Chondroitin, a dietary supplement used to treat osteoarthritis, is ineffective, a new meta-analysis — a study of published research — finds (Review, p. 580).The authors selected 20 trials comparing chondroitin to placebo or no treatment and found that chondroitin had little effect on knee or hip pain caused by arthritis.Although few adverse side effects were reported, the authors conclude that chondroitin use should “be discouraged. [click link for full article]

Breastfeeding can offset the increased risk of invasive breast cancer for women who had their first full-term pregnancy after the age of 25, a study led by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) suggests.The findings of the study were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research held in Los Angeles. [click link for full article]

Hodgkin’s disease survivors who have greater genetic instability in their white blood cells are two-and-a-half times more likely to develop another type of cancer, researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reported at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in Los Angeles. [click link for full article]

Senate legislation (S 3) that would allow the government to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies under the Medicare prescription drug benefit contains a provision that would require the government to conduct comparison studies on major medications, the [click link for full article]

President Bush’s “moral objection” to human embryonic stem cell research is “hypocritical,” Michael Hadjiargyrou — an associate professor of biomedical engineering, genetics and orthopedics at Stony Brook University in New York — writes in a [click link for full article]

Spring allergies affect many people, and can especially be a nuisance for those with hay fever and asthma who want to active outdoors. The sneezing, itchy eyes, wheezing and coughing…

Louisiana is working to re-enroll in Medicaid or LaCHIP about 67,000 children who lost health insurance during the Hurricane Katrina evacuation or whose parents did not renew their benefits for other reasons, Ruth Kennedy, program manager for LaCHIP, said on Thursday, the [click link for full article]

Access to antiretroviral therapy for advanced HIV infection in low- and middle-income countries continued to grow throughout 2006, with more than two million people living with HIV/AIDS receiving treatment in December 2006, a 54% increase over the 1.3 million people on treatment one year earlier in these countries. [click link for full article]

The United Nations World Food Programme today appealed for increased international donor support to avert a deepening humanitarian crisis in the Central African Republic, where hundreds of thousands of people displaced by war and civil conflict are in urgent need of food assistance. [click link for full article]

The United Nations World Food Programme said today that a shortage of contributions has forced it to cut food rations for 1.28 million people driven into camps from their homes during a 20-year rebellion by the Lord’s Resistance Army. WFP gives internally displaced people partial rations because they can grow some food on land near the camps to supplement what WFP gives them. [click link for full article]