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Scientists reported new evidence on the effectiveness of that old folk remedy — cranberry juice — for urinary tract infections at the ACS' 240th National Meeting. "A number of controlled clinical trials — these are carefully designed and conducted scientific studies done in humans — have concluded that cranberry juice really is effective for preventing urinary tract infections," said Terri Anne Camesano, Ph.D., who led the study. "That has important implications, considering the size of the problem and the health care costs involved." Estimates suggest that urinary tract infections (UTIs) account for about 8 million medical visits each year, at...

The Associated Press is reporting today that surgical technician Kristen Diane Parker, who has been charged with switching used syringes for those filled with the painkiller fentanyl while working at two different healthcare facilities in Colorado, has pleaded guilty. As many as 36 patients have contracted hepatis C and many others may have been exposed to the virus via the contaminated syringes. Authorities say she is expected to receive a sentence of 20 years in prison. At a hearing, Parker described for prosecutors how she evaded a hospital's drug screening process and began stealing drugs as she coped with a...

In a study published in January 7, 2010 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from four Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers and two non-VA hospitals found preoperative cleansing of patients’ skin with chlorhexidine-alcohol is superior to cleansing with povidone-iodine for preventing surgical-site infection.

Researchers at National Jewish Health have discovered that a naturally occurring lipid in the lung can prevent RSV infection and inhibit spread of the virus after an infection is established. RSV is the major cause of hospitalization for children in the first two years of life, and is increasingly recognized as a dangerous pathogen in adults with chronic lung diseases, the elderly, and immunocompromised individuals. Currently, there is no effective vaccine for the virus. The findings, published in the December 21, 2009, issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also help explain how the lipid, known as...

Manuka honey may kill bacteria by destroying key bacterial proteins. Dr Rowena Jenkins and colleagues from the University of Wales Institute - Cardiff investigated the mechanisms of manuka honey action and found that its anti-bacterial properties were not due solely to the sugars present in the honey. The work was presented this week (7-10 September), at the Society for General Microbiology's meeting at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. Meticillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was grown in the laboratory and treated with and without manuka honey for four hours. The experiment was repeated with sugar syrup to determine if the effects seen were...

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Public health officials are investigating the death of a University of Chicago researcher who studied plague bacteria and was found to have the microbe in his blood, university officials said on Monday. Malcolm Casadaban, who died on September 13, was researching a weakened strain of the plague bacteria Yersinia pestis. Because it is missing key proteins, the strain is not normally harmful to people. Medical center spokesman John Easton said Casadaban had the laboratory strain of Yersinia pestis in his blood, suggesting he had a form of the infection known as septicemic plague, which can kill even...

A hilarious new Republican anti-tax YouTube video shows that, finally, Democrats and their lackeys (read: Jon Stewart) no longer own the Web. When I heard this week about a new pro-Republican, anti-tax video on YouTube, I was expecting something along the lines of the cringe-worthy “Young Conservative Rappers” featured everywhere from Mike Huckabee’s show on Fox to Bill Maher.

Subject: Flu Update from Dr. Gitterle After I returned from a public health meeting yesterday with community leaders and school officials in Comal County , Heather suggested I send an update to everyone, because what we are hearing privately from the CDC and Health Department is so different from what you are hearing in the media. Some of you know some or maybe all of this, but I will just list what facts I know.. - The virus is infectious for about 2 days prior to symptom onset - Virus sheds more than 7 days after symptom onset (possibly as...

The West Virginia Senate passed a bill on Friday that would protect gay men and lesbians from discrimination in the areas of employment, housing and public accommodations, reports The Charleston Gazette. Senate Bill 238 was introduced by state Senator Brooks McCabe, a Democrat from Kanawha, on February 12. The bill now heads to the House for approval. A final vote tally was unavailable from the West Virgina Legislature's website, but sources indicate 7 Republicans and 3 Democrats opposed the bill. If all senators voted, the legislation passed by a 24 to 10 vote. The bill defines sexual orientation as the...

WEDNESDAY, March 4 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists report that a common germ-killing compound prevented transmission of an HIV-like virus in five female monkeys, an encouraging sign that it might also work in humans. The research is still in its early stages. However, the researchers said the compound could eventually make its way into sexual lubricants that women could use to avoid infection with the virus that causes AIDS. "It's a promising lead that we're on to something that's a different way to approach the problem of prevention," said study co-author Dr. Ashley T. Haase, head of the Department of Microbiology...

She went to a Brooklyn emergency room suffering from what she thought was just a kidney stone, but a medical nightmare left her partly blind and a quadruple amputee. Tabitha Mullings claims doctors at Brooklyn Hospital Center failed to diagnose an infection that has literally eaten her alive. RELATED: BOY WITH GIANT LIMB GIVEN $200G FIXUP "Sometimes I can't believe it's me laying here," the mother of three told the Daily News Wednesday from her bed in the very hospital she blames for her ravaged body.  Wiping tears with a bandaged stump, Mullings struggled to explain how in a...

