"Health News - Medicine, Diet and Fitness"

When it comes to low back pain, physicians generally advise exhausting nonsurgical options before resorting to surgery. But a new study shows that for degenerative spondylolisthesis with spinal stenosis, surgery provides significantly better results than nonsurgical alternatives.

The study, published in the May 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, is the second in a series reporting findings of the Spine Patients Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT), a five-year, multicenter study supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), a part of the National Institutes of Health.

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Senate to follow

The House today passed significant reforms to the Food and Drug Administration’s drug safety review system. Part of a comprehensive FDA bill, the bill was a compromise between Senate and House legislation that passed overwhelmingly earlier this year. The bill, which includes strong consumer protections, will be voted on in the Senate tomorrow.

Statement by CALPIRG’s Federal Health Care Advocate Paul Brown:

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Belgian firm Solvay has released its results for 2005 with pharmaceutical sales up 30 per cent to 2.27 billion euros. The company as a whole had profits of 816 million euros for the year.

In the pharmaceutical sector sales were helped in Europe by the purchase of the French firm Fournier Pharma. A company statement said: “The performance of fenofibrate, Fournier Pharma’s ‘blockbuster’, was remarkable and above our expectations.” Sales in cardiometabolics doubled with the integration of fenofibrates from Fournier Pharma.
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New Study Analyzes FDA Actions Against Manufacturers For Deceptive Marketing Of Vioxx, Paxil, 150 Other Drugs

SAN FRANCISCO—Over the last five years, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent prescription drug companies 170 enforcement letters criticizing false or misleading advertising that omitted or minimized risks, promoted unproven uses, and made other deceptive claims to doctors and consumers about 150 different drugs including Vioxx, Paxil, Oxycontin and Accutane, according to a new report released today by the CALPIRG Education Fund.

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Baltimore – In a survey of more than one thousand infertility patients with frozen embryos, 60 percent of patients report that they are likely to donate their embryos to stem cell research, a level of donation that could result in roughly 2000 to 3000 new embryonic stem cell lines. Researchers from Duke University and Johns Hopkins University report the startling findings in the July 6, 2007 issue of Science.

In August of 2001, less than two dozen embryonic stem cell lines were made eligible for federal research funding. Most scientists now agree that the eligible lines have proven inadequate in number and unsafe for transnational research. Until recently, the best estimate of human embryos currently in storage that might be available for additional stem cell research was three percent. The 2003 study showed that donations would yield, at best, less than 300 new lines.

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Fast tracking new drugs could have a negative effect on patients in the longer term, a senior doctor in Britain has claimed. An article published in the British Medical Journal by consultant neurologist Abhijit Chaudhuri discusses the issues surrounding the fast tracking of new drugs.

The doctor, from the Essex centre for neurological sciences in Romford, considers fast tracking new drugs for commercial licensing. He reflects on the recent approval granted to multiple sclerosis treatment natalizumab and its subsequent withdrawal over health fears. Clinical trials of natalizumab indicated that the drug was highly effective in preventing body tissue from getting inflamed and could be used in the treatment of both multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease.
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(Ivanhoe Newswire) – Different snake families may share more ingredients in their venom than researchers once thought.

A new study unexpectedly finds a toxin from a different snake family in the rare Desert Massasauga Rattlesnake, as well as a new type of toxin.

Researchers from Singapore and the University of Northern Colorado created a genetic library of the Massasauga snake’s venom gland and created 576 tagged sequences. The venom showed several known sequences, but it also had three-finger toxins – a family of poisons thought to only be in the Elapidae snake family.

When we shop at the market or go to a restaurant our first thought is to get food we like to eat and know. There are several foods out there that do not often make it into the shopping cart.

We always think that we don’t want that or don’t have time to fix that, but the reality is it doesn’t take any more time to prepare a well balanced and nutritious meal than going to the drive thru and getting something unhealthy when you calculate the time it takes to get through a line of ten cars or ten people in the restaurant.

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Washington — Reducing the amount of salt in America’s diet would go a long way toward lowering our collective blood pressure, according to AMA testimony before a Nov. 29 hearing of the Food and Drug Administration.

The Association joined with others in asking the agency to set strict limits on the levels of salt in processed foods and restaurant meals and to remove salt from the list of foods that generally are considered to be safe.

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Rheumatoid arthritis: treatment, symptoms, cause, prevention, long-term outlook, complications, statistics, risks … proper treatment, many people newly …

MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Arthritis
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