Researchers from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research have shown that a hormone released naturally from the gut could be used to treat obesity and Type 2 diabetes. After a meal, the hormone peptide YY (PYY) is released into the blood from the gastrointestinal tract. PYY then acts on the brain, contributing to a feeling of satiety and inhibiting the desire to continue eating. These effects of PYY suggested that it could be used as a weight loss medication.

If you have primary liver cancer that has spread to other organs or is too advanced to be treated by surgery, Moffitt Cancer Center is looking for you. You must not have had prior chemotherapy treatment. Hepatocellular carcinoma, or primary liver cancer, is the fifth most common type of tumor. Moffitt is recruiting participants for a phase II study of the oral medication AZD6244, an experimental anti-cancer drug that may stop the growth of cancer cells.

Many allergic skin conditions, such as atopic dermatitis, can get much worse in the wintertime. Most people love taking extremely hot showers when it’s cold outdoors, which tends to dry…

DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance hailed a federal decision to make budget neutrality the financial performance threshold for the developing Medicare Health Support (MHS) disease management pilot.”This is a prudent, positive decision for Medicare Health Support Organizations and the thousands of beneficiaries they serve daily,” DMAA President and CEO Tracey Moorhead said.

Democrats “deserve credit for scoring some impressive legislative victories” in the 2007 Congress — “including the largest increase in funding for veterans, health care” and other areas — “especially with a president who rarely lifted a finger in urging his Republican colleagues to buckle up and work with the new majority,” Donna Brazile, a nationally syndicated columnist and political commentator, writes in a Washington Times opinion piece.

A study of middle aged and older people living in Norfolk, UK, has suggested that not smoking, being active, eating enough fruit and vegetables and drinking only moderate amounts of alcohol can increase lifespan by an average of 10 years compared to people who do none of these things.

Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. that announced SRT501 (Proprietary Version of Resveratrol), apart from being safe and well tolerated, also significantly lowered glucose in an oral glucose tolerance test in a Phase 1b, 28-day, clinical trial with patients who had Diabetes Type 2. The company presented its clinical trial data at the 26th Annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, San Francisco, USA.

Although some experts “hailed” the November 2007 announcement that scientists in Japan and Wisconsin had “reprogrammed” mature adult human skin cells to produce embryonic-like stem cells that might eventually be converted into heart, nerve or other tissue as the “solution” to the U.S.

Medicare spending rose faster in 2006 than it had done during the previous 25 years, due mainly to prescription drug benefit for disabled people and the elderly. In 2006, health care spending represented 16% of the American economy, a rise of 6.7% to $2.1 trillion, according to a report in Health Affairs. Healthcare spending continues to outpace economic growth. The cost of medical services in America continues to increase at a faster rate than people’s incomes.

A team of U.S., Israeli and German scientists used computational biology techniques to discover 480 genes that play a role in human cell division and to identify more than 100 of those genes that have an abnormal pattern of activation in cancer cells.