Health Alert

Researchers have identified a gene in mosquitoes that helps the insects to fight off infection by the Plasmodium parasite, which causes malaria in humans.

Anopheles mosquitoes transmit the malaria parasite to nearly 550 million people worldwide each year with these cases resulting in more than 2 million deaths annually.

The protective gene was identified in a study conducted by a team of investigators from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Malaria Research Institute, the Imperial College of London and the University of Texas Medical Branch. It will be published in the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of October 24.

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Saying the stalemate about a 13-year-old girl's cancer treatment could not continue, a judge gave state lawyers the weekend to come up with reasons why he should not return the girl to her parents.
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The parents of Katie Wernecke have battled with Child Protective Services since June, when doctors said the family's refusal of treatment was killing Katie and a judge ordered her into foster care.

State District Judge Jack Hunter said Friday that Katie's chances of survival were dwindling every hour because her treatment at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston has apparently been unsuccessful. Her oncologist said in a previous hearing that her prognosis for recovery had fallen from 80 percent to 20 to 25 percent.

"I don't care who's at fault," Hunter said. "If she has limited time, she may need to spend quality time with her family."

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A potential cure for bowel cancer could soon be made available on the NHS in England and Wales.

Draft guidance by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has recommended a combination treatment, which includes the drug Eloxatin, should be available for NHS patients.

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Eating vegetables from the cabbage family can reduce the risk of lung cancer for people with a certain genetic make-up, scientists say.

Such cruciferous vegetables had already been linked to reduced rates of lung cancer, but it had not been clear why.

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A recent US study had suggested having an abortion increased significantly a woman's chance of suffering depression.

But the authors of a British Medical Journal work looking at 1,247 women say pre-existing mental health might be a better predictor of depression risk. Anti-abortion lobbyists maintain abortions are psychologically damaging.

Source.

Early detection through screening mammography and improved adjuvant treatment have contributed almost equally to the substantial decrease in breast cancer death rates over the past 10 to 15 years, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

There has been a controversy among experts over what factor or factors to credit for improved breast cancer survival: screening mammography, better treatment or a combination of the two.

Each of the seven teams designed its own statistical model to determine the contribution of each method. These independent models used the same sources of data -- some of which had not been mined before -- but their approaches and assumptions differed.

Source.

Ukraine has no recorded bird flu cases but has tightened its border controls as the deadly virus spreads in neighbouring Russia and Romania, senior officials said on Wednesday.

"Over the last month or month and a half we have implemented a number of measures to prevent the spread of bird flu to Ukraine," Yuri Melnik, deputy prime minister, told a news conference.

Via Reuters.

Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holding, the maker of Tamiflu said Thursday it had temporarily suspended shipments of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu in the United States to ensure that enough treatments will be available for the regular influenza season.
 
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