It turns out that the orientation of mad cow disease could have possibly oriented from Indian funerals. What happens is the bodies float down a river and get washed ashore. The result is contaminated animal feed, said British scientists on Friday. When it comes to Mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), the cause is unknown. It infected an estimated 2 million cattle during the epidemic in the UK. The suspicion is however, that it is a result of food containing remains of sheep infected with scrapie, being fed to cattle.

Illinois Department of Public Health issued a statement claiming that a 92-year-old woman died Saturday of the West Nile virus. No information including the name was given about the woman, as was the location of the clinic where she was treated. “This death is an unfortunate reminder that West Nile can be very serious and that people need to take precautions,” Leonard said. “A lot of people don’t seem to be taking it as seriously and using precautions, especially since last year was a mild season in terms of deaths and cases.”

On Thursday, the DPH of Illinois stated eight more cases of West Nile were confirmed, ages ranging from 39 to 86.

In one of the largest studies ever, scientist has discovered that a newer blood thinner could cut the risk associated with life threatening bleeding in half. Researchers presented their findings Monday at the conference of the European Society of Cardiology, which occurs annually. The scientists stated that switching to the new drug could prevent 10 fatal heart attacks, four strokes and 25 major bleeding incidents for every 1,000 people who received treatment. When patients enter the emergency room with something called “acute coronary syndrome”, which is a sudden serious reduction in blood flow to the heart, drugs aimed at preventing blood clots that cause heart attacks are administrated right away. The bonus of these drugs is that they are very effective, but the large down-side to using them is an increased risk of bleeding to death, the biggest threat these patients face.

“The future really is to find therapies that are just as effective, but safer,” said the study’s leader Dr. Salim Yusuf, cardiology chief at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Yusuf also stated that major bleeding increases the risk of death by more than 400 percent. Yusuf also said that the drug, which is already used to prevent a type of blood clot in the legs known as deep vein thrombosis, is less expensive than standard treatment.

Can you imagine a world where you are not tempted by McDonalds or Tim Horton’s Iced Cappuccinos? That world can be a reality as Americans are turning to hypnosis as a method to shear excess poundage off. America is the most obese nation in the world, at two thirds either obese or overweight. “The country is getting fatter and fatter, so different weight-loss methods are getting more attention,” said Jean Fain, a psychologist who practises hypnosis at Harvard Medical School’s Cambridge Hospital. It has worked for a woman by the name of Cynthia Lewis. Apparently she is no longer tempted by the aroma of baking cookies. “Now just smelling (the cookies) is enough,” she said.

Hypnosis may sound like a piddy-paddy magician show to you, but it is already being used to help smokers overcome their addictions, and reduce physical pain. The hypnotic period is described as a state of focused concentration. While in this state patients are more open-minded to change and suggestions.

People in New Orleans have a ghastly task ahead of them: finding and rescuing the dead bodies of those killed by the hurricane. It cannot be a fun task by any means as the people they are looking for are friends, relatives, and neighbours. The bodies are scattered all over the city from in basements, attics, shopping malls, just on the street, or floating in the river. “We need to prepare the country for what’s coming,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Fox News yesterday. “We are going to uncover people who died hiding in the houses, maybe got caught in floods. It is going to be as ugly a scene as you can imagine.” When Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt was asked on CNN’s Late Edition how many he suspected were dead, he responded, “I think it’s evident it’s in the thousands.” Just this morning a woman’s body was lying in the middle of one of the busiest intersections of New Orleans. The body had reportedly been there since at least last Wednesday. Our heart goes out to all the citizens of New Orleans who died or lost family.

An interesting article came out today which states that daily levels of stress may in reduce the risk of breast cancer in a woman according to Danish researchers. They are stating that it is the “high levels” of daily stress which are good as opposed to short acute stress. This conclusion was made after a study was performed using 7,000 women.

During the study, women were asked to identify the types of stress they suffer from on a daily basis and to provide the researchers with the details. The types of conditions that fall under the “stress” category include: nervousness, impatience, anxiety, and tension. What the researchers proceeded to do next is to monitor all of the women for the next 18 years to see how many developed breast cancer. The result? 251 individuals developed the disease.

The study concluded that 40% of the women that reported high stress levels were less likely to reduce this dangerous disease. This study is pretty interesting however researchers caution that this theory has not actually been tested, serving as a reminder that several factors may influence the individual’s risk for breast cancer.

So the bottom line is I guess - Try to live a healthy lifestyle as it is important due to the fact that high stress levels can play a role in other diseases and not just breast cancer.

Based on the latest research, high doses of Vitamin C that is injected into an individual’s bloodstream could help beat cancer according to the scientists. When Vitamin C is converted into a form of ascorbate - a study showed that it killed cancer cells (in the laboratory). This most recent study was led by Dr Mark Levine of National Institutes of Health, Maryland who conducted the experiments performing Vitamin C infusions. A total of 9 cancer cells and 4 regular normal cells were exposed to Vitamin C (ascorbate) during research, and in 5 cancer lines - a 50% decrease in cancer cell survival had occured while the other normal cells were left alone without any effect.

This is a pretty interesting study on fighting cancer because a while back a study was performed using Vitamin C that showed no cancer fighting benefit, however scientists have made it clear that the trials that were performed back then were based on the oral version of Vitamin C and not the “abscorbate”.

Earlier today, researchers stated that eating soy protein foods reduces pregression of osteoporosis in women following menopause during times when the risk of bone fractures is higher after menopause. After menopause, women start to lose bones pretty rapidly when estrogen levels drop, resulting in approx 5% bone mass loss each year during the following 5-7 years according to the Archives of Internal Medicine.

So lets break down this study that was just released:

24,000 women who ate lots of soy protein lowered their bone loss risk by 37% when compared to women who didn’t consume much soy at all. A total of 1,770 bone fractures have been reported based on the study according to Xianglan Zhang of Vanderbilt University (the author of the study). Not only does this study suggest that soy protein helps reduce the bone fracture loss in post-menopausal women but it also shown to have possible benefits associated with cardiovascular diseases and other cancer hormone complications.

The average woman consumed about 8.5 grams of soy products such as (tofu, soybeans, soy milk, etc) daily during the clinical research study.

A latest study published in The New England Journal of Medicine has confirmed that new prescription drugs which are used in treating schizophrenia barely offer any real benefits over the older medications. The study took a look at “atypical antipsychotics” which are newer drugs and also used an older medication. Such drug as Zyprexa, helped patients control their symptoms a little bit longer as opposed to the rest but this medication had higher risk of weight gain and diabetes.

These findings will most likely affect Medicaid programs due to the high cost of schizophrenia drugs however the prescribing habits of doctors most likely aren’t going to be affected at all since they don’t need to worry about the cost. The conclusion is basically - these new drugs work but they are not satisfactory to a lot of individual patients.

Spear pharmaceuticals company announced today the approval of their new product: Tretinoin Cream. The company’s new product is therapeutically equivalent to Johnson and Johnson’s Renova cream. A new product Tretinoin Cream USP is an adjunctive agent directed for use in the palliation (mitigation) of fine wrinkles, tactile roughness of facial skin, and mottled hyperpigmentation.