Month: January 2014

BAYONNE, N.J. (AP) — Passengers aboard a cruise ship on which hundreds fell ill recalled days of misery holed up in their rooms as it returned to its home port Wednesday from a Caribbean trip cut short by what is suspected to be among the largest such norovirus outbreaks in the last 20 years.

New Jersey researchers have linked a byproduct of the pesticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) to an elevated risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. They located the byproduct in blood samples from subjects in a small study. Lead author Jason R. Richardson, of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, and his team published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association Neurology. The Alzheimer’s Association reports that more than 5 million people in the United States have Alzheimer’s disease.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Antioxidant vitamins are widely assumed to be cancer fighters even though research in smokers has found high doses may actually raise their risk of tumors. Now a new study may help explain the paradox.

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Mariam Karouny GENEVA (Reuters) – International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said on Wednesday that he does not expect to achieve anything substantive in the first round of Syria talks ending on Friday, but hoped for a more productive second round starting about a week later. "We talked about the TGB (Transitional Governing Body), but of course it is a very, very preliminary discussion and more generally of what each side expects," Brahimi told reporters. Opposition and government sides said they agreed to use the "Geneva communiqué", a document endorsed by world powers at a conference in June 2012, and which sets out the stages needed to end the fighting and agree on a political transition. "We have agreed that Geneva 1 is the basis of the talks," opposition spokesman Louay al-Safi told reporters.

By Gene Emery NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children who are overweight when they start school are far more likely to be obese by the time they become teenagers, according to a new study of nearly 8,000 children. Overweight five-year-olds were four times more likely to be obese by age 14 than children who started kindergarten at a healthy weight. “Half of childhood obesity occurred among children who had become overweight during the preschool years,” researchers led by Solveig Cunningham of Emory University in Atlanta wrote. “If we’re just focused on improving weight when kids are adolescents, it may not have as much of an impact as focusing on the preschool-age years,” Cunningham told Reuters Health.

By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are more likely to be in a serious traffic accident, but medication may counteract that risk for some, according to a new study from Sweden. Researchers found that people with ADHD are about 50 percent more likely to be in serious traffic accidents, compared to people without the condition. But taking medication to control some of the symptoms may help reduce that increased risk – at least among men, according to the study’s lead author. “It has been known for a while that ADHD is associated with traffic accidents and traffic violations,” Zheng Chang said.

After three years of seeing major drugs like Zyprexa for schizophrenia lose patent protection and wipe away billions of dollars in revenue, Eli Lilly and Co Chief Executive Officer John Lechleiter wants to change the game plan. "It's time to go back on offense," Lechleiter said in a recent interview. New treatments for diabetes and cancer now awaiting approval and increased sales of animal-health products and drugs in China and Japan are some of the aggressive moves he has in mind. "We're on the cusp of launching products in cancer and diabetes, two therapeutic areas where we're well established and where we have built out the infrastructure we need," Lechleiter said.