Month: March 2013

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Arkansas Senate voted Tuesday to override Gov. Mike Beebe's veto of legislation that would ban most abortions from the 12th week of pregnancy onward and give the state the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.

CHICAGO (AP) — Want to know your chances of dying in the next 10 years? Here are some bad signs: getting winded walking several blocks, smoking, and having trouble pushing a chair across the room.

ABC News’ Paula Faris reports: After last week’s “Real Money” piece on saving thousands on prescription drugs, many viewers inquired about how easy it was to use the money-saving apps suggested by expert Michelle Katz. So, Katz, a health care advocate, joined up with the…

CDC officials report increase in dangerous superbugs in hospitals; urge steps to stop spread

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Lab results sent directly to doctors’ computer screens sometimes get lost in a flood of other alerts, according to a new study. Researchers, who surveyed over 2,500 doctors at U.S. veterans hospitals, found that doctors received several dozen electronic alerts every day, and nearly a third said they’ve missed lab results and that ended up delaying their patients’ care. “You can easily miss one or two, because the signal gets buried,” said Dr. Hardeep Singh, the study’s lead author from the Houston VA Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence. …

(Reuters) – Par Pharmaceutical Cos, a generic drugmaker, has pleaded guilty to improperly marketing a medication intended to address appetite loss in AIDS patients, and agreed to pay $45 million to resolve a federal criminal probe and related civil litigation. The company pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for misbranding the drug Megace ES for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, at a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Madeline Cox Arleo in Newark, New Jersey. Private equity firm TPG Capital LP bought Par for $1.9 billion in September. …

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People with HIV are almost 50 percent more likely to have a heart attack than those who aren't infected with the virus – even after taking into account their other health risks, according to a new study. Researchers aren't sure what explains the higher heart attack rate in HIV-positive people, but they speculate it's a combination of the effects of HIV itself and the antiretroviral drugs used to treat it. "It's a complicated picture," said Dr. Matthew Freiberg, who led the new study at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania. …

NEW YORK (Reuters) – “Nightmare bacteria” that have become increasingly resistant to even the strongest antibiotics infected patients in 3.9 percent of all U.S. hospitals in the first half of 2012, including 17.8 percent of specialty hospitals, public health officials said on Tuesday. “Our strongest antibiotics don’t work and patients are left with potentially untreatable infections,” Dr Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement. He said doctors, hospitals and public health officials must work together to “stop these infections from spreading. …