Month: January 2013

(Adds NFL response, paragraphs 11-12) BOSTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) – The union that represents U.S. professional football players has given Harvard University a $100 million grant for a study of the range of health problems, from brain damage to heart conditions, that affect current and former players. Researchers with Harvard Medical School plan to spend a decade studying hundreds of former players who are members of the National Football League Players Association, university officials said on Tuesday. …

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PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Gunmen riding on a motorcycle shot and killed a police officer protecting polio workers during a U.N.-backed vaccination campaign in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, the police said.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which is an advisory panel of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has issued its vaccination recommendations for 2013. The recommendations, formally known as the Adult Vaccination Schedule, were published online Monday morning in the Annals of Internal Medicine ahead of the journal’s next full issue.

A team of surgeons at John Hopkins Hospital successfully performed the first bilateral arm transplant last month on Iraqi war veteran Brendan Marrocco.

A team of surgeons at John Hopkins Hospital successfully performed the first bilateral arm transplant last month on Iraqi war veteran Brendan Marrocco.

NEW YORK (AP) — A big government study has fingered leafy greens like lettuce and spinach as the leading source of food poisoning, a perhaps uncomfortable conclusion for health officials who want us to eat our vegetables.

Nearly 700,000 Oklahoma residents are currently without insurance, according to the Oklahoma Policy Institute . Where will they be when the mandated expansion of Medicaid in 2014 by the Affordable Care Act goes into place throughout most of the nation — but not in Oklahoma due to Republican Gov. …

LONDON (AP) — A genetic variant commonly found in Chinese people may help explain why some got seriously ill with swine flu, a discovery scientists say could help pinpoint why flu viruses hit some populations particularly hard and change how they are treated.

LONDON (Reuters) – British and Chinese scientists have found a genetic variant which explains why Chinese populations may be more vulnerable to the H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu. The discovery of the variant could help doctors find those people at high risk of severe flu and prioritize them for treatment, researchers said. It may also help explain why new strains of flu virus often emerge first in Asia, where the variant known as rs12252-C is more common in the population than elsewhere, they said. …

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Women who bleed heavily after giving birth aren’t at any higher risk of most complications during their next pregnancy, according to a new UK study. Postpartum hemorrhage – when a woman loses at least half a quart of blood – typically occurs when the muscles in her uterine wall don’t contract correctly after childbirth. Although that much bleeding can be scary, researchers said the new findings are “reassuring” for women hoping to have another child after a first-time hemorrhage. “Intuitively, that would have been what I would expect also,” said Dr. …

You’ve heard people of various age groups laughingly refer to an occasional memory lapse as “having a senior moment.” The humor of such a situation decreases proportionately with either increase in age or increase in such lapses — or both. As scientists endeavor to discover the reason for poorer memory as we age, a small study concluded that poor sleep is one such cause.