Month: March 2014

Jenna Hinman is in medically induced coma; twin girls are doing well.

PARIS (AP) — Paris imposed drastic measures Monday to combat its worst air pollution in years, banning around half of the city's cars and trucks from its streets for a day in an attempt to reduce the toxic smog that's shrouded the City of Light for more than a week.

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) – British archaeologists have found what they say is the world’s oldest complete example of a human being with metastatic cancer and hope it will offer new clues about the now common and often fatal disease. Researchers from Durham University and the British Museum discovered the evidence of tumors that had developed and spread throughout the body in a 3,000-year-old skeleton found in a tomb in modern Sudan in 2013. Analyzing the skeleton using radiography and a scanning electron microscope, they managed to get clear imaging of lesions on the bones which showed the cancer had spread to cause tumors on the collar bones, shoulder blades, upper arms, vertebrae, ribs, pelvis and thigh bones. “Insights gained from archaeological human remains like these can really help us to understand the evolution and history of modern diseases,” said Michaela Binder, a Durham PhD student who led the research and excavated and examined the skeleton.

The cone snail may hold the secret to safe and reliable management.

Amgen Inc said its experimental new type of cholesterol-fighting drug met the primary goal of a late-stage trial by slashing “bad” LDL cholesterol levels in patients with a genetic tendency towards high levels of the artery-clogging fat. Amgen said on Monday patients given its injectable drug evolocumab once a month, on top of standard daily statin treatments, showed “clinically meaningful” improvement compared with taking statins alone after 12 weeks of treatment. The Phase 3 study, called TESLA, involved 49 adult and adolescent patients with a rare condition called homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia. The condition, seen in about one in a million individuals, can cause a four-fold increase in levels of LDL cholesterol, greatly raising the risk of heart disease.