health - "develop"

The U.N. health agency says at least three in four mental health patients in developing countries receive no treatment.

LONDON (Reuters) - A new high-powered microscope has allowed scientists to watch a zebrafish develop from a single cell into an embryo with a beating heart, the first time this has been possible in vertebrates, researchers said on Thursday.

Scientists from Germany and the UK have found a new source of stem cells that could be as good as embryonic stem cells for researching and developing treatments for a range of serious diseases, but without the ethical problems of embryonic stem cells; the source is routine biopsies of men's testicles.

A number of prominent people in the disability industry were present at the launch of NuDrive - the world's first lever-drive propulsion accessory for manual wheelchairs. NuDrive reduces the force needed to self-propel by up to 40% and was launched on 7th October by Peter Gage, Chairman of the NHS National Wheelchair Managers' Forum, at the Aspire National Training Centre.

The University of Michigan will lead the effort to expand and enhance the molecular data needed to develop computer programs that more accurately predict potential drug candidates. The data will be housed in a Web-based resource that the scientific community and others interested in this information can access for free. The resource is estimated to receive up to $5 million over five years from NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS).

deCODE genetics (Nasdaq:DCGN) has announced the launch of deCODE BreastCancerT, a new tool for assessing risk of the common forms of breast cancer. For the first time, a woman concerned about breast cancer can speak with her physician about a genetic test to better understand her lifetime risk of developing the common forms of the disease.

An increasing number of men from tribes in Uganda and other parts of East Africa that traditionally do not practice circumcision have undergone the procedure, prompting the government to begin developing a plan to promote male circumcision as a method of curbing the spread of HIV, AFP/Mail & Guardian reports.

Two separate research teams each have developed techniques for noninvasive prenatal blood tests for Down syndrome that have yet to produce a false negative or a false positive result, the New York Times reports.

Scientists are reporting a key advance toward developing the first effective drug treatment for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a genetic disease that involves motor neuron loss and occurs in 1 out of every 6,000 births. SMA is the leading cause of hereditary infant death in the United States. The study is scheduled for publication online Oct. 8 by ACS Chemical Biology, a monthly journal.

A novel delivery system that could lead to more efficient and more disease-specific vaccines against infectious diseases has been developed by biomedical engineers at The University of Texas at Austin.