Metropolitan Health Networks, Inc. (AMEX:MDF), a leading provider of healthcare services in Florida, announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Metcare of Florida, Inc., (the “PSN”) has entered into a definitive agreement to assume three physician provider agreements along with the responsibility of managing the health care of approximately 1,000 Humana Medicare Advantage members in South Florida. [click link for full article]

Obese men with prostate cancer are more likely to have lower PSA levels than non-obese men with prostate cancer - a higher body mass index (BMI) is linked to higher plasma volume, which in turn can lead to lower PSA (prostate-specific antigen) levels, according to an article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), November 21 issue. [click link for full article]

Two years ago, Aliyah Davis received one of the first ventricular assist devices (VAD) available in Indiana. This miraculous device kept Aliyah healthy enough to leave the hospital and even attend college. Assisting Aliyah in her quest for a new heart, Quality Assured Services, Inc. (QAS), a medical device service provider based in Orlando, Florida, provided her with VAD supplies and replacement parts during her entire stay at home. [click link for full article]

For children with mild/moderate throat infection symptoms, tonsillectomy (removing the tonsils) may be more costly but not necessarily better than watchful waiting, according to an article in Archives of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery (JAMA/Archives), November issue. The authors explain that the removal of the tonsils (tonsillectomy), with or without adenoidectomy (removing the adenoids), is one of the most common surgical procedures performed on children. [click link for full article]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it has approved Nexavar (sorafenib) for use in patients with a form of liver cancer known as hepatocellular carcinoma, when the cancer is inoperable. Nexavar was originally approved in 2005 for the treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma, a form of kidney cancer.”In a randomized clinical trial, the group of patients with inoperable hepatocellular carcinoma who received Nexavar survived 2. [click link for full article]

Outside the laboratory, Anthony Azenabor is outgoing and talkative, an extrovert who laughs heartily at his own jokes.But engrossed in his research, Azenabor is a shrewd and serious investigator who coaxes rogue bacteria to give up deadly secrets of how they cause several human illnesses.Educated in Nigeria and Great Britain, Azenabor landed a fellowship sponsored by the World Health Organization soon after completing his doctorate on the bacteria Chlamydia. [click link for full article]

Mothers who reported sleeping five hours or less per day when their babies were six months old had a threefold higher risk for substantial weight retention (11 pounds or more) at their baby’s first birthday than moms who slept seven hours per day, according to a new study by Kaiser Permanente and Harvard Medical School / Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. [click link for full article]

Many states could more effectively address the huge financial and societal burden of alcohol abuse by changing policies that may be inadvertently impeding access to an inexpensive prescription drug known to reduce problem drinking. These findings appear in a new study in the online version of the journal, Health Services Research. [click link for full article]

Mary Agnes Carey, associate editor of CQ HealthBeat, examines SCHIP negotiations, the Labor-HHS-Education spending bill veto and efforts to delay a scheduled Medicare physician fee cut in this week’s “Health on the Hill from kaisernetwork. [click link for full article]

The American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) supports today’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) ruling, which allows multiple prescriptions for controlled substances when appropriate. This DEA Final Ruling, “Issuance of Multiple Prescriptions for Schedule II Controlled Substances,” was published in the Federal Register on Monday, Nov. 19, 2007. [click link for full article]