health - "medicine"

'Tiny Tom', an innovative new telemedicine service which will help with the care of sick babies in North Queensland was launched in Townsville today Friday, June 27. Tiny Tom is the latest development of the telepaediatric service, a major research project run by The University of Queensland's Centre for Online health (COH), a research centre based in the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane.

Pain Therapeutics, Inc. recently announced the successful completion of its first clinical study utilizing a novel melanoma treatment, which the company licensed from Albert Einstein College of medicine of Yeshiva University. The treatment consisted of dosing patients with a monoclonal antibody labeled with a radioisotope. A research team at Einstein, led by Arturo Casadevall, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chairman of microbiology & immunology, and Ekaterina Dadachova, Ph.D.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that the number of Americans with diabetes has grown to 24 million - a surge of more than 3 million people in the past two years.That surge is evident at Temple University's School of Podiatric medicine, where podiatrists have seen a spike in recently diagnosed diabetic patients who have been referred by their primary care physician as part of a heightened awareness of the disease.

UCB announced that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) of the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) has issued a positive opinion recommending that the European Commission grants a marketing authorisation for lacosamide, proposed trade name Vimpat(TM), for the adjunctive treatment of

The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) has recommended updating the product information for epoetin-containing medicines with a new warning for their use in cancer patients stating that blood transfusion should be the preferred method of correcting anaemia in patients suffering cancer. Epoetin-containing medicines are indicated in patients with chronic renal failure and for the treatment of anaemia in symptomatic patients with non-myeloid tumours receiving chemotherapy.

Using new scientific techniques, scientists have unlocked the cascade of molecular events that lead to Alzheimer's disease. The scientific findings published in the latest edition of Nature medicine suggest a potential new target for the development of drug therapies to fight the irreversible and degenerative disease which affects some 29.8 million people worldwide. The total worldwide societal cost of dementia was estimated at somewhere in the region of US$315.4 billion in 2005.

The European Medicines Agency has recommended updating the product information for ergot-derived dopamine agonists with new warnings and contraindications in relation to the risk of fibrosis. Ergot-derived dopamine agonists are mainly used to treat Parkinson's disease.

(University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) Researchers have shown that the unfolded protein response, which is a reaction to stress induced by sleep deprivation, is impaired in the brains of old mice. The findings suggest that inadequate sleep in the elderly could exacerbate an already-impaired protective response.

(McGill University) Researchers from McGill University's faculty of medicine have discovered a compound that reduces resistance to chemotherapy agents used to treat cancer. Their results were published in the June issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

A survey of patients participating in a clinical trial for a new HIVtherapy found that the majority of the patients not only sought topersonally benefit from the trial, but also realized that participatingin research can contribute to society as a whole. Results of the studyare published in the June 23 issue of Archives of InternalMedicine.