Study: Heart Failure Drug Guidelines Often Ignored

Most hospitalized heart failure patients are sent home without widely recommended inexpensive pills, despite a program to get more doctors to follow treatment guidelines, a study suggests.
Only one-third of 12,565 patients eligible for the drugs got them — even though they were treated at 201 hospitals that had voluntarily enrolled in the American Heart Association's Get with the Guidelines program....

4 Nov 2009 Science Daily 'World's Largest Malaria Vaccine Trial Now Underway In Seven African Countries' : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091103102248.htm

Must say that this is really something !

Baby with rare disease cured in world medical first

'Baby Z', an infant who was cured of molybdenum cofactor deficiency by doctors at Monash Medical Centre in Victoria Sophie Tedmanson in Sydney




An Australian infant with a rare and fatal disease has been cured with treatment which has only previously been used on mice, in what doctors are claiming is a world first medical procedure.
The infant, known as Baby Z, was born with molybdenum cofactor deficiency type A, a rare progressive neurodegenerative disorder in which a build-up of toxic sulphite causes fits and brain damage, and results in death in infancy.
Until now, there has been no known cure for the metabolic condition, which kills about 100 babies each year.
A team from the Monash Medical Centre in Victoria scoured medical literature around the world looking for a miracle cure for Baby Z after she was diagnosed with the condition when she began suffering seizures just 60 hours after she was born in May, 2008.....

New Gene Therapy Halts 2 Boys' Rare Brain Disease

French Scientists Appear To Halt Rare Brain Disease In 2 Boys With New Gene Therapy Approach


French scientists mixed gene therapy and bone marrow transplants in two boys to seemingly halt a brain disease that can kill by adolescence.

The surprise ingredient: They disabled the HIV virus so it couldn't cause AIDS, and then used it to carry in the healthy new gene.

The experiment marks the first time researchers have tried that long-contemplated step in people - and the first effective gene therapy against a severe brain disease, said lead researcher Dr. Patrick Aubourg of the University Paris-Descartes.

Although it's a small, first-step study, it has "exciting implications" for other blood and immune disorders that had been feared beyond gene therapy's reach, said Dr. Kenneth Cornetta, president of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy.

"This study shows the power of combining gene therapy and cell therapy," added Cornetta, whose own lab at Indiana University has long researched how to safely develop gene delivery using lentiviruses, HIV's family.

The research was published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

In 20 years of gene therapy research, there have been few home runs and some headline-making setbacks - including a risk of leukemia caused by otherwise successful gene therapy for another rare disorder, "bubble boy disease." That's a risk that specialists hope a lentivirus-based gene therapy will eliminate......

Babies 'cry in mother's tongue'

German researchers say babies begin to pick up the nuances of their parents' accents while still in the womb.
The researchers studied the cries of 60 healthy babies born to families speaking French and German.
The French newborns cried with a rising "accent" while the German babies' cries had a falling inflection..


listen to the babies cry in those languages