C M G Buttery

Last weekend, the Federal Government committed $6.5 million over the next five years for the Diabetes Vaccine Development Centre (DVDC) to continue its work. “One of the projects DVDC supports, based at Garvan, involves a therapy that targets an arm of the immune system. With promising results in mice, researchers may have identified a way [...]

The CBS Evening News (7/25, story) reported, “Another crisis may be brewing at the other end of the age spectrum as baby boomers age by the millions, and the number of doctors trying to care for them shrinks.” Notably, “there are just over 7,000 certified geriatricians in the United States. It’s estimated” that 16,000 are [...]

In today’s ProMED-mail is a report from the INSTITUT DE VEILLE SANITAIRE reporting on 500 cases of influenza A(H5N1) over 6+years.  This is hardly and epidemic with less than one case per 10,000,000 per year!  It is high time that the WHO and its partners revise the criteria for an epidemic and that politicians stopped [...]

From Science Daily: A clinical trial in Cambodia has found it possible to prolong the survival of untreated HIV-infected adults with very weak immune systems and newly diagnosed tuberculosis (TB) by starting anti-HIV therapy two weeks after beginning TB treatment, rather than waiting eight weeks, as has been standard for more detail see The CAMELIA [...]

Quick Guide to Healthy Living

During trials of preventive HIV vaccines, trial participants may develop HIV-related antibody responses that could lead to a positive HIV test by routine antibody detection methods (called vaccine-induced seropositivity/reactivity [VISP]), and the potential for false-positive test results and an incorrect HIV diagnosis, according to a study in the July 21 issue of JAMA, a theme [...]

In today’s New England Journal there is a good perspective on the current tobacco problems, noting that despite all of the escalating costs of medical care, the problems of childhood obesity, and heart disease, that smoking remains the most common cause of preventable death and disability in the United States. The prevalence of smoking in [...]

Under the new health care overhaul law, insurers will be required to pay fully for services that get an “A” or “B” recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a volunteer group made up of primary care and public health experts. “It’s a wide-open door for lobbying,” says Robert Laszewski, a health insurance industry [...]

Strict laws on the criminalization of drug use and drug users are fueling the spread of HIV and other serious harms associated with the criminal market and should be reviewed, say experts in a series of articles published in BMJ online. Comment: while this study focused on drugs in Russia there is increasing data and [...]

New research evaluating the effectiveness of a broad selection of popular slimming supplements sold in pharmacies and health food shops has found no evidence that any of them facilitate weight loss. Two studies presented at the International Congress on Obesity in Stockholm, Sweden, have found they were no more effective than the fake supplements they [...]