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 Xingxing Zang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of the Microbiology and Immunology Department at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, has been awarded a five-year, $1.5 million NIH grant to study novel molecular approaches to treat type 1 diabetes (T1D). Dr. Zang, who is a new faculty member of Einstein’s Diabetes Research and Training Center and its Cancer Center, is one of 10 scientists nationwide to receive the Type 1 Diabetes Pathfinder Award from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health.

Pathfinder Awards are given for highly innovative research studies that offer exceptional promise for improving the understanding, prevention, and treatment of T1D and its complications. The award builds on Dr. Zang’s earlier findings on new pathways for T lymphocyte costimulation and coinhibition.

T1D, sometimes called juvenile onset diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes, is an autoimmune disease that affects about three million Americans, and its incidence appears to be on the rise worldwide. T1D occurs when the body’s T lymphocytes, which normally fight off invading pathogens (viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites), attack and destroy pancreatic beta cells that produce the critical hormone insulin needed for survival. T1D patients have to take multiple insulin injections and test their blood sugar levels daily.

“While insulin injection allows a T1D patient to stay alive, it does not cure the disease nor does it prevent its eventual and devastating effects of kidney failure, heart attack, stroke, blindness, nerve damage, and amputations,” said Dr. Zang. “That is why we must find a more effective, long-term treatment. Part of my laboratory is working on a promising approach, which is to develop a way to inhibit the T lymphocytes from destroying pancreatic cells.”

T lymphocyte activity is regulated in part by a family of proteins called B7 proteins. Dr. Zang discovered the newest member of the B7 family, B7x, a few years ago. He has since shown that B7x inhibits T lymphocyte function by binding to receptors on T lymphocytes. No one yet knows the role of B7x in diabetes. In recent studies with mouse models, Dr. Zang found that over-expression of the B7x gene in the pancreas of selected mice prevents them from developing T1D. He has hypothesized that the B7x protein binding to receptors on T lymphocytes may prevent T1D.

The Pathfinder Award will help Dr. Zang explore this hypothesis, to search for the precise location of the B7x receptor, and to understand the mechanism by which the B7x protein mediates resistance to T1D. “The outcome of this research may not only advance our understanding of the pathogenic processes underlying type 1 diabetes and its complications, but also lead to a rational approach for clinical therapeutic interventions,” said Dr. Zang.

For more than 30 years, the Einstein Diabetes Research and Training Center has been a leader in basic and clinical research related to diabetes, obesity and other metabolic diseases. It is one of only five comprehensive diabetes centers supported by NIH nationally and is positioned to effectively translate basic science findings into clinical applications.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University is one of the nation’s premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. It is the home to some 2,000 faculty members, 750 M.D. students, 350 Ph.D. students (including 125 in combined M.D./Ph.D. programs) and 380 postdoctoral investigators. Last year, Einstein received more than $150 million in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In addition, the NIH funds major research centers at Einstein in diabetes, cancer, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Through its extensive affiliation network involving five hospital centers in the Bronx, Manhattan and Long Island - which includes Montefiore Medical Center, Einstein’s officially designated University Hospital - the College runs one of the largest post-graduate medical training program in the United States, offering approximately 150 residency programs to more than 2,500 physicians in training. For more information, please visit http://www.aecom.yu.edu/

Source: Michael Heller

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in 17 Americans suffer from serious mental illness. Four new memoirs deal with the harsh reality of people and families who cope with a chronic, disabling condition. Two focus on bipolar disorder (sometimes called manic depression), which is found in about 5.7 million adults. Another examines a family legacy of bipolar disorder and suicide. The fourth addresses schizophrenia, which afflicts an estimated 2.4 million Americans. This severe disease causes hallucinations and delusional thinking. USA TODAY critiques the new titles.

