Month: February 2014

(Reuters) – A new strain of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus, or PEDv, has been identified in samples taken from Illinois and Missouri, a top veterinarian at Iowa State University said on Monday. “We found that there is a variant out there that appears to be quite different than the original,” Rodger Main, the head veterinarian of Iowa State University’s veterinary diagnostic lab, told Reuters on Monday. PEDv, a highly contagious and potentially fatal pig virus, causes diarrhea, vomiting and severe dehydration.

By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks slumped on Monday, with the S&P 500 suffering its worst drop since June, after weaker-than-expected data on the factory sector in the world's largest economy provided investors with the latest reason to move away from riskier assets. "Nothing is preserved today – once the market started selling off, that was that," said Keith Bliss, senior vice-president at Cuttone & Co in New York.

By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Most U.S. adults are eating too much sugar and that’s linked to an increased risk of dying from heart disease, according to a new government study. What’s more, participants who got more than the recommended amount of calories from added sugar were more likely to die of heart disease, compared to those who typically got less added sugar. “We know cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S.,” Quanhe Yang told Reuters Health. “There are a lot of risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

The Obama administration on Monday said it will soon begin hearings to resolve problems for people who enrolled in health insurance through the Obamacare website HealthCare.gov, only to encounter errors including unnecessarily high costs. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the lead agency responsible for implementing the healthcare reform law, issued a statement saying it was reaching out to consumers with error-ridden enrollments to help them complete applications for coverage without a formal appeal. The statement came in response to a Washington Post report that said about 22,000 Americans have appealed to CMS for help fixing enrollment mistakes that have led to excessive charges, enrolled them in the wrong health plan, or denied them coverage altogether. The appeals have hit a technological dead end, the newspaper reported, because the administration has yet to complete the technology infrastructure necessary to manage the appeals process.

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