Matthew Herper When drugs fail, new surgical procedures and devices can help. Movie legend Elizabeth Taylor, 78, took to the micro-blogging site Twitter last October and announced she was undergoing an experimental heart procedure. “It’s very new and involves repairing my leaky valve using a clip device, without open heart surgery, so that my heart will function better,” she wrote. Heart device aficionados immediately recognized the device as the MitraClip, from Abbott Laboratories ( ABT – news – people ), which is not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration....

Pregnant women in the workplace affect the inclination of female colleagues to try for children, a new study shows. The same is however not true for expectant fathers. If a woman at a workplace becomes pregnant, the chance of other colleagues becoming pregnant within 13 to 24 months increases by 10 percent, according to the study of birth patterns by Uppsala University researchers Lena Hensvik and Peter Nilsson. Read More…

Light exercise during pregnancy may improve the future health of a child by controlling weight in the womb, New Zealand and US researchers say. Overweight or obese mums are more likely to have larger babies which could be at higher risk of health problems later in life. A study of 84 first-time mothers found exercise was associated with slightly lighter babies. UK guidelines recommend regular light exercise for pregnant women. Read More…

LONDON: In what’s being claimed as a major breakthrough, scientists have developed a simple blood test to detect breast cancer in women. Normal breast screening checks, using Xray mammograms, detect a tumour only once it is three or four times bigger, by which time it may have started to spread beyond breast. But, this test can pick up a cancer the size of a small seed before a woman has developed any symptoms. Developed by the scientists, led by Norwegian company Diagenic ASA, the test looks for raised levels of chemical “markers” for cancer picked up as blood flows through...

A gene which hinders the ability of radiotherapy to kill cancer cells has been detected by UK researchers. The team found that if they blocked the POLQ gene – which has a role in repairing damaged DNA – radiotherapy was more effective. It is hoped that the discovery, which came about after a trawl through 200 candidate genes, could lead to new drugs to boost radiotherapy. The findings are published in the journal Cancer Research. Read More…

By Frank Urquhart SCOTTISH scientists have made a major breakthrough in the development of a new treatment for a killer tropical disease. Sleeping sickness, one of the world’s most neglected killer diseases, claims the lives of an estimated 70,000 people every year in sub-Saharan Africa. The researchers at the Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) at Dundee University – working with scientists at York University and Toronto – have identified a compound which can kill the parasite which causes the fatal disease. Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) – commonly known as sleeping sickness – is caused...

(Reuters) – British scientists studying the genetics of aging said on Thursday that experiments on laboratory worms showed that a specific gene is strongly linked to lifespan, immunity and disease resistance. Since the gene, called DAF-16 in worms, is found in many animals and in humans, the finding could open up new ways to affect aging, immunity and resistance in humans, the scientists said. “We wanted to find out how normal aging is being governed by genes and what effect these genes have on other traits, such as immunity,” said Robin May of the University of Birmingham, who...

Written by Jane Tucker A study done at the Stanford University Medical Center based in California has suggested that there is a link between female sexual dysfunction and infertility. The study which was done on over 200 women saw that those with fertility problems had a significantly higher risk of sexual dysfunction. The first group of 119 women were handed questionnaires at a fertility clinic where they were receiving treatment and the results showed that 40 percent of them scored very low points on the sexual function questionnaire which meant that they were in the high risk category of female...

A study has indicated that high consumption of soft drinks may be the cause of reduced sperm quality in men Young men who want to become fathers may want to cut their cola consumption, according to new Danish research results recently published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Doctors and scientists at Rigshospital and at the University of Southern Denmark have found a probable correlation between high soft drink consumption and poor sperm quality. The study was carried out to determine whether there was a correlation between caffeine intake and sperm quality. Read More…

Chocolate reduces the risk of stroke or heart attack by increasing flow of blood around the brain and lowering blood pressure, study finds Chocolate lovers and those eagerly awaiting Easter eggs, rejoice. Your indulgence means you are less likely to have a stroke or heart attack, especially if dark chocolate is your thing. New research shows that regularly consuming as little as a square of chocolate a day helps to reduce your blood pressure and thus your chance of succumbing to cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is Britain’s biggest killer. Scientists have found that people eating just...