In its ongoing effort to predict and prevent premature birth, the March of Dimes announced support for the innovative research of eight scientists with combined grant awards of $3 million.”These grants demonstrate the increasing investment of the March of Dimes in research to discover etiology of preterm labor,” said Dr. Jennifer L. Howse, president of the March of Dimes. “The number of premature births has risen to more than 500,000 babies each year. [click link for full article]

Reports of studies of cancer prognostic factors are largely suboptimal, a new study concludes.Researchers believe that certain characteristics of a tumor, such as the expression of a particular gene, may help doctors predict a patient’s prognosis - how they respond to a certain chemotherapy drug or how likely they are to survive their cancer, for example. However, most proposed prognostic markers have not been validated and have not changed clinical practice. [click link for full article]

Survivors of a rare cancer called hairy cell leukemia are at an increased risk of Hodgkin lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and thyroid cancer, and at an increased risk of death from leukemia and lymphoma, according to a new study. However, the absolute risk of those second cancers is small.Hairy cell leukemia is a malignancy of a type of white blood cell called B lymphocytes. It accounts for about 2 percent of all leukemias. [click link for full article]

Aprotinin, a drug used for limiting blood loss in patients undergoing cardiac surgery, is associated with an increased risk of death during five years following the surgery, according to a new study in the February 7 issue of JAMA.Aprotinin was first approved for use in high-risk patients needing coronary artery surgery in the United States in 1993. [click link for full article]

Asthma is a chronic disease of the lungs leading to symptoms of wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath and a tightness feeling in the chest. Acute symptoms are caused by smooth…

In the past couple of years, researchers at Oncolytics Biotech have been developing a harmless virus as a potent cancer killer, but they have also been accumulating data that suggests in addition to directly killing tumor cells, the reovirus may prime the immune system to mount a separate, powerful and long lasting defence against cancer.Evidence for this theory has been mounting for the past year. On January 10, 2007, Dr. Sheila Fraser of St. [click link for full article]

Between 2004 and 2006, the number of new cases of cancer diagnosed each year in Europe has increased by 300,000 according to new estimates published in a report in Annals of Oncology [1]. It is estimated that in 2006 there were 3.2 million new cases of cancer (up from 2.9 million in 2004) and 1.7 million deaths from the disease in the whole of Europe. [click link for full article]

Scientists at Queensland University of Technology are one step closer to developing a world-first vaccine to protect women against contracting the most common sexually-transmitted disease, Chlamydia. International vaccine company Sanofi-Pasteur has awarded QUT a funding boost of more than $300,000 to continue its research into Chlamydia and work towards developing a vaccine specifically targeting adolescent women. [click link for full article]

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today announced it will conduct its second annual provider satisfaction survey of Medicare fee-for-service contractors who process and pay more than $280 billion in Medicare claims each year. [click link for full article]

Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) President andCEO Kathleen Jaeger today released the following statement on theCenters for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) announcement that morethan half of all Medicare Part D prescriptions dispensed are genericmedicines. “CMS deserves enormous credit for educating Medicare Part Dbeneficiaries about the benefits of using safe, effective and affordablegeneric medicines. [click link for full article]