RESEARCHERS CALL FOR FURTHER STUDIES AFTER IDENTIFYING A POSSIBLE LINK BETWEEN ASPARTAME AND BRAIN TUMORS
In the November 1996 issue of the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology, John Olney, M.D. and his colleagues Nuri Farber, M.D., Edward Spitznagel, Ph.D. and Lee Robins, Ph.D, all from Washington University in St. Louis, report that brain tumor rates have risen in the United States over the past 17 years in two distinct phases.
"The first phase occurred in the mid l970's and might be explained primarily by improved diagnostic methods. The second phase occurred abruptly in the mid l980's, resulting in a 10 per cent higher rate of brain tumors which has persisted to the present. This increase also was associated with a shift from a lower to a higher grade of malignancy."
New Orleans - While the Federal Emergency Management Agency rushes to move thousands of Gulf Coast storm victims out of government-issued trailers, scientists are tearing the units apart to learn why many have exposed occupants to dangerous levels of formaldehyde fumes.
Los Angeles - The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Sunday ordered the recall of 143 million pounds of frozen beef from a California slaughterhouse, the subject of an animal-abuse investigation, that provided meat to school lunch programs.
Diabetes is known to impair the cognitive health of people, but now scientists have identified one potential mechanism underlying these learning and memory problems. A new National Institutes of Health (NIH) study in diabetic rodents finds that increased levels of a stress hormone produced by the adrenal gland disrupt the healthy functioning of the hippocampus, the region of the brain responsible for learning and short-term memory. Moreover, when levels of the adrenal glucocorticoid hormone corticosterone (also known as cortisol in humans) are returned to normal, the hippocampus recovers its ability to build new cells and regains the "plasticity" needed to compensate for injury and disease and adjust to change.
Researchers have identified a key reason why people make mistakes when they try to predict what they will like. When predicting how much we will enjoy a future experience, people tend to compare it to its alternatives - that is, to the experiences they had before, might have later, or could have been having now. But when people actually have the experience, they tend not to think about these alternatives and their experience is relatively unaffected by them.
In new research funded by the National Science Foundation and presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, shares the findings in a presentation titled, "Why People Misimagine the Future: The Problem of Attentional Collapse." The research was done with Carey Morewedge of Carnegie Mellon University, Karim Kassam of Harvard, Kristian Myrseth of the University of Chicago, and Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia.
Before the handshake that may have saved his life, Mark Gurrieri thought his hands were getting bigger because of too much DIY and working in his restaurant kitchen. But a chance meeting with a doctor revealed the growth was related to a rare disease which could have cost him his sight.
Alarm bells rang for GP Chris Britt when he spotted Gurrieri's fleshy hand and large features. Gurrieri, 36, had acromegaly, a condition caused by excessive growth hormone from the pituitary gland, usually prompted by a tumour, that affects three in a million people.
Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent
Telegraph.co.ukSun, 17 Feb 2008 00:48 UTC
Britons are three times more likely than the French to die from heart disease, according to a new European league table.
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©European Society of Cardiology
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Age-standardized mortality from ischaemic heart disease in European regions (men; age group 45 - 74 years; year 2000)
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At a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hearing on the safety of psychotropic drugs on Feb 2 2005, dozens of despondent parents testified that their children had committed suicide or other violent acts after being prescribed the same drugs that are being marketed in the Bush-backed pharmaceutical industry schemes aimed at recruiting the nation's 52 million school children as customers.
In July 2003, the Bush appointed New Freedoms Commission on Mental Health (NFC) recommended screening all children for mental illness and designated TeenScreen as a model program to ensure that every student receives a mental health check-up before finishing high school.
The NFC also has a preferred drug program in place, modeled after the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), that lists what drugs are to be used on children found to be mentally ill.
The list contains every drug that people complained about at the FDA hearing, including Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Wellbutron, Zyban, Remeron, Serzone, Effexor, Buspar, Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroqual, Geodone, Depakote, Adderall, and Prozac.
Don Schell was taking a Prozac-type antidepressant when he killed his wife, daughter and granddaughter, then turned the gun on himself. His son-in-law sued the drugs company - and won £5m. Sarah Boseley meets him.
A teenage girl who recently discovered she has four kidneys is hoping to be able to donate two of them to patients desperately in need of a transplant.
Laura Moon, 18, from Whinmoor, Leeds, is one of a tiny number of people to have four of the organs growing naturally. She only became aware of her unusual anatomy six months ago after undergoing an ultrasound scan to investigate stomach pains following a car crash.