Walgreen to open more in-store health clinics
Walgreen Co., the largest U.S. drugstore company in terms of revenue, on Monday said it plans to open more health clinics within its drugstores, marking the latest move by a pharmacy chain to offer health services that go beyond filling prescriptions.
Earlier this month, CVS Corp., the largest chain in terms of the most stores, said it plans to buy MinuteClinic, the biggest operator of retail-based health clinics in the United States, a move that will help it expand offerings for customers at its drugstores.
Walgreen, based in Deerfield, Illinois, opened 10 Health Corner Clinics in the Kansas City market last week and plans to open nine more in the St. Louis area later this summer.
Australia scientists work on anti-Alzheimer’s pill
Australian mental health researchers have developed a once-a-day pill they believe might stop or slow the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, with human trials expected within two months.
A 15-month trial on mice showed the drug called PBT2 reduced the amyloid protein, which many scientists believe causes Alzheimer’s, by 60 percent within 24 hours, said researchers at The Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria.
Institute director George Fink said on Monday the drug attacked one of the root causes of Alzheimer’s, a degenerative brain disease and the most common form of dementia, particularly in people over the age of 65.
New training technique is proving successful in helping excessive drinkers curb their alcohol abuse
A new training technique developed in the UK is proving successful in helping excessive drinkers curb their alcohol abuse.
Researchers funded by the Economic and Social Research Council have experimentally tested a computer-based training programme which helps abusive drinkers pay less attention to alcohol, feel more in control of their drinking and drink less.
Researchers at the University of Wales found that excessive drinkers cut down significantly on their drinking following their participation in this project’s newly developed Alcohol Attention-Control Training Programme (AACTP). Moreover, excessive drinkers were found to have maintained this improvement at a three-month follow-up assessment.
Light to Moderate Drinking Reduces Risk of Cardiac Events, Death
Older adults who consume one to seven alcoholic beverages a week may live longer and have a reduced risk for cardiac events than those who do not drink - an association that appears independent of the anti-inflammatory effects of alcohol, according to a report in the July 24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Alcohol may worsen some chronic diseases and the overall effect of drinking on survival is not clear, according to background information in the article. However, several studies have shown that alcohol may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and heart failure and contribute to a lower death rate. Light to moderate alcohol intake has been shown to reduce levels of C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, compounds that circulate in the blood due to inflammation. Therefore, researchers have suspected that the mechanism linking alcohol to reduced risk of cardiovascular disease may be related to inflammation.
Athletic trainers tell how to avoid heat illnesses
As temperatures soar during these summer months, the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) advises that athletes, parents, coaches and medical personnel follow their new recommendations for preventing and treating dehydration, heat stroke and other exertional heat illnesses.
“Some of the worst heat problems happen with highly trained athletes in their teens and twenties,” NATA spokesperson, Dr. Douglas Casa, told Reuters Health.
Athletes may be able to participate in various trainings and practices despite the summer heat, but they should not expect to complete a full practice session, with equipment, on the first day, according to Casa, director of athletic training at the University of Connecticut.
Parents press China for answer to bad, fake drugs
Cradled in her mother’s arms, tiny Liang Jiayi stares blankly. Foam begins to flow from her mouth and her body suddenly goes into a spasm.
“She’s cramping,” her father Liang Yongli cries out as he and his wife massage the contorted limbs of the five-year-old.
Jiayi used to be lively and mischievous but everything changed when she was given a vaccine shot against Japanese encephalitis B in August 2003 in a government hospital near her home in Jiangmen, in China’s southern Guangdong province.
Global early warning system for zoonoses launched
A global early warning system for animal diseases transmissible to humans (zoonoses) was formally launched this week by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The Global Early Warning and Response System (GLEWS) is the first joint early warning and response system conceived with the aim of predicting and responding to animal diseases including zoonoses worldwide. This system builds on the added value of combining and coordinating the tracking, verification and alert mechanisms of OIE, FAO and WHO.
Scientists slow vision loss with vitamin E, alpha-lipoic acid and other antioxidant chemicals
Scientists at Johns Hopkins have successfully blocked the advance of retinal degeneration in mice with a form of retinitis pigmentosa (RP) by treating them with vitamin E, alpha-lipoic acid and other antioxidant chemicals.
“Much more work needs to be done to determine if what we did in mice will work in humans,” said Peter Campochiaro, the Eccles Professor of Ophthalmology and Neuroscience at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “But these findings have helped to solve a mystery.”
In patients with RP, rod photoreceptors die from a mutation, but it has not been known why cone photoreceptors die. After rods die, the level of oxygen in the retina goes up, and this work shows that it is the high oxygen that gradually kills the cones. Oxygen damage is also called “oxidative damage” and can be reduced by antioxidants. So for the first time, scientists have a treatment target in patients with RP, added Campochiaro. His team’s findings appeared in the July online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
