Medicare no longer will reimburse hospitals for the treatment of preventable errors, injuries and infections that occur in the facilities under a new rule scheduled for publication this week, a move that CMS officials said could save lives and millions of dollars, the [click link for full article]

Children who carry variations in specific genes that metabolize vehicle emissions are more susceptible to developing asthma, particularly if they live near major roadways, a study led by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) suggests.Researchers found that children who carried variations in two genes and lived within 75 meters of a major road were up to nine times more likely to develop asthma than children who lived further away, says Muhammad T. Salam, Ph. [click link for full article]

The first regional summit on HIV-positive women being denied inheritance and property rights was held on Saturday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, as part of the 8th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, Caitlin Wiesen-Antin, United Nations Development Programme regional HIV/AIDS coordinator in Asia and the Pacific, said Thursday, [click link for full article]

CSL Limited, which distributes Merck’s human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil in Australia, announced that 77% to 90% of girls in Australian secondary schools have received the vaccine, Melbourne Herald Sun reports (Collier, Melbourne Herald Sun, 8/17). [click link for full article]

The density of a woman’s breast tissue and her level of sex hormones are two strong and independent risk factors for breast cancer, according to a team of researchers from Harvard and Georgetown universities. The finding dispels the common belief that the risk associated with dense breasts merely reflects the same risk associated with high levels of circulating sex hormones, they say. [click link for full article]

Many community health leaders in the Albany, N.Y., area are concerned about access to abortion in the region after the state mandated changes to three local hospitals, the Albany Times Union reports (Wechsler, Albany Times Union, 8/17). New York Gov. George Pataki (R) and the state Legislature in 2005 formed the [click link for full article]

Scientists have reported new evidence that infection with a common virus may be a contributing factor to the obesity epidemic sweeping through the United States and other countries. In laboratory experiments they showed that infection with human adenovirus-36 (Ad-36), long recognized as a cause of respiratory and eye infections in humans, transforms adult stem cells obtained from fat tissue into fat cells. Stem cells not exposed to the virus, in contrast, were unchanged. [click link for full article]

FDA on Thursday issued a warning that Bristol-Myers Squibb’s hepatitis B drug entecavir might increase the likelihood of developing resistance to antiretroviral drugs among people coinfected with HIV, [click link for full article]

Actelion Ltd (SWX: ATLN) announced the online publication in “The Lancet Neurology” of the one-year results from a randomized controlled study evaluating safety and efficacy of miglustat (Zavesca®) in patients suffering from Niemann-Pick type C (NP-C) [1]. NP-C is an autosomal recessive genetic disease affecting children, juveniles and adults, characterized by progressive, severe and heterogeneous neurological manifestations, and reduced life expectancy [2]. [click link for full article]

A group of physicians from Singapore and the United Kingdom recently developed a new test that can detect within two hours whether a fetus has Down syndrome, Singapore’s Business Times reports. The new FlashFISH test is a modified version of the existing Standard FISH test, which provides results in 24 to 48 hours. [click link for full article]