The appearance of a rash in cancer patients treated with erlotinib (Tarceva) is strongly associated with longer survival, according to researchers from the drug’s developer, OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. [click link for full article]

The number of UK veterans suffering the debilitating effects of war trauma is set to increase, according to a University of Nottingham academic.Research by Dr Nigel Hunt, Associate Professor in the Institute of Work, Health and Organisations, shows that, with no end in sight for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, more and more veterans will return home suffering the effects of war trauma. [click link for full article]

Current PET-CT scanners with standard commercial software designed to provide images of the heart are falsely indicating coronary artery disease in as many as 40 percent of patients, according to a study published on the cover page of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.Lead author K. Lance Gould, M.D. [click link for full article]

Imagine wearing a smart T-shirt or a suit embedded with tiny electronics that can monitor your heart or respiratory function wirelessly. When dirty, you take it off and throw it in the wash or have it dry-cleaned. [click link for full article]

The most common procedure for clearing blocked kidney arteries can also release thousands of tiny particles into the bloodstream that can impair kidney function, according to researchers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and colleagues.”This is the first data in humans to show that debris released during angioplasty and stenting of the kidney arteries can be harmful to kidney function,” said Matthew Edwards, M.D., M.S. [click link for full article]

Griffith University has been working with Queensland Health and the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) to reduce the cost of sleep disorders.Griffith Senior Lecturer in Management Dr Don Kerr said the direct cost of sleep disorders on the Australian health system was estimated at $40 million per year.”In addition to direct costs, sleep disorders are also costing the nation a lot of money indirectly, through road accidents and accidents at work,” Dr Kerr said. [click link for full article]

A new study on the outcome of cardiac surgery in patients with liver cirrhosis found that the surgery can safely be performed in patients with milder disease, while those with more severe cirrhosis are less likely to survive.The results of this study appear in the July 2007 issue of Liver Transplantation, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and the International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS). [click link for full article]

Egypt recently announced that it will impose a total ban on female genital cutting, rescinding a provision that allowed the practice to be performed by qualified physicians in exceptional cases, BBC News reports (Abdelhadi, BBC News, 6/28). [click link for full article]

During vigorous exercise, heart muscle cells take a beating. In fact, some of those cells rupture, and if not for a repair process capable of resealing cell membranes, those cells would die and cause heart damage (cardiomyopathy).Researchers at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine have discovered a specific repair mechanism in heart muscle and identified a protein called dysferlin that is critical for resealing heart muscle cell membranes. [click link for full article]

Major U.S. academic medical centers can successfully - and safely - integrate minimally invasive lung surgery into their training programs with a standardized, step-by-step plan, according to University of Cincinnati (UC) thoracic surgeons. [click link for full article]