Hurry Down Sunshine
By Michael Greenberg
Other Press, 234 pp., $22

In this powerful memoir, writer Michael Greenberg describes the terrifying summer his 15-year-old daughter, Sally, became a stranger to herself and to her father. In August 1996, the lively teenager became, almost overnight, manic and uncontrollable, unable to stop talking as words poured out. The cause: the onset of bipolar disorder. Taken to a Manhattan emergency room, Sally was immediately placed in the hospital’s psychiatric unit.
has an extraordinary grasp of what it means to have bipolar disorder. David Lovelace grew up in Massachusetts with bipolar parents. His brother is bipolar, as is David. In the year 1986, every Lovelace male was committed to a psychiatric hospital at some point.

Only his sister does not have the disease.

Yet Scattershot is not a horror story but rather a portrait of a loving if sometimes crazy family. Lovelace’s father is a brilliant theologian and an expert on Puritan thinkers including Cotton Mather. His mother is an artist. Lovelace is a published poet and bookseller.

He details how his parents, his brother and he all follow the same biochemical pattern. They zoom from manic highs of creativity to bottomless lows. This empathetic memoir illustrates that medication is as essential for people with bipolar disorder as insulin is for diabetics.

Blue Genes: A Memoir of Loss and Survival
By Christopher Lukas
Doubleday, 248 pp., $24.95

In Blue Genes, TV producer and director Christopher Lukas describes the shadow of sorrow that suicide has cast over his life.

The book opens in 1997 with the suicide of the author’s older brother, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist J. Anthony Lukas. This continued a terrible family tradition. Their 33-year-old mother had committed suicide in 1941, when her sons were 6 and 8, after struggling with bipolar disorder for years.

In Blue Genes, Lukas movingly describes what it was like to grow up the child of a suicide. Lukas’ father became an alcoholic, and the boys were sent to boarding school. He writes about feeling abandoned and angry. He also describes his loving but complex relationship with his brother.

Yet this memoir also affirms the joy Lukas has found in being a husband and father. His story will resonate with readers who have lost friends or family members to suicide.

GREENBELT (MARYLAND): The game would
be called Float Ball. It would combine elements of basketball, football and the
Lionel Richie video for ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’ into a sort of free-for-all,
compelling weightless players to bounce off walls, obstacles and one another
while herding weightless balls of various colours to either end of the playing
space, which would be placed inside the cabin of a zero-gravity plane or,
possibly, on the moon. Eventually, one day, if all went well, some sort of
custom arena would be constructed.

“On Mars, there’s a bonus,”
said the game’s promoter, Ken Harvey, speaking to an attentive audience of
National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers, technicians and
scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center here recently, “where you have to
pick up a person holding a certain ball and throw them through a hoop as a sort
of extra point.”

The football analogy seemed to come easily to mind.
Ken Harvey was that Ken Harvey, No. 57 in your Washington Redskins program for
much of the late 1990s.

Now 43, he has not played a down since he
dropped out of training camp in 1999. With two sons nearing college age, Harvey
has taken the steady, earthbound gig as an anchor while training his restless
imagination on a high-concept project he has called, somewhat risibly,
SpaceSportilization.

While casting about as a motivational speaker,
Harvey struck up a friendship with Allen Herbert, a fellow congregant at Grace
Covenant Church in Chantilly, Virginia. Herbert, who studied aerospace
engineering in college, encouraged him to consider the outer reaches of the
tourism business.

Seeking his own role with some degree of
skepticism, Harvey met with Eric Anderson, the president of Space Adventures, a
private company in Vienna, Virginia, that has delivered six paying customers to
the International Space Station.

Anderson, whose firm also operates
suborbital flights providing five minutes of weightlessness for $5,000, said
that a Float Ball league would require a couple of decades of significant
reductions in the cost of space travel. In the meantime, he said, thinking big
can hardly hurt, least of all when the big thinker is a famous football player.

LONDON: Children who live in areas
which receive heavy rainfall are likely to develop autism, for a new study has
found a link between wet weather and the disorder.

An international
team has claimed that rainfall could be an “environmental trigger” which makes
already susceptible children develop the symptoms associated with autism,
ranging from severe problems to a mild need for routine.

