Month: March 2013

By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The symptoms people come to the emergency room with may not predict the actual diagnosis they're given when they're released from the hospital, according to a new study. Researchers found about 6 percent of 35,000 patients who visited ERs in 2009 did not need immediate care, but that could not be predicted when they first got to the emergency department. "Until we evaluate them in the emergency department, we don't know if their condition requires emergency treatment or not," said Dr. …

By Caroline Humer and Jessica Wohl (Reuters) – Walgreen Co and partner Alliance Boots said on Tuesday they signed a 10-year deal with AmerisourceBergen that will include daily drug distribution, enabling Walgreen to increase its sales of pricey specialty drugs. Walgreen, the nation's largest drugstore, distributes more than 80 percent of its own drugs, but over time most if not all of that distribution will be handled by AmerisourceBergen. …

By Kim Palmer CHARDON, Ohio (Reuters) – An Ohio teenager wearing a T-shirt with "killer" scrawled on it gave a profane statement and made an obscene gesture in court as he was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Tuesday for killing three students in a school shooting rampage last year. T.J. Lane, 18, also wounded three students in the attack in a high school cafeteria in Chardon, a small town east of Cleveland, leaving one paralyzed from the waist down. …

By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Elderly nursing home residents are often prescribed courses of antibiotics that last 10 days or more, a new Canadian study shows, which may needlessly raise the risk of drug resistance and secondary infections. A week or less of antibiotic use effectively kills most common infections, including pneumonia, researchers said. “If they’re receiving antibiotic treatment beyond cure, they’re being exposed to those harms without additional benefit,” said Dr. Nick Daneman, who worked on the new study at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto. …

By David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two Republican state senators from Arkansas may soon accomplish what seasoned Washington politicians couldn't: make the main provisions of President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul palatable to hard-core conservatives. Jonathan Dismang and David Sanders, with two colleagues from the state House, believe they have come up with an alternative to the Medicaid expansion, as laid out in the law. Their idea is to use privatization to avoid the proliferation of government bureaucracy that conservatives vehemently oppose. …

The law prohibits cities and counties from enacting rules to limit soda size or salt content in food, or to ban toys from kids’ fast-food meals.

(Reuters) – The Food and Drug Administration has named Dr. Kathleen Uhl acting director of its Office of Generic Drugs as it initiates a nationwide search for a full-time replacement for Dr. Gregory Geba, who resigned last week. The announcement was made on Tuesday in a note to staff from Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Dr. Uhl most recently served as Geba's senior adviser. (Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Got milk? It turns out that low-fat versions may not be the answer to helping kids maintain a healthy weight. Long a staple of childhood nutrition, milk is a good source of calcium and vitamin D, which can help to build bone, and experts believed that lower-fat versions could help children to avoid the extra calories that came with the fat in whole milk.