By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) – In a long-term study of older men diagnosed with low-risk prostate cancer and followed with so-called active surveillance, less than a third of cases eventually needed treatment, according to a new study. About one half of one percent of the men died of their cancer during up to 18 years of follow-up. Some prostate cancers do need to be treated on diagnosis, but older
Sony Pictures Entertainment executives altered the script of its forthcoming movie “Concussion,” about football-related brain trauma, to avoid antagonizing the National Football League, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. Citing emails between Sony studio executives that were leaked by hackers last year, the Times said marketing plans for the movie were positioned to focus on the story of a whistle-blower, rather than a condemnation of the sport. Sony said
By Heide Brandes OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – The University of Tulsa is working to clean up what it is calling a minor spill of a radioactive chemical on its research campus and is having 21 people who may have been exposed to the cesium-137 undergo medical evaluations, school officials said on Tuesday. The spill by Tracerco, a subsidiary of British chemical company Johnson Matthey that was contracted by the university,
By Madeline Kennedy (Reuters Health) – Wrist-worn activity trackers, increasingly popular among consumers and in healthcare research, can vary considerably in their accuracy, a study from Iowa State University suggests. Researchers pitted consumer devices against a gold-standard metabolic monitor and found the wristbands are more accurate for calories burned while resting or jogging, but have higher error rates for activities like weight lifting and crunches. “We have continued to study
(Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday issued warning letters to five distributors of pure powdered caffeine, as the federal agency stepped up efforts to curtail ingestion of the stimulant in its pure form. The drug regulator had in 2014 issued a consumer advisory warning of the risk to taking pure powdered form of caffeine after two men died from overdose. Earlier in 2012, the FDA issued
By Isla Binnie VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis will give all priests discretion during the Roman Catholic Church’s upcoming Holy Year to formally forgive women who have had abortions, in the Argentine pontiff’s latest move towards a more open and inclusive church. In Church teaching, abortion is such a grave sin that those who procure or perform it incur an automatic excommunication, which can only be lifted by designated
Comstock, 55, becomes the first woman in GE’s history to become a vice chair, a title that three other company executives also hold. In a statement, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt said Comstock had spearheaded investment in the “Industrial Internet,” GE’s efforts to evolve into a digital industrial company. As head of GE Business Innovations, Comstock has been overseeing the company’s lighting business, which had $2.5 billion in revenue last
Asterias Biotherapeutics Inc said initial data from a small study showed that its lead stem cell therapy could improve mobility in patients paralyzed by a spinal cord injury. Shares of BioTime Inc, a company that owns nearly 70 percent of Asterias, were little changed at $3.07. Its success is a key step toward proving that embryonic stem cell research could cure diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s and serious health conditions
CHICAGO (AP) — A racial gap in kidney transplants appears to have closed, a 13-year study found.Rates of such transplants among white patients used to far surpass those in blacks, but U.S. data on nearly 200,000 end-stage kidney disease patients shows that disparity had disappeared by 2010. Rates remained stable in 2011 and that trend likely…
By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) – Operations to replace a knee or a hip appear to increase heart attack risk in the short term and the risk of blood clots in the long term, according to a new study. The heart attack risk falls again over time, but blood clot risk is still elevated years later, the researchers found. The reason for the elevated risks is unclear at this point,