Researchers, led by Cornell University, have based their findings
after looking at a group of children born in different parts of three American
states — California, Oregon and Washington — between 1987 and 1999, British
newspaper ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported.

Subsequently, they
compared the annual rainfall that the children would have been exposed to in the
first two years of their life and found a link between higher levels of annual
precipitation and autism.

In fact, according to the researchers, the
rates of autism later diagnosed were positively related to the amount of
precipitation these counties received from 1987 to 2001.

“Similarly,
focusing on (counties within) Oregon and California, autism prevalence was
higher for (those children who) experienced relatively heavy precipitation when
they were younger than three years.

“As well as other explanations,
there is also the possibility that precipitation is more directly involved. For
example, there may be a chemical or chemicals in the upper atmosphere that are
transported to the surface by rainfall lead researcher Michael Waldman said.

The findings are published in the latest issue of the ‘Archives of
Paediatrics & Adolescent Medicine’ journal.

Infants and toddlers under two are waiting more than twice as long for hernia surgery than recommended, leading to more emergency visits and potential damage to a testicle or ovary, researchers say.

Inguinal hernia is a bulge of tissue in the groin area and one of the most common surgical disorders of childhood. The hernia may be present at birth, causing vomiting, lack of bowel movements and other symptoms that send families to emergency rooms.

In Tuesday’s issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr. Jacob Langer of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and his colleagues reported that young children who waited more than 14 days for the surgical repairs showed a doubling of the risk of hernia incarceration — where a loop of bowel gets stuck in the opening of the abdominal wall in the groin area, also known as strangled hernia.

The loop starves the bowel of its blood supply, and the testicles or less commonly an ovary may slide down through a hernia and get stuck or damaged.

In the study, Langer and his colleagues looked at nearly 1,100 children under two in Ontario who had surgical repairs for inguinal hernias.

Among the children waiting for the elective surgery, 16.9 per cent were seen in an emergency department at least once and 11.9 per cent developed incarcerated hernias, which if left untreated, can cause serious health problems.

The rate of hernia incarceration was 5.2 per cent among babies who waited up to 14 days, compared with 10.1 per cent among those who waited up to 35 days, which was the median wait time from diagnosis to surgery.

“Our data support a recommendation that all inguinal hernias in infants and young children should be repaired within 14 days after surgical consultation,” the study’s authors concluded.

Identify urgent pediatric cases

Children have largely been ignored in the debate on surgical wait times in Canada and babies with painful hernias have no political voice to demand resources, Dr. Geoffrey Blair, chair of the Pediatric Surgical Chiefs of Canada, said in a commentary accompanying the study.

“Our knee-jerk response might be simply to call for more operating room time, resources and personnel,” Blair wrote in the commentary.

“However, there may be better solutions. For instance, infants and young children with an inguinal hernia could be appropriately stratified into urgent, less urgent and even ‘wait-and-see’ groups. This approach may offer a more effective strategy to manage the surgical needs of this population.”

The risk to a boy’s testes from incarceration are well known, even with surgical repair. But testicular damage after hernia repair may occur in up to 9.3 per cent of those operated on, Blair noted, in calling for a balance in making the repairs promptly against the risk of injuring an infant’s delicate tissues during surgery.

In June, the federal government announced up to $9.8 million in funding for a Canada-wide project to manage pediatric wait times in 10 surgical areas, including cancer, cardiac, dental treatment, urology, gynecology and neurosurgery.

People with high levels of a particular protein are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, says a team of international researchers who cut short trials after discovering the risk drops by nearly half if patients are treated with statin medications.

“The risk of cardiovascular disease due to increased hs-CRP (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein) levels has been greatly underestimated until now,” according to Dr. Jacques Genest, director of McGill University Health Unit’s cardiology division.

‘This takes prevention to a whole new level, because it applies to patients who we now wouldn’t have any evidence to treat.’—Dr. W. Douglas Weaver, American College of Cardiology

“Our results show that this is an extremely important indicator that doctors will have to consider in the future,” he said in a release.

