Researchers Find Declining Trend in Lung TumorsDespite a global increase in adenocarcinoma of the lung throughout the last half century, new research reveals that a continuous decline of malignant tumors is now evident in the United States. [click link for full article]

The Dallas Morning News on Sunday examined Sierra Health Services’ recent announcement that next year it will terminate a Medicare prescription drug plan that covers the cost of brand-name drugs during the benefit’s “doughnut hole” coverage gap (Moos, Dallas Morning News, 4/8). [click link for full article]

Researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson have identified a protein that they say is key to helping a quarter of all breast cancers spread. The finding, reported online the week of April 9, 2007 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could be a potential target for new drugs aimed at stopping or slowing the growth and progression of breast cancer.Kimmel Cancer Center director Richard Pestell, M.D., Ph.D. [click link for full article]

A woman’s chance of undergoing a hysterectomy can now be accurately predicted, according to new UCSF study findings.Results from a four-year study of 762 women with various symptoms of uterine distress, such as chronic pelvic pain, abnormal bleeding or fibroids, are reported in the April 2007 issue of the “Journal of the American College of Surgeons.” Study findings also are available online at http://www.journalacs.org/. [click link for full article]

Texas state House Speaker Tom Craddick (R) and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) on Thursday announced a settlement with plaintiff’s attorneys in a class-action lawsuit involving Medicaid benefits for children, the Austin American-Statesman reports. [click link for full article]

The “often confusing” issue of breast cancer screening became “more confusing” after the recent release of separate screening recommendations by the American Cancer Society and the American College of Physicians, a [click link for full article]

The proportion of Americans who are severely obese — about 100 pounds or more overweight — increased by 50 percent from 2000 to 2005, twice as fast as the growth seen in moderate obesity, according to a RAND Corporation study issued recently. [click link for full article]

A common herbal extract available in health food stores can greatly reduce urinary tract infections and could potentially enhance the ability of antibiotics to kill the bacteria that cause 90 percent of infections in the bladder.Researchers at Duke University Medical Center, in a series of experiments in mice, believe they have also discovered why many urinary tract infections in the bladder return even after treatment with antibiotics. [click link for full article]

An incentive for pharmaceutical companies to provide large discounts on some drugs to universities that was “inadvertently slashed” by a change in a Medicaid rebate law was an “important benefit for clinics and their patients,” and it should be reapplied, a New York Times editorial says (New York Times, 4/9). [click link for full article]

The Eritrean government in a proclamation published on Wednesday said it has banned the practice of female genital cutting in the country, IRIN News reports (IRIN News, 4/5). Genital cutting, a practice sometimes referred to as female circumcision or female genital mutilation, involves a partial or full removal of the labia, clitoris or both. The [click link for full article]