LONDON (AFP) — Police will Monday examine the house of a London drum-maker who died after inhaling anthrax spores while handling imported animal skins, the hospital treating him said.
Fernando Gomez, 35, from Hackney in east London, had been in intensive care for several days but his condition deteriorated overnight and he died around lunchtime, the Homerton University Hospital said.
Health Protection Agency (HPA) staff have sealed off Read the rest of this entry »

Dec 01, 2008 (Datamonitor via COMTEX) –
— AstraZeneca has announced that MedImmune, its wholly owned biologics business, has received a complete response letter from the FDA asking for additional information on motavizumab.
The complete response letter is in connection with the biologics license application for motavizumab for the prevention of serious respiratory syncytial virus disease, which was submitted in January 2008. Motavizumab is an Read the rest of this entry »

22nd child abandoned at Neb. hospital under law
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A 15-year-old girl was abandoned by her father Tuesday night at an Omaha hospital, bringing to 22 the number of children left under the state’s unique safe-haven law since it took effect in July.
The girl left Tuesday at Omaha’s Immanuel Medical Center is a state resident, said Children and Family Services division director Todd Landry in a statement.
State officials declined Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Joseph A. Sergent recently passed away at home following a long illness. He was 82.
Joe Sergent was born in Jersey City, N.J. to Lyda and Joseph Sergent. He graduated from Seton Hall College and received his medical degree from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
During World War II, he served with the U.S. Navy aboard a destroyer in the Pacific.
He practiced internal medicine in Rochester, N.Y. for many years, before moving to Summit Read the rest of this entry »

Monday, Oct 06, 2008, Page 3
While lauding the government for choosing the best technology available to detect melamine in food products, some health experts said more must be done to ensure accuracy and overall food safety.
The weeks-long controversy over which method to use to test for traces of melamine in foods didn’t end with the Department of Health’s decision on Wednesday to use liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS).
Read the rest of this entry »

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2008)
— Researchers at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute have discovered that a drug used to treat epilepsy and bipolar disorders blocks the formation of plaques that cause Alzheimer’s disease in animal models.
The team led by UBC Psychiatry Prof. Weihong Song, who is also the Jack Brown and Family Professor and Chair in Alzheimer’s Disease at UBC, found that if Valproic Read the rest of this entry »

At least 33 people have died after a car bomb went off next to a police checkpoint in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, officials said.
“The death toll has risen to 33, as 11 wounded died in hospital overnight and rescue teams recovered six bodies from the debris,” provincial police spokesman Riaz Ahmed said on Sunday.
A senior police official said: “A vehicle laden with explosives went off near the police post which has been totally Read the rest of this entry »

David H. Perlmutter, MD, Named To One Of Nation’s Most Influential Medical Organizations
David H. Perlmutter, MD, scientific director and physician-in-chief at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, has been elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM).
The IOM was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences as a national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on health issues. Read the rest of this entry »

on Tuesday morning after suffering a reaction to one of the drugs he received following last week’s liver transplant surgery, the hospital said Tuesday afternoon. He is listed in stable condition, according to the hospital.
Family friend Pat Ryan said that the move was a “a little bit of a setback,” but not a life-threatening development. The hospital confirmed that assessment.
Peters, 59, was operated on Oct. 7. His liver was failing because Read the rest of this entry »

Oregon’s newly minted blueprint for health care reform calls for achieving its objectives “in a reasonable time — less than a decade.”
But “less than a decade” is not nearly urgent enough for thousands of middle-class Oregonians and employers struggling with soaring health care costs and insurance premiums. This was made abundantly clear in public comment to the Oregon Health Fund Board, which toiled for nearly a year on the 162-page proposal delivered Read the rest of this entry »