There's an argument out there that oral sex is not sex. For some grown-ups, it's a way to deny that they're cheating. To some young people, oral sex preserves virginity—technically speaking—and allows for what is perceived as risk-free sexual intimacy. From a medical perspective, however, this is sex—and generally, as practiced, it's unsafe. People seem clueless that sexually transmitted diseases such as herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and human papillomavirus can take hold in parts of the oral cavity during sex with infected partners and that the oral contact can infect the genitals, too. HPV is a particularly scurrilous threat, since it...

The number of deaths linked with hospital superbug Clostridium difficile has soared in England and Wales, figures from the Office for National Statistics show. Between 2005 and 2006 the number of death certificates which mentioned the infection rose by 72 per cent to 6,480. Elderly people were most at risk from the bacteria, which caused more than 55,000 infections in NHS hospitals last year. It is thought that some of the increase may be due to more complete reporting on death certificates, but there has been a fiftyfold increase in C. difficile infections since 1990. Deaths citing C. difficile as...

"It's why I lost my leg, so it sucks." The assessment, from a 22-year-old Marine toughing out physical therapy on two prosthetic limbs, is laconic, matter-of-fact. Sgt. David Emery lost one leg in February 2007 when a suicide bomber assaulted the checkpoint near Haditha, Iraq, where he and fellow Marines stood guard. Military surgeons were forced to remove his remaining leg when it became infected with acinetobacter baumannii-a strain of highly resistant bacteria that since U.S. forces began fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has threatened the lives, limbs, and organs of hundreds wounded in combat. "They could have saved it,"...

Scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology (GIVI) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have found that therapy can be used to stimulate the production of vital immune cells, called “T- cells,” in adults with HIV infection. HIV disease destroys T-cells, leading to collapse of the immune system and severe infection. The thymus gland, which produces T-cells, gradually loses function over time (a process called “involution”) and becomes mostly inactive during adulthood. Because the thymus gland does not function well in adults, it is difficult for HIV-infected adults to make new T-cells. Thus, therapies that stimulate...

Cranberries Help Combat Urinary Tract Infections In Women, Researcher Finds ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2008) — Cranberry juice, long dissed as a mere folk remedy for relieving urinary tract infections in women, is finally getting some respect. Thanks to Prof. Itzhak Ofek, a researcher at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, the world now knows that science supports the folklore. Prof. Ofek's research on the tart berry over the past two decades shows that its juice indeed combats urinary tract infections. And, he’s discovered, the refreshing red beverage has additional medicinal qualities as well. Prof. Ofek has found that cranberry...

Research into the way antibiotics work could make them more effective weapons in the battle against bacteria. Researchers have learned that all three major classes of antibiotics kill bugs by boosting levels of free radicals, destructive molecules which damage DNA and cell membranes. The new findings could aid the development of new anti-bacterial drugs, and help scientists overcome resistance to existing antibiotics. One way bacteria become drug resistant appears to be through their in-built DNA repair mechanism, which kicks in after exposure to free radicals. "Our findings suggest that if you could shut off the bacteria's repair response, you might...

Jokin de Irala | Wednesday, 22 August 2007 Abstinence education: are we asking the right questions? Research findings seem to show that abstinence only education "doesn't work". Surely that means we have to make it better, not just give up. Teenagers can tend to live dangerously and society today gives them plenty of opportunities to do so. As a result, we are seeing epidemics of youthful drunkenness, drug-induced mental illness and sexually transmitted diseases, to mention only three of the excesses young people seem prone to. This week in Britain there are calls for the legal drinking age to be...

Staph superbug may be infecting patients June 25, 2007 02:04:50 PM PST A dangerous, drug-resistant staph germ may be infecting as many as 5 percent of hospital and nursing home patients, according to a comprehensive study. At least 30,000 U.S. hospital patients may have the superbug at any given time, according to a survey released Monday by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. The estimate is about 10 times the rate that some health officials had previously estimated. Some federal health officials said they had not seen the study and could not comment on its methodology or...

Superbug emerging across Canada Sharon Kirkey, CanWest News Service Published: Tuesday, January 02, 2007 A superbug that causes infections from large, boil-like lesions to hemorrhagic pneumonia and, in rare cases, ''flesh-eating'' disease is poised to ''emerge in force'' across Canada, a new report warns. While the prospect of a flu pandemic has governments scrambling to develop emergency plans, an epidemic of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or CA-MRSA, is already raging in the U.S. and beginning to entrench itself here, infectious disease experts report today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. In the U.S., clusters have been reported in groups from...