Genest led the Canadian component of the clinical study, initiated by Dr. Paul Ridker of the Harvard University Faculty of Medicine.

The results, reported Sunday at an American Heart Association conference in New Orleans, were hailed as a watershed event in heart disease prevention.

Participants received statin drug daily

The study followed nearly 18,000 patients from 27 different countries. All had normal levels of cholesterol (LDL-c) and high levels of hs-CRP, and as such were not considered at risk for cardiovascular disease, and were therefore not receiving any treatment.

Study participants received a daily dose of the statin drug rosuvastin. They experienced a 44 per cent decrease in the risk of cardiovascular disease and a 21 per cent decrease in mortality.

“These results definitely surpassed our predictions,” Genest said. “We had to stop the study before its scheduled completion, as the benefit of the treatment for the selected patients was so great that we needed to present our findings to the medical community as soon as possible.”

Since statins have a cholesterol-lowering effect, they are currently used to prevent cardiovascular disease in patients who are at risk due to high LDL-c levels. But cardiovascular disease is also caused by vascular inflammation, marked by high levels of hs-CRP.

The study shows statins act on both cholesterol and inflammation, an effect that has long been suspected but not proven.

Astra Zeneca, a pharmaceutical company that markets rosuvastatin under the brand name Crestor, funded the study.

Doctors said the findings might lead more people to consider taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs.

“This takes prevention to a whole new level, because it applies to patients who we now wouldn’t have any evidence to treat,” said Dr. W. Douglas Weaver, a Detroit cardiologist and president of the American College of Cardiology.

The study also gives the best evidence yet for using a new blood test for the protein to identify people who may need treatment, say doctors.

With files from the Associated Press

 OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSUR), a market leader in oral fluid diagnostics, today announced that it will begin to sell its OraQuick ADVANCE® Rapid HIV-1/2 Antibody Test directly into the U.S. hospital market beginning in 2009. In recent years, the U.S. hospital market has received this product through an exclusive distribution arrangement with Abbott.

In early 2005, OraSure and Abbott entered into an agreement under which Abbott has distributed OraQuick ADVANCE® on an exclusive basis to U.S. hospitals and reference laboratories and on a non-exclusive basis to the U.S. physician office market. Pursuant to a transition agreement recently executed by the parties, the distribution agreement will terminate effective as of the end of 2008. Abbott and OraSure will work to implement a transition of this business directly to OraSure.

In anticipation of the transition, OraSure has started to increase the size of its hospital sales force along with inside sales, customer service and sales support resources. The direct sales force will be responsible for selling OraQuick ADVANCE® to U.S. hospital customers along with other future products, including the OraQuick® Hepatitis C test recently submitted to the FDA for pre-market approval. The U.S. physician office market will continue to be served through distributors.

“We have enjoyed a successful relationship with Abbott and appreciate all of Abbott’s efforts to build our OraQuick ADVANCE® business in the U.S. hospital market,” said Douglas A. Michels, President and CEO of OraSure Technologies. “Beginning in 2009, OraSure will sell OraQuick ADVANCE® directly to the U.S. hospital and reference laboratory markets. Our hospital business is extremely important and we anticipate continued growth in this market with both current and future products. We are eager to continue the development of even closer relationships with our hospital customers.”

The transition will result in incremental expense related to sales force recruitment, infrastructure expansion and payment of a termination fee to Abbott pursuant to the transition agreement. In addition, OraSure sales to Abbott in the fourth quarter of 2008 are expected to be somewhat lower than normal as Abbott reduces its inventory level of OraQuick ADVANCE® as part of the transition. Additional information regarding the transition will be provided during the Company’s third quarter earnings call scheduled for 5:00 p.m. EST (2:00 p.m. PST) today.

