CDC US swine flu cases rise to nearly 34,000
Federal probe finds problems with chelation study
CDC Private health care coverage at 50-year-low
Few survive cardiac arrest, even with hospital CPR
Fawcetts death spotlights a rare cancer
Mississippi fattest, obesity rises in 23 states
Gene variants linked to higher schizophrenia risk
State-by-state list of obesity rates, rankings
WHO paper TB vaccine could kill babies with HIV
Bone agent linked to problems in neck surgeries

By Reed Saxon (AP)

When Michael Jackson went into cardiac arrest, rescuers took him to a place known for bringing the dead back to life. A world-renowned surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center has pioneered a way to revive people that most doctors would have long written off, including a woman whose heart had stopped for 2 1/2 hours.

Tested on a few dozen cardiac arrest patients, 80 percent survived. Usually, more than 80 percent perish.

"They took people who were basically dead, not all that different than Michael Jackson, and saved most of them," said Dr. Lance Becker, an emergency medicine...

By D. Morris (AP)

Mississippi's still king of cellulite, but an ominous tide is rolling toward the Medicare doctors in neighboring Alabama: obese baby boomers.

It's time for the nation's annual obesity rankings and, outside of fairly lean Colorado, there's little good news. Obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states over the past year and didn't decline anywhere, says a new report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

And while the nation has long been bracing for a surge in Medicare as the boomers start turning 65, the new report makes clear that fat...

By Keith Srakocic (AP)

The doctor had barely pulled away the needle when a blister appeared on Tracey Berg-Fulton's abdomen: An experimental shot was revving up the 24-year-old's immune system _ part of a bold quest to create a vaccine-like therapy for diabetes.

"If we're right, that is what's going to stop Type 1 diabetes," said Dr. David Finegold as he watched the blisters appear _ one to match each of four shots _ with intense satisfaction.

It's a big "if." The research is in its infancy, a first-step experiment to be sure the vaccine approach is safe before researchers at Children's Hosp...

By Elaine Thompson (AP)

Health officials estimate that as many as 1 million Americans now have the new swine flu.

Lyn Finelli, a flu surveillance official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, voiced the estimate at a vaccine advisory meeting Thursday in Atlanta.

The estimate is based on mathematical modeling. Nearly 28,000 U.S. cases have been reported to the CDC, accounting for roughly half the world's cases. The U.S. count includes 3,065 hospitalizations and 127 deaths.

An estimated 15 million to 60 million Americans catch seasonal flu each year.

...

By Jeff Chiu (AP)

Each day, skeleton crews of doctors, nurses and pharmacists field almost 900 calls a day around California from people such as a mother whose child swallowed flea repellant and an elderly man who accidentally doubled up on his medication.

But the poison control centers that have been a lifeline for millions of residents could go dark this summer under the governor's plan for closing the state's $24.3 billion deficit. That would make the nation's most populous state the only one without poison control assistance.

The demise of the California program could have a domino effect ...

By Michael Conroy (AP)

When it comes to health care spending, an ounce of prevention is seldom worth a pound of cure.

Take Mrs. Jones, a hypothetical 55-year-old obese woman at risk for diabetes. It costs $900 a year to hire a personal lifestyle coach to help her lose weight and prevent diabetes. Suppose that the coaching works for Mrs. Jones, and she is spared diabetes and all the resulting health bills.

But research shows that for every person like Mrs. Jones, six other people just like her get nothing out of such a program. They either don't lose weight or get diabetes anyway or wouldn't have...

By Michael Conroy (AP)

When it comes to health care spending, an ounce of prevention is seldom worth a pound of cure.

Take Mrs. Jones, a hypothetical 55-year-old obese woman at risk for diabetes. It costs $900 a year to hire a personal lifestyle coach to help her lose weight and prevent diabetes. Suppose that the coaching works for Mrs. Jones, and she is spared diabetes and all the resulting health bills.

