Month: August 2014

By Rich McKay ATLANTA (Reuters) – The second American aid worker who contracted the Ebola virus in West Africa is expected to arrive in Atlanta on Tuesday in serious condition, while a New York hospital is testing a man with symptoms of the deadly disease. Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan said on Monday it was testing a man who traveled to a West African nation where Ebola has been reported. "Odds are it is not Ebola," said Dr. Jeremy Boal, the hospital's chief medical officer. The New York patient added to concerns about the often-fatal disease after two American healthcare workers contracted the virus in West Africa where they had traveled to help fight the disease that has killed nearly 900 people since February.

Hopes of finding a treatment for the deadly Ebola virus shifted on Monday to a small California-based biotech company whose experimental drug has been used to treat two American missionary workers. The drug, developed by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc, was used to treat two aid workers, one from the Samaritan’s Purse group and the other from Christian mission group SIM USA, who were exposed to the disease in Liberia, according to a U.S. government health official. The Samaritan Purse aid worker, Dr Kent Brantly, returned to the United States on Saturday for medical care, and his colleague Nancy Writebol of SIM USA is due to fly back via medical aircraft on Tuesday. Samaritan’s Purse said both the aid workers received the experimental treatment while in Liberia.

Scientists said on Monday they had statistical evidence to back a novel theory that infection by the AIDS virus may reduce the risk of multiple sclerosis (MS). Patients in England who were infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) were mathematically far less likely to develop MS than the general population they found. MS is a progressive disease of the brain and central nervous system in which the immune system goes haywire, attacking a fatty insulative sheath around nerve fibres. In 2011, doctors reported on the case of a 26-year-old Australian man who was diagnosed with MS several months after being confirmed as having HIV.

One small corner of the wider culture war over public health and sweeteners, this fight isn't about how much sugar should be in your food, but how much you should know about it. U.S. food regulators say the public needs to know how much sugar manufacturers add to their products, beyond the sweetener that naturally occurs in the raw ingredients. Companies such as Campbell Soup Company oppose the addition. While the company says it supports better food labels, it warns that making a distinction in the source of sugar risks dangerous confusion.

Two American aid workers infected with Ebola are getting an experimental drug so novel it has never been tested for safety in humans and was only identified as a potential treatment earlier this year, thanks to a longstanding research program by the U.S. government and the military.

Patient who’d traveled to West Africa went to ER with possible Ebola symptoms.

By Verna Gates BIRMINGHAM Ala. (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Monday ruled unconstitutional an Alabama law that threatened to close three of the state’s five abortion clinics, while a trial opened in Texas with an abortion rights group trying to overturn restrictions imposed in that state. A number of abortion clinics have closed in recent months due to laws passed in 11 U.S. states requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled Alabama’s law imposed an undue burden on a woman’s ability to choose to have an abortion by making it unnecessarily difficult to obtain the procedure. “The evidence compellingly demonstrates that the requirement would have the striking result of closing three of Alabama’s five abortion clinics,” the judge wrote.