Doctors overriding end of life counselling see benefit in current controversy

[Jessica Marcy] The paragraphs, buried deep in the 1000-page House health reform bill, appear innocuous, but they have ignited a firestorm in the United States among critics predicting government-sponsored euthanasia. Read more >>

Scientists discover how new drug kills roundworms

A PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases study found how a new drug developed by scientists in China effectively kills roundworms - "a parasite that lurks in the intestines and which affects nearly two billion people in tropical countries," Reuters reports. "Roundworms are particularly harmful to children and pregnant women," Reuters writes. Read more >>

New scientific 'edugame' develops and accelerates learning abilities for students, adults, seniors

Stephane Bergeron, M.D., CEO of Brain Center America (BCA), today announced the launch of NeuroActive LEARNING, a new scientific edugame that develops and accelerates learning abilities, for anyone 11 years of age and older, including high-school and college students, adults and seniors. The doctor-developed computer program hit the market yesterday, August 11. Read more >>

New target for Alzheimer's disease

For close to a decade, pharmaceutical researchers have been in hot pursuit of compounds to activate a key nicotine receptor that plays a role in cognitive processes. Triggering it, they hope, might prevent or even reverse the devastation wrought by Alzheimer's disease. Read more >>

Pink heart card designed for breast cancer

October is breast cancer awareness month and the Hout Bay, Cape Town-based company, Original T-Bag Designs, has designed a “pink heart” card in support of the cause. Read more >>

Over R1m grant for loveLife

loveLife, Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst (DED) and Barloworld have collaborated to streamline loveLife's youth development programme. The initiative, known as Connected!, will receive a grant of R1 million over three years from Barloworld, with the contribution for the first year matched by DED, it was announced yesterday, Thursday, 13 August 2009. Read more >>

Assisted ventilation in cardiac arrest rescue may lower chances of survival

Arizona researchers have added another piece to the mounting body of evidence that suggests during resuscitation efforts to treat patients in cardiac arrest, "passive ventilation" significantly increases survival rates, compared to the widely practiced "assisted ventilation." Read more >>

Children, adolescents and headache

Family quarrels and a lack of free time can promote headaches in children. This is what Jennifer Gassmann and her co-authors concluded in their study on risk factors, which appears in the current issue of the Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2009; 106[31-32]: 509-16). Read more >>

Only the best looking men tempt women into casual sex

Men are far more interested in casual sex than women. While men need to be exceptionally attractive to tempt women to consider casual sex, men are far less choosy. These findings by Dr Achim Schützwohl, from the Department of Psychology at Brunel University in the UK, and his team are published online in Springer's journal Human Nature. Read more >>

High caffeine consumption, more headaches?

People who consume high amounts of caffeine each day are more likely to suffer occasional headaches than those with low caffeine consumption, a team of researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) reports in a study recently published in the Journal of Headache Pain. Read more >>

Motoring and medication might not mix

The following report relates to the United States, where it has been found that many senior drivers unaware of potential impact on driving performance associated with taking medications. The same could well apply here in South Africa. Read more >>

Past flu pandemics help predict the future course of 2009 H1N1 virus

A commonly held belief that severe influenza pandemics are preceded by a milder wave of illness arose because some accounts of the devastating flu pandemic of 1918-19 suggested that it may have followed such a pattern. Read more >>

MRI boosts chances of more extensive surgery over conservative approaches in breast cancer diagnosis

A new review says using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) before surgery to assess the extent of early breast cancer has not been shown to improve surgical planning, reduce follow-up surgery, or reduce the risk of local recurrences. Read more >>

Gay people more likely to have mental health or substance use disorders

Members of ‘sexual minorities' are around twice as likely as heterosexuals to seek help for mental health issues or substance abuse treatment. A model of treatment-seeking behaviour, described in the open access journal BMC Psychiatry supports the idea that lesbian, gay and bisexual people may have specific treatment needs. Read more >>

Obesity leads to worse prostate cancer in both black and whites equally

A new look at a large database of prostate cancer patients shows that obesity plays no favourites when it comes to increasing the risk of recurrence after surgery: Being way overweight is equally bad for blacks and whites, say researchers at Duke University Medical Centre. Read more >>

Wine may offer radio-protective effect for breast cancer patients

Drinking wine while undergoing radiation treatment for breast carcinoma may reduce the incidence of skin toxicity in breast cancer patients, according to a study in the August issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology *Biology* Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). Read more >>