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| Relatives seek extended care for brain-dead California girl Friday, Dec 27, 2013 06:12 PM PST By Laila Kearney SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Relatives of a California girl declared brain dead after complications from a tonsillectomy want her moved to a long-term care facility, but face resistance from the hospital where she is due to be disconnected from a breathing machine on Monday. The family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, who has been without brain function and on a ventilator for two weeks at Children's Hospital in Oakland, California, said they had found an extended-care center willing to take the girl on an indefinite basis, hospital officials said on Friday. But the center will not accept Jahi unless she has surgically implanted ports for breathing and feeding tubes placed in her body before the transfer, family attorney Christopher Dolan said on Thursday. Full Story | Top |
| Abbott Labs settles with U.S. over kickback claims Friday, Dec 27, 2013 03:14 PM PST (Reuters) - Abbott Laboratories has agreed to pay the United States $5.48 million to resolve allegations that it paid improper kickbacks to induce doctors to use some of its products, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Friday. The settlement resolves allegations that Abbott paid well-known doctors for teaching assignments, speaking engagements and conferences, expecting that they would arrange for the hospitals with which they were affiliated to buy Abbott's carotid, biliary and peripheral vascular products. Carotid and peripheral vascular products are implanted to treat circulatory disorders by increasing blood flow, while biliary products are implanted to treat obstructions in the bile ducts, the government said. "Patients have a right to treatment decisions that are based on their own medical needs, not the personal financial interests of their health care providers," Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery of the Justice Department's civil division said in a statement. Full Story | Top |
| Miley Cyrus says after Disney, it was time to be herself Friday, Dec 27, 2013 02:19 PM PST  It is sex, drugs and pop music - and Miley Cyrus is fine with it that way now that the provocative singer has shed her innocent Disney star image along with most of her clothes. Cyrus, 21, who has grabbed headlines in the past year for her admitted drug use, sexually suggestive dancing and wearing as little as boots in a music video, said she was surprised by the scrutiny her new persona has attracted. I don't really dress as a teddy bear and, like, twerk on Robin Thicke, you know?" Cyrus, who rose to prominence as a teen star of the Disney musical TV series "Hannah Montana," has become a bad girl of pop music since her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards in September when she "twerked" (a sexually suggestive dance) during a performance of Thicke's hit "Blurred Lines." "I don't have a bunch of celeb friends, because I feel like some of them are a little scared of the association," Cyrus said of her new persona. I'm like, 'Walk out with me right now and get this picture, and this will be the best thing that happens to you, because just you associating with me makes you a little less sweet.'" Cyrus, whose newest music video "Adore You" shows her writhing between bed sheets in her underwear, sucking her thumb and rubbing her body, said she feels more free to be herself now that she is no longer under a Disney contract. Full Story | Top |
| Small changes in kids' fast food meal cut calories Friday, Dec 27, 2013 01:16 PM PST By Shereen Jegtvig NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Changes made last year to McDonald's Happy Meals selections for children may be helping kids to cut calories, according to a new study. "We were curious to know how diners might have changed what they were ordering in order to make up for the reduction of calories," Andrew Hanks, one of the study's authors, told Reuters Health. "That was the component we were really interested in because there's evidence of compensation when your calories decrease," he said. In addition to adding apple slices, the new Happy Meals contain a smaller portion of French fries and non-fat chocolate milk was offered along with 1 percent-fat white milk. Full Story | Top |
| Lundbeck gets EU marketing approval for Brintellix Friday, Dec 27, 2013 09:25 AM PST Danish drugmaker Lundbeck has received marketing authorization from the European Commission for its antidepressant Brintellix following approval in the United States in September, it said on Friday. Brintellix is important for Lundbeck, which hopes it will provide a new source of revenue as its existing antidepressant Cipralex - sold as Lexapro in the United States and Japan - comes off patent. Cipralex is Lundbeck's single biggest source of revenue. The approval for Brintellix will cover all 28 European Union member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Full Story | Top |
| Strict parenting may reduce teen smoking Friday, Dec 27, 2013 09:24 AM PST  Researchers surveyed middle schoolers from diverse backgrounds and found those whose parents had an "authoritative" and "structured" parenting style were also more likely to be discouraged from smoking by their parents and less likely to become smokers. "Many past studies have examined broad parenting styles, however this study looked at how specific parenting strategies may help protect youth from cigarette smoking initiation," said Cassandra Stanton, an assistant professor in the oncology department at Georgetown University, who led the study. It's important to identify ways of helping parents prevent kids from starting to smoke, Stanton's team writes in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology, because the majority of lifetime smokers begin before the age of 18. Past research has found links between low discipline, parental disengagement and increased risk of smoking, Stanton's team notes. Full Story | Top |
