New research funded by the National Institute for Health Research’s Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) programme will investigate whether controlling the blood sugar levels of children in intensive care helps reduce deaths and serious complications. The £1. [click link for full article]

Scientists showed that curcumin, the main ingredient of the Indian herb turmeric, restores key immune cells that fight off cancer.The immune system of patients with advanced cancer is significantly weakened, mostly because the main cells that fight off tumors either cannot proliferate anymore or have died off. Curcumin was previously shown to have anti-tumor activity but its effects on the immune system were unknown - until now. [click link for full article]

Coinciding with today being World No Tobacco Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) is urging all countries to bring in a 100 per cent ban on smoking in indoor public places and workplaces and has released its new policy recommendations on protection from exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke.”The evidence is clear, there is no safe level of exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke,” said WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan in a prepared statement earlier this week. [click link for full article]

Washington State Secretary of Health Mary Selecky on Wednesday announced that about 28,000 doses of Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil have been shipped to public and private clinics across the state, the Seattle Times reports (King, Seattle Times, 5/24). Gardasil and [click link for full article]

At four months, babies can tell whether a speaker has switched to a different language from visual cues alone, according to a University of British Columbia study.Researcher Whitney Weikum found that infants are able to discern when a different language is spoken by watching the shapes and rhythm of the speaker’s mouth and face movements.The findings suggest that older infants, raised in a monolingual environment, no longer need this facility. [click link for full article]

Researchers at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute of the University of Pennsylvania and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute describe in Science a new candidate breast-cancer susceptibility gene. The Rap80 gene is required for the normal DNA-repair function of the well-known breast cancer gene BRCA1.Cancer-causing mutations in the BRCA1 protein fail to bind to the Rap80 protein. Consequently BRCA1 is unable to identify DNA damage sites in the genome. [click link for full article]

The United Kingdom’s Department of Health recently issued new guidelines recommending that women who are pregnant or trying to conceive abstain from consuming alcohol completely, London’s Independent reports (Shaikh, Independent, 5/25). [click link for full article]

Federal regulators on Friday announced that Medicare planned to deny coverage of artificial disks implanted in the lower spines of beneficiaries older than age 60, the New York Times reports. [click link for full article]

The Mexico Supreme Court on Friday announced that it has accepted a petition, filed by the National Human Right’s Commission, to review the constitutionality of a Mexico City law that allows pregnant women to obtain an abortion during the first three months’ gestation, the Los Angeles Times reports (Tobar, Los Angeles Times, 5/29). [click link for full article]

Scientists have identified the receptor in cells of the peripheral nervous system that is most responsible for the body’s ability to sense cold.The finding, reported on-line in the journal “Nature”, reveals one of the key mechanisms by which the body detects temperature sensation. But in so doing it also illuminates a mechanism that mediates how the body experiences intense stimuli - temperature, in this case - that can cause pain. [click link for full article]