OraQuick ADVANCE® is the only rapid, point-of-care test for the detection of antibodies to both HIV-1 and HIV-2 within twenty minutes that is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on oral fluid, finger-stick or venipuncture whole blood, and plasma specimens. The test is also CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvements Amendments Act of 1988) waived for all specimen types except plasma. OraSure commercially launched the OraQuick ADVANCE® test in October 2004.

About OraSure Technologies

OraSure Technologies develops, manufactures and markets oral fluid specimen collection devices using proprietary oral fluid technologies, diagnostic products including immunoassays and other in vitro diagnostic tests, and other medical devices. These products are sold in the United States as well as internationally to various clinical laboratories, hospitals, clinics, community-based organizations and other public health organizations, distributors, government agencies, physicians’ offices, and commercial and industrial entities.

OraSure Technologies is the leading supplier of oral-fluid collection devices and assays to the life insurance industry and public health markets for the detection of antibodies to HIV. In addition, the Company supplies oral-fluid testing solutions for drugs of abuse testing. For more information on the Company, please go to http://www.orasure.com.

Important Information

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, including with respect to markets, product sales and distribution, sales personnel, expenses and revenues. Actual results could be significantly different. Factors that could affect results include the ability to market and sell products; changes in relationships, including disputes or disagreements, with strategic partners and reliance on strategic partners for the performance of critical activities under collaborative arrangements; failure of distributors or other customers to meet purchase forecasts or minimum purchase requirements for the Company’s products; impact of replacing distributors; inventory levels at distributors and other customers; impact of replacing distributors; inventory levels at distributors and other customers; impact of competitors, competing products and technology changes; ability to develop, commercialize and market new products; market acceptance of oral fluid testing or other products; changes in market acceptance of products based on product performance; continued bulk purchases by customers, including governmental agencies, and the ability to fully deploy those purchases in a timely manner; ability to fund research and development and other products and operations; ability to obtain and maintain new or existing product distribution channels; reliance on sole supply sources for critical product components; availability of related products produced by third parties or products required for use of our products; ability to obtain, and timing and cost of obtaining, necessary regulatory approvals for new products or new indications or applications for existing products; ability to comply with applicable regulatory requirements; history of losses and ability to achieve sustained profitability; volatility of the Company’s stock price; uncertainty relating to patent protection and potential patent infringement claims; uncertainty and costs of litigation relating to patents and other intellectual property; availability of licenses to patents or other technology; ability to enter into international manufacturing agreements; obstacles to international marketing and manufacturing of products; ability to sell products internationally, including changes in international funding sources; loss or impairment of sources of capital; ability to meet financial covenants in agreements with financial institutions; ability to retain qualified personnel; exposure to patent infringement, product liability, and other types of litigation; changes in international, federal or state laws and regulations; customer consolidations and inventory practices; equipment failures and ability to obtain needed raw materials and components; the impact of terrorist attacks and civil unrest; ability to identify, complete and realize the full benefits of potential acquisitions; and general political, business and economic conditions. These and other factors are discussed more fully in the Securities and Exchange Commission (”SEC”) filings of OraSure Technologies, including its registration statements, its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and its other filings with the SEC. Although forward-looking statements help to provide complete information about future prospects, readers should keep in mind that forward-looking statements may not be reliable. The forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and OraSure Technologies undertakes no duty to update these statements.

OraSure Technologies

 Enanta Pharmaceuticals, a
leader in the development of small molecule anti-infective drugs, announced
today the initiation of a Phase 1 study on investigational oral antibiotic
EDP-322, a first-in-class MRSA-active Bicyclolide, a novel
macrolide-related drug class with a distinct resistance profile. The
clinical development program for EDP-322 will include the treatment of
hospital- and community-acquired gram-positive infections, including
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Preclinically, EDP-322
has demonstrated strong in vitro activity against hospital-acquired MRSA
strains resistant to vancomycin, Zyvox(R) (linezolid), and CUBICIN(R)
(daptomycin).

“Macrolides have been commonly prescribed to treat community infections
for decades due to their convenient oral dosing and favorable