| High rates of high blood pressure persist in US Southeast Friday, Dec 27, 2013 08:38 AM PST  By Kathryn Doyle NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - One third of U.S. adults have high blood pressure, but in the southeastern part of the country the rate is well over half, according to a new study that finds too little is being done to reverse the problem. The Southeast has been called the Stroke Belt because of well-known high rates of cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure. "The rates have not changed," though the U.S. has had treatment guidelines for high blood pressure since 1977, said one of the authors, Dr. Uchechukwu K. A. Sampson, an assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. "The number of people who do not know that they have high blood pressure is the same," he added. Full Story | Top |
| Anxiety linked to stroke risk Friday, Dec 27, 2013 07:27 AM PST By C. E. Huggins NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Men and women with severe symptoms of anxiety may have a higher risk of stroke than their more relaxed counterparts, a new study suggests. "The greater your anxiety level, the higher your risks of having a stroke," study co-author Dr. Maya J. Lambiase, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, told Reuters Health. "Assessment and treatment of anxiety has the potential to not only improve overall quality of life, but may also reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, such as stroke, later in life," she said in an email. Dr. Philip Muskin, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center in New York emphasized that the stroke risk identified in the study among overly anxious individuals was not vastly increased. Full Story | Top |
| German state of Hesse threatens to sue Rhoen over particle therapy Friday, Dec 27, 2013 06:09 AM PST  Germany's state of Hesse said on Friday it was preparing to file a suit against Rhoen-Klinikum if the hospitals operator fails to meet a deadline to start offering particle therapy at its Giessen-Marburg hospital. Rhoen-Klinikum bought the hospital in central Germany from the state in 2006 and at the time promised to invest in particle therapy, a method for fighting cancer in which protons or charged ions are fired at tumors while sparing surrounding healthy tissue. Siemens bought back the equipment from Rhoen and pulled out of the project, saying it had been too ambitious in offering the new technology for general patient treatment. Rhoen-Klinikum had promised less than a year ago that it would start operating the particle therapy facility by the end of 2013. Full Story | Top |
| China targets cement, batteries, metals in anti-pollution push Friday, Dec 27, 2013 05:39 AM PST  China will raise standards for the production of cement, batteries, leather and heavy metals as part of its efforts to cut air, water and soil pollution, the environment ministry said on Friday. Beijing, facing growing public anger over smog, contaminated food and unclean water, has said it will tackle the environmental costs of more than three decades of unbridled growth. It has promised to get tough with under-regulated industries such as cement, iron and steel and coal but the central government has traditionally struggled to impose its will on powerful industrial sectors and local governments. According to a notice issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (www.mep.gov.cn), China produced 2.21 billion tons of cement in 2012, 56 percent of the global total. Full Story | Top |
| Bahrain court acquits princess on trial for torturing doctors Friday, Dec 27, 2013 02:58 AM PST A Bahraini court has acquitted two police officers, including a Bahraini princess, who were on trial for torturing doctors while in detention during political turmoil in the Gulf Arab island kingdom in 2011, a lawyer and an activist said on Friday. Sheikha Noura bint Ibrahim al-Khalifa was one of the two police officers acquitted by the court of appeals on December 23, Hameed Mulla, a lawyer for the doctors told Reuters by telephone from Manama. The government's Information Affairs Authority (IAA)confirmed Sheikha Noura was acquitted on Monday by the Supreme Criminal Appeals Court but did not say what charges she had faced or provide other details. Bahrain's ruling al Khalifa family includes hundreds of princes and princesses, many of whom hold jobs in the public sector. Full Story | Top |
| WHO says 4 new Saudi cases of MERS virus, one fatal Friday, Dec 27, 2013 02:43 AM PST  Four more people in Saudi Arabia have been infected with the SARS-like Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus and one of them - an elderly man - has died, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday. The new infections, including in two health workers from Riyadh who have not reported any adverse symptoms, bring the worldwide total of confirmed cases of the respiratory disease to 170 with 72 deaths, the United Nations health agency said. MERS first emerged in the Middle East in September 2012 and is from the same family as the SARS virus, can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia. Cases have been reported in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Tunisia as well as in several countries in Europe, and scientists are increasingly focused on a link between the human infections and camels as a possible "animal reservoir" of the virus. Full Story | Top |
| China's lonely parents tell of loss of only children as family holiday nears Friday, Dec 27, 2013 12:38 AM PST  By Grace Li HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese travel far and wide to join their families for the Lunar New Year holiday, but for 60-year-old Xie, whose only child died seven years ago, China's biggest holiday is a reminder that she faces old age with little in the way of financial support. Her daughter, Juanjuan, was 29 when she died, leaving her parents in the ranks of China's more than a million "shidu" families, or those who have lost their only child, in a country where parents have traditionally relied on their children to look after them in old age. Many shidu parents are victims of China's strict family planning policy, which since the late 1970s has restricted most families to one child, and have stepped up calls for compensation. China says the policy has averted 400 million births, preventing the population from spiraling out of control. Full Story | Top |
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