Month: March 2013

NEW YORK (AP) — A new study offers more compelling evidence that life expectancy for some U.S. women is actually falling, a disturbing trend that experts can't explain.

CHENNAI (Reuters) – An Indian patent appeals board upheld on Monday a decision to allow a domestic company to sell a generic version of Bayer AG's cancer drug Nexavar, in a blow for global drugmakers' efforts to hold on to monopolies on high-price medicines. The ruling paves the way for the issue of more so-called compulsory licenses as governments, particularly in emerging markets such as China and Thailand, battle to bring down healthcare costs and provide access to affordable drugs to treat diseases such as cancer, HIV-AIDS and hepatitis. …

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Can crunches create six-pack abdominal muscles? Do weight-lifting women risk bulging biceps? Is stretching always a good idea? Experts say disentangling folklore from fact is not easy in fitness, where misconceptions are as pervasive as push-ups and as stubborn as love handles. Jennifer Burke, a fitness manager at a Crunch gym in West Hollywood, California, said many women still worry that weight training will create big and bulky muscles. …

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The proportion of patients who have blocked arteries show up during a stress test has dropped "enormously" over the past two decades, according to a new study. However, researchers disagreed about why that might be the case – whether the tests are getting worse, people's heart problems are becoming less severe, or simply too many healthy people are being referred for testing they don't need. On a stress test, doctors monitor a person's heart and blood vessels during exercise or after administering a combination of drugs that similarly stress the heart. …

(Please note explicit language in paragraph 41.) DAKOTA DUNES, South Dakota (Reuters) – A year ago, Beef Products Inc. had four state-of-the art plants, more than 1,300 employees and was expanding aggressively. The meat company was the leading maker of "lean finely textured beef," a low-fat product made from chunks of beef, including trimmings, and exposed to tiny bursts of ammonium hydroxide to kill E. coli and other dangerous contaminants. Few Americans realized the product was a mainstay of fast-food burgers, school lunch tacos and homemade meatloaf. …

In a landmark announcement, researchers said they’d cured the first child with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The 26-month-old toddler was born to a mother also infected with the virus, and was started on combination antiretroviral treatment (ART) when she was just 30 hours old. A press release issued by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, home to Deborah Persaud, Ph.D., a virologist and the study’s lead author, said the news “may help pave the way to eliminating HIV infection in children.”

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) – Florida Governor Rick Scott's plan to expand Medicaid coverage to cover about 1 million more poor people suffered a setback on Monday when the proposal failed to make it out of a key state legislative committee hearing. On the eve of convening of the 2013 session, the House Select Committee on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act rejected the expansion. A Senate counterpart committee postponed consideration of the issue, which is sure to be one of the biggest controversies of the session. …

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Set on a gritty corner of Oakland's International Boulevard, the nonprofit Street Level Health Project offers free checkups to patients who speak a total of 22 languages, from recent Mongolian immigrants seeking a doctor to Burmese refugees in need of a basic dental exam.