Cancer Prevention Research, found a significant fall in certain markers which indicate cancer development.

Doug

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Mary Rutan Hospital in Bellefontaine says the doctor gave a spinal anesthesia to both women before they delivered their healthy babies May 21 and did not wear a face mask.

Both women became sick and one died May 23.

Doug

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A massive effort to test pregnant women for a deadly germ they can spread to their babies has found a high rate of wrong test results that led some infants to miss out on treatment.

A study found the test missed more of the infections than would be expected. If the mothers had tested positive for the Group B strep bacteria, they would have been given antibiotics during labor to cut the chances of infecting their infants. The bacteria is common and harmless in adults but can in rare cases in newborns lead to blood infections, pneumonia, meningitis, mental retardation and death.

The study, published in today's New England Journal of Medicine and led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the first large national study of the program. The CDC is planning follow-up research to determine the cause.

Doug

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A cream used to treat pre-cancerous skin lesions also reverses signs of ageing, a study reveals.

Fluorouracil improved wrinkles, dark spots, shadows and sallowness, as well as its intended effect of removing suspect growths from sun damaged skin.

Patients with pre-cancerous actinic keratoses can expect younger-looking skin as a side effect of the treatment, Archives of Dermatology reports.

Doug

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"Somebody is going to have to take responsibility," said U.S. Rep. Phil Roe of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs' oversight and investigation subcommittee.

Doug

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Genotoxic stress, namely anything that damages the genetic code of life DNA, causes a malfunction of the cells ultimately responsible for hair colour.

The stress sets off a chain of reactions involving specialised cells called melanocyte stem cells, their work on mice in Cell journal reveals.

Similar mechanisms appear to be at work in humans too, they say.

The findings could help explain why people with Ataxia telangiectasia, a rare, neurodegenerative syndrome caused by a mutation in a gene called ATM, go grey prematurely.

In their study, Dr Emi Nishimura and colleagues found the ATM "caretaker" gene serves as a checks and measures system to stop melanocyte stem cells going awry.

It is the job of these cells within the hair follicles to make the mature pigment-producing melanocytes that give hair its youthful colour.

doug

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Of the more than 1.7 million Kappa and Sigma pacemakers implanted worldwide, about 21,300 are included in the recall.

They include devices in the Kappa Series 600/700/900 and Sigma Series 100/200/300 manufactured primarily between November 2000 and November 2002.

Patients can enter the serial number of their device at this Web site to find out whether it is included in the recall.

Doug

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The women who took the medicine, metoclopramide, didn’t have a higher rate of premature birth, according to research published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study also found their babies didn’t have a higher risk of malformations or low birth weight compared with the infants of women not taking the drug.

As much as 80 percent of women experience nausea and vomiting in their first trimester of pregnancy and no medicine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is available currently to treat the condition, study author Gideon Koren said. Another large study is needed in pregnant women to confirm if metoclopramide is effective in relieving morning sickness, he said.

“People were very hesitant to use it in pregnancy because they didn’t know it was safe,” said Koren, director of the Motherisk Program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and a professor at the University of Toronto in a June 9 telephone interview. “You cannot answer those questions with small numbers. This is the first ground-breaking study of almost 5,000 women. It answers the questions totally.”

Metoclopramide tablets, syrups and injections are sold by several generic drugmakers and under the brand name Reglan by Marietta, Georgia-based Alaven Pharmaceutical and by Baxter International Inc., based in Deerfield, Illinois. The medicine has been approved by the FDA to treat heartburn and digestive problems.

Doug

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The FDA announced that Clarcon is voluntarily recalling some skin sanitizers and skin protectants marketed under several different brand names because high levels of disease-causing bacteria were found in the products during a recent inspection.

"Consumers should not use any Clarcon products and should throw these products away in household refuse," states an FDA news release.

Doug

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 Doug

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Diabetics with stable heart disease do just as well taking drugs alone as getting quick angioplasty or bypass surgery to open blocked heart arteries, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

They said patients advised to have angioplasty and a heart stent to restore blood flow and ease chest pain could safely wait and give drugs a chance to work.

But those with more severe disease sent for more invasive heart bypass surgery might be able to avoid a future heart attack if they have the surgery right away.
Doug

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The Obama administration has sought to reassure the industry, with its substantial lobbying might, by pointing to the three dozen states that offer their employees a choice between government-backed insurance options and a menu of commercial policies.

Doug

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If anything, the drug may slightly lower the overall risk of death, said the authors of the much-anticipated RECORD study, which was presented Friday at the American Diabetes Association's annual meeting in New Orleans and published simultaneously online in The Lancet.

"The findings essentially are that, in overall cardiovascular terms, the drug is safe," Dr. Philip D. Home, chairman of the study steering committee and a professor of diabetes medicine at Newcastle University in Britain, said during a Friday news conference. "There's no decreased risk, and that includes the heart failure element. If anything, deaths were reduced with rosiglitazone [Avandia] compared to those in the control group. It doesn't reach statistical significance, but it's on the right side of benefit."

Doug

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Propylthiouracil is considered second-line treatment but is used when patients can't take another drug, methimazole.

The FDA said it saw an increased risk of liver injury with propylthiouracil when compared to methimazole.

Doug

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An experimental drug that starves the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis makes conventional therapy five times more effective against drug-resistant TB, doctors reported on Wednesday.

The company-run study found that the Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) drug TMC207, if added to a standard cocktail of five other TB medicines, cleared traces of the tuberculosis bacteria in the sputum of 48 percent of the volunteers after eight weeks. Only 9 percent of patients given the five older drugs alone showed that type of improvement.

TMC207 is being billed as the first new tuberculosis drug in 40 years. It works by interfering with the enzyme ATP synthase, which the bacteria need to store energy.

"It starves them. It's like cutting off your food supply," Dr. David McNeeley of Tibotec Inc., the subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that developed the drug, said in a telephone interview. Other drugs attack TB in different ways.

The only notable side effect was nausea, experienced by 26 percent of volunteers in the TMC207 group, versus 4 percent among those getting the conventional cocktail plus a placebo, they reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The test involved 47 people in South Africa with newly diagnosed lung TB that was resistant to two standard drugs, isoniazid and rifampin.

About 1.8 million people die worldwide each year from tuberculosis and a third of the world's population -- 2 billion people -- are infected, according to the World Health Organization.

The WHO says that of 9 million new TB cases annually, about 490,000 are multiple-drug resistant TB or MDR-TB and about 40,000 are extensively drug resistant or XDR-TB.

Doug

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Chinese scientists have given cells from adult pigs the ability to turn into any tissue in the body, just like embryonic stem cells.

They hope the breakthrough could aid research into human disease, and the breeding of animals for organ transplants for humans.

Doug

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