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Alcohol / Addiction / Illegal Drugs News
Using 'Optogenetics' To Control Reward-Seeking Behavior Using a combination of genetic engineering and laser technology, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have manipulated brain wiring responsible for reward-seeking behaviors, such as drug addiction.	30 June 2011
Just Two Talks With Teens Can Reduce Marijuana Use For At Least A Year Nearly a third of high school students in the United States report smoking marijuana. Despite the mixed messages about the safety of marijuana, smoking grass is risky behavior for teens, who are, after all, still developing.	30 June 2011
Teen Drug Use At Epidemic Levels; Smoking Is Main Gateway Almost a quarter of all youth that begin smoking, drinking or using drugs of any kind before the age of 18 go on to become severely addicted to some sort of drug in adulthood according to a new study released this week by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA).	30 June 2011

Alzheimer's / Dementia News
Coffee Wards Off Alzheimer's Because Unknown Ingredient Teams Up With Caffeine An unknown ingredient in coffee teams up with caffeine to stimulate blood levels of a critical protein called GCSF, short for granulocyte-colony stimulating factor, that appears to put off the development of Alzheimer's disease.	30 June 2011
Dementia Will Be The New Tax Unless A Charging Revolution Is Achieved - Alzheimer's Society, UK People do not plan for care and risk facing a 'dementia tax' unless the system of funding for care changes dramatically, Alzheimer's Society warns.Publishing the results of Dementia Tax 2011, a major investigation into charging for care for people with dementia and carers, the charity is revealing that just three per cent of people with dementia have long term care insurance.	30 June 2011
How Relevant Is Informal Care In Dementia Disorders? Rising life expectancy is associated with increasing prevalence rates of dementia disorders. In course of the disease the patients' need for care grows steadily, which imposes increasing costs of care.	30 June 2011

Arthritis / Rheumatology News
Zalicus Initiates Phase 2b Clinical Trial Of Synavive In Rheumatoid Arthritis Zalicus Inc. (NASDAQ: ZLCS) a biopharmaceutical company that discovers and develops novel treatments for patients suffering from pain and immuno-inflammatory diseases today announced the initiation of the SYNERGY trial, a Phase 2b clinical trial evaluating Synavive™, a low-dose glucocorticoid with the potential for amplified immuno-inflammatory benefits, in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).	30 June 2011
Women Make More Progress Early On After Knee Replacement Surgery, Men Play Post-Op Catch-Up Although women generally have worse knee function and more severe symptoms before undergoing surgery for knee replacement than men, they recover faster after the operation. Men take longer to recover but, after a year, they catch up with women and there are no differences in surgery outcomes at that time.	30 June 2011

Autism News
Asuragen And Fragile X Collaborators Report Findings Using A Novel Methylation PCR Technology To Characterize The FMR1 Gene Asuragen, Inc. announces results from an evaluation of a breakthrough PCR technology that determines the methylation status of the fragile X gene. The study was published in collaboration with researchers at the University of California Davis M.	30 June 2011

Dentistry News
Gene Combination Identified As Risk Factor In Success Of Dental Implants The health of the surrounding tissue affects the success of a dental implant. Identifying and reducing risk factors is therefore a key step in the implant process. Now a combination of genes has been identified as a possible indicator of greater tissue destruction leading to negative outcomes for implants.	30 June 2011

Flu / Cold / SARS News
Infectious Disease Experts Call For Better Understanding Of How To Protect Older Americans From Influenza Americans 65 years of age and older are at the highest risk of developing severe complications from influenza, but these same individuals receive less protection from annual influenza vaccination than others.	30 June 2011

Health Insurance / Medical Insurance News

One-Third Of New Jersey's Immigrant Children, Nearly Three-Quarters Of Adult Newcomers Lack Health Insurance: Rutgers Study One-third of immigrant children and more than 70 percent of foreign-born, nonelderly adults living in New Jersey five years or less lack health coverage, a Rutgers statewide survey finds.The report, "Health, Coverage and Access to Care of New Jersey Immigrants," by the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy (CSHP), also concludes immigrants face significant access-to-care barriers and their lack of health insurance is a much larger problem than for New Jerseyans born in the United States.

30 June 2011

Heart Disease News
New NICE Quality Standard Published On Chronic Heart Failure NICE has today (30 June) published quality standards for the assessment, diagnosis and clinical management of chronic heart failure1 in adults, adding to the bank of quality standards already completed.	30 June 2011
NICE Draft Guidance Recommends New "Clot-Busting" Drug To Treat Acute Coronary Syndromes In draft guidance published today (30 June) NICE has recommended ticagrelor (Brilique, Astrazeneca) in combination with aspirin as an option to treat adults with acute coronary syndromes.Acute coronary syndromes refer to a group of heart problems ranging from myocardial infarction (heart attacks) to unstable angina, which occur due to narrowed coronary arteries.	30 June 2011
Understanding Interaction Between Hydrogen Sulphide And Nitric Oxide Could Lead To Development Of New Therapies And Interventions For Heart Failure Research carried out by scientists from the Peninsula Medical School at the University of Exeter and the National University of Singapore has analysed the complex 'cross talk' between hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and nitric oxide (NO), both gasses that occur naturally in the body, and found that the interaction may offer potential strategies in the management of heart failure.	30 June 2011
Texas Children's Hospital Is First Pediatric Hospital In The Nation To Implant Artificial Heart Texas Children's Hospital in Houston announced that it is the first pediatric hospital in the United States to implant an artificial heart into the chest of a 17-year-old patient as the only option to save his life.	30 June 2011
Omeros Announces Publication Of Phase 2 Clinical Results For OMS103HP In Arthroscopy Omeros Corporation (NASDAQ: OMER) reported the publication of results from a Phase 2 trial investigating OMS103HP in patients undergoing arthroscopic partial meniscectomy surgery. OMS103HP is Omeros' product candidate being developed for use during arthroscopic procedures and is designed to provide a multimodal approach to preemptively block the inflammatory cascade induced by arthroscopy.	30 June 2011
Micell Technologies Announces Reduced Clinical Trial Sample Size For MiStent® Drug-Eluting Coronary Stent Based On Early Clinical Data Micell Technologies, Inc. announced that it has completed its review of the scheduled four-month follow-up on the first 10 patients from the DESSOLVE I first-in-human trial of the MiStent Drug-Eluting Coronary Stent System ("MiStent DES"), an ultra-thin drug-eluting stent distinguished by a rapid-absorbing drug/polymer coating formulation.	30 June 2011
Shortening Time Between CPR And Shocks Improves Cardiac-Arrest Survival Reducing the intervals between giving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and an electronic defibrillator shock after cardiac arrest significantly improves survival, according to UT Southwestern Medical Center emergency medicine doctors involved in an international study.	30 June 2011

IT / Internet / E-mail News
New Anti-Smoking Text Technology Doubles Quit Chances Study Says Text to stop smoking. Period. A new study has found that smokers in the United Kingdom who receive electronic text messages to their mobile devices, doubles their chances of finally kicking the habit.	30 June 2011
Artificial Sensitive Skin Developed For Robots Our skin is a communicative wonder: The nerves convey temperature, pressure, shear forces and vibrations - from the finest breath of air to touch to pain. At the same time, the skin is the organ by which we set ourselves apart from our environment and distinguish between environment and body.	30 June 2011
3 Programs To Advance Health Research And Development The Life Sciences Discovery Fund (LSDF) has announced awards to three multi-institutional teams to support development of improved therapies and key resources for medical researchers and health-care policymakers.	30 June 2011

Mental Health News
"Disturbed" Jared Loughner Will Be Forced Anti-Psychotics In Prison Jared Lee Loughner will be forced anti-psychotic drugs. U.S. District Judge Larry Burns, at a hearing in San Diego, denied a request by Loughner's lawyer to prevent prison doctors from given him anti-psychotic drugs against his will.	30 June 2011
Saving Veterans From Suicide An estimated 18 American military veterans take their own lives every day - thousands each year - and those numbers are steadily increasing. Even after weathering the stresses of military life and the terrors of combat, these soldiers find themselves overwhelmed by the transition back into civilian life.	30 June 2011
UK Researchers Hail First Approach To Antidepressant Medication For 20 Years Millions of people with severe, treatment-resistant depression could get their lives back by adding an anti-inflammatory drug such as aspirin to their anti-depressant medication, a leading consortium of UK researchers in biological psychiatry, the Psychiatric Research into Inflammation, Immunity and Mood Effects (PRIME), reported at the International Congress of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Brighton.	30 June 2011
NAMI Manual For Police, School CIT To Help Children And Teens; 70 Percent Of Youth In Juvenile Justice System Have Mental Illness The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has published a crisis intervention team (CIT) manual for families, police, schools, mental health professionals and others to build local programs to help youth with mental illness.	30 June 2011
Evaluation Of Mental Health Court By SHSU Team A team of researchers at Sam Houston State University will evaluate a new mental health court in Montgomery County.The College of Criminal Justice received a grant from the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense to evaluate the effectiveness of the new program, which will provide a managing attorney and master's-level social worker for criminal cases involving mentally ill defendants.	30 June 2011

Pharmacy / Pharmacist News

Pharmacy Bodies Join Together To Represent Community Pharmacy At LGA's National Conference Pharmacy bodies have joined together to represent community pharmacy at the Local Government Association's national conference this week. Representatives from Pharmacy Voice, PSNC and the RPS are exhibiting jointly at the event, at which speakers include Prime Minister David Cameron, the Leader of the Opposition and the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.

30 June 2011

Seniors / Aging News
Infectious Disease Experts Call For Better Understanding Of How To Protect Older Americans From Influenza Americans 65 years of age and older are at the highest risk of developing severe complications from influenza, but these same individuals receive less protection from annual influenza vaccination than others.	30 June 2011
The Stroke Association Comments On British Geriatric Society Report, UK Healthcare support to 400,000 older people in care homes needs significant improvement says new BGS inquiry.Today, a new report, Quest for Quality by the British Geriatrics Society (BGS), highlighted many vulnerable older people resident in care homes are frequently denied access to routine NHS healthcare because they live in care homes.	30 June 2011

Sexual Health / STDs News
Reaching Girls Before They Become Sexually Active: An International Model For Promoting Female Health In Africa The onset of puberty is a critical moment for reaching girls with health messages and information, and the stakes are particularly high in countries where the HIV/AIDS epidemic rages and where threats to female reproductive health abound.	30 June 2011
Bristol Young People To Run Sex Education Day For Their Peers, UK On Monday 4th July, a group of young people from across Bristol will run an interactive Sex Education Day for teenagers across the city. The event, which is supported by sexual health organisations Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) and 4YP Bristol (part of NHS Bristol), will look at issues ranging from peer pressure to the media's influence on body image through workshops, quizzes, and drama.	30 June 2011

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