But research shows that for every person like Mrs. Jones, six other people just like her get nothing out of such a program. They either don't lose weight or get diabetes anyway or wouldn't have...

By Michael Conroy (AP)

When it comes to health care spending, an ounce of prevention is seldom worth a pound of cure.

Take Mrs. Jones, a hypothetical 55-year-old obese woman at risk for diabetes. It costs $900 a year to hire a personal lifestyle coach to help her lose weight and prevent diabetes. Suppose that the coaching works for Mrs. Jones, and she is spared diabetes and all the resulting health bills.

But research shows that for every person like Mrs. Jones, six other people just like her get nothing out of such a program. They either don't lose weight or get diabetes anyway or wouldn't have...

By (AP)

Health officials say the number of U.S. swine flu cases has reached nearly 34,000, and deaths rose 34 percent in the past week to hit 170.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the numbers Thursday afternoon. They mark an increase from the 127 deaths and nearly 28,000 confirmed and suspected swine flu cases reported last week.

The United States has nearly half the world's reported swine flu cases.

...

By (AP)

A federal investigation has found problems with a controversial study of an alternative medicine treatment for heart attack victims.

A report from the U.S. Office for Human Research Protections says people in the study were not told enough about the potential dangers of the treatment, called chelation ("kee-LAY'shun"). The report says some doctors involved in the study have been disciplined by state medical boards, and at least three are convicted felons.

The government is letting the study go on while the probe continues.

...

By (AP)

The percentage of Americans who don't have private health insurance has hit its lowest mark in 50 years, according to two new government reports. About 65 percent of non-elderly Americans had private insurance in 2008, down from 67 percent the year before, according to preliminary data released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"It's bad news," said Kenneth Thorpe, a health policy researcher at Emory University.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, nearly 80 percent of Americans had private coverage, according to CDC officials.

Some experts bla...

By (AP)

You don't have to be Michael Jackson to have this problem: The odds of surviving cardiac arrest after getting CPR in a hospital are slim and have not improved in more than a decade, a big Medicare study concludes.

Only about 18 percent of such patients live long enough to leave the hospital, researchers found. Blacks fared worse than whites _ a disparity only partly explained by more of them being treated in hospitals that did a poorer job of CPR.

Results were published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Lance Becker, a University of Pennsylvania...

By (AP)

In a perverse twist of medical fate, Farrah Fawcett has become the poster girl for anal cancer, a rare disease often linked to a sexually transmitted virus.

Before her death last week, at age 62, the actress had come to terms with the illness and agreed to have her suffering and treatment chronicled for a television documentary.

"She knew that she had the kind of anal cancer that she wasn't going to ultimately overcome, and decided to leave as much of a legacy of awareness as she possibly could," her physician, Dr. Lawrence Piro, said Tuesday before her funeral.

It is a...

By (AP)

Mississippi's still king of cellulite, but an ominous tide is rolling toward the Medicare doctors in neighboring Alabama: obese baby boomers.

It's time for the nation's annual obesity rankings and, outside of fairly lean Colorado, there's little good news. Obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states over the past year and didn't decline anywhere, says a new report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

And while the nation has long been bracing for a surge in Medicare as the boomers start turning 65, the new report makes clear that fat...

By (AP)

A handful of typos in a mysterious region of the human genetic code are connected to a slightly higher risk of schizophrenia, new studies show.

In a first-of-its-kind look at the genetic elements of schizophrenia, a massive international effort focused on seven spots of genetic variation. Dozens of scientists then published three papers from the effort on Thursday in the journal Nature. Those genetic blips account for at most one-third of genetically caused schizophrenia.

Based on studies of identical twins, scientists figure that about half of schizophrenia is inherited with...

By (AP)

State-by-state list of obesity rates, each state's obesity ranking in the nation and the percentage point change from the previous report, according to the Trust for America's Health:

State Rate Rank Change

Ala. 31.2 2 1.1

Alaska 27.2 18 -0.1

Ariz. 24.8 33 1.5

Ark. 28.6 10 0.5

Calif. 23.6 41 0.5

Colo. 18.9 51 0.4

Conn. 21.3 49 0.5

Del. 27.3 17 1.4

D.C. 22.3 45 0.2

Fla. 24.1 39 0.8

Ga. 27.9 14...

By (AP)

The World Health Organization says a study has shown that babies with HIV could die if given a standard tuberculosis vaccine.

WHO says a three-year study in South Africa found babies born with HIV had a higher risk of contracting a deadly form of TB if given the widely used BCG vaccine.

The study recommends not vaccinating babies with HIV and delaying vaccination for those babies whose HIV status is unknown.

The study was published Wednesday in the journal Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

___

On the...

By (AP)

A bone growth agent used in thousands of spinal fusion surgeries for neck pain has been linked to complications and higher cost, according to the first nationwide study of the product. Safety questions arose last year about the protein product, BMP, when used in fusion surgeries in the neck region, a use not approved by federal regulators.

"Some of these complications are life-threatening because the neck is such a sensitive area," said lead author Dr. Kevin Cahill of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. The study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the America...

By (AP)

For men with fertility problems, some doctors are prescribing a very conventional way to have a baby: more sex.

In a study of 118 Australian men with damaged sperm, doctors found that having sex every day for a week significantly reduced the amount of DNA damage in their patients' sperm. Previous studies have linked better sperm quality to higher pregnancy rates.

The research was announced Tuesday at a meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Amsterdam.

Dr. David Greening of Sydney IVF, a private fertility clinic in Australia, and...

By (AP)

In a startling measure of just how widely a new disease can spread, researchers accurately plotted swine flu's course around the world by tracking air travel from Mexico.

The research was based on an analysis of flight data from March and April last year, which showed more than 2 million people flew from Mexico to more than 1,000 cities worldwide. Researchers said patterns of departures from Mexico in those months varies little from year to year; swine flu began its spread in March and April this year.

Passengers traveled to 164 countries, but four out of five of those went...

By (AP)

In a startling measure of just how widely a new disease can spread, researchers found that more than 2.3 million people flew from Mexico to more than 1,000 cities worldwide in March and April as the swine flu epidemic was unfolding.

Passengers traveled to 164 countries, but four out of five of those went to the United States. That fits with the pattern of the epidemic, say researchers reporting their findings Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The research shows promise in forecasting how a new contagion might unfold, indicated one government health official who...

By (AP)

Health officials have confirmed a case of swine flu that is resistant to Tamiflu, the leading pharmaceutical weapon against the new virus.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials say the resistance was seen in a patient in Denmark. The good news is that scientists say the resistant strain developed in that one patient and has not spread to others.

Experts say Tamiflu resistance has developed in other types of flu, so this was not unexpected. But until an effective vaccine is developed, the drugs Tamiflu and Relenza are considered the best defense medicine...

By (AP)

A 9-year-old girl infected with swine flu has died in Britain, the third swine flu fatality in the U.K., a hospital reported Monday.

Birmingham Children's Hospital said the girl who died Friday had other serious underlying health problems. But it did not elaborate on those health issues, or say what exactly she died from, or respond to questions about whether the virus she had was drug-resistant.

Britain's health ministry also reported another 1,604 new cases of swine flu since Friday, bringing the total in the U.K. to 5,937. Britain has been the hardest-hit nation in Europe...

Sears Tower unveils 103rd floor glass balconies
French investigators release report on Flight 447
Serena saves match point, advances to semifinals
AP Ex-Edwards aide appears at federal courthouse
Rare copy of Declaration of Independence found
As deficit grows, Calif. prepares to issue IOUs
Major military operation under way in Afghanistan
Report NKorea likely to fire barrage of missiles
SC governor silent as clamor grows for resignation
LA high school featured in Bruno leaves district