St. Jude Medical, Inc. (NYSE:STJ) announced that it has renewed its complete line of product agreements with HealthTrust Purchasing Group, LP (HealthTrust). The renewal will extend through December 2010 all existing purchasing agreements between the parties, which cover St. Jude Medical’s complete line of Cardiac Rhythm Management, Atrial Fibrillation, Cardiac Surgery and Cardiology products.

If you have a stressful job your chances of developing heart disease are considerably higher compared to a person who does not have a stressful job, according to an article published in the European Heart Journal.Researchers examined details on over 10,000 UK civil servants - Whitehall employees, from messengers to top bosses.

The following highlights health issues mentioned in governors’ recent state of the state addresses.Arizona: In her Jan. 14 speech, Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) proposed creating a program called “KidsShare,” which she said would allow families “to buy health insurance for their children at the parents’ cost, with no subsidy from the state’s general fund.

President Bush likely will reveal his proposal for changing the Medicare physician fee formula during his State of the Union address on Monday, CongressDaily reports (CongressDaily, 1/22).Bush for the first time is required by law to send a Medicare savings plan to Congress after he releases his fiscal year 2009 budget proposal because Medicare trustees last year triggered a “Medicare funding warning.

The Washington Post on Tuesday examined the issue of suicide among young Hispanic women. According to the Post, Hispanic women ages 12 to 17 are the largest minority group of girls in the U.S., and they are more likely than girls of any other racial or ethnic group in that age range to attempt suicide.

U.S. energy group Chevron on Monday pledged a $30 million, three-year grant to the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in an effort to provide corporate support to global health programs, the Financial Times reports.

Although socioeconomic status can strongly predict outcomes for people with melanoma, it does not explain poor overall survival among blacks with skin cancer, according to a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Reuters reports. The study looked at 34,049 patients diagnosed with melanoma between 1993 and 2003.

Aethlon Medical, Inc. (OTCBB: AEMD), a pioneer in developing therapeutic devices for infectious disease, disclosed that researchers have demonstrated the effectiveness of the Aethlon Hemopurifier® in capturing the highly-fatal H5N1 strain of the Avian Flu Virus (Bird Flu). In pre-clinical studies, high concentrations of H5N1 flu virus (approximately 3 million flu virus/ml) were observed to be rapidly depleted from cell culture fluids when circulated through the Hemopurifier®.

Giving 10mg per day of the bisphosphate drug alendronate to women after their menopause can help prevent loss of bone mass, reducing their risk of fractures, a Cochrane Review has found. This finding applies to women who have started to lose their bone mass but have no fractures (primary prevention), as well as those who have lost significant bone mass and/or have had fractures (secondary prevention).Healthy bones constantly break down and rebuild their structure.

Our bodies sense painful stimuli through certain receptors located in the skin, in joints and many internal organs. Specialized nerve fibers relay these signals coming from the periphery to the brain, where pain becomes conscious. “The spinal cord is placed between these structures as kind of a pain filter”, says Hanns Ulrich Zeilhofer, Professor at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at ETH Zurich and at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology of the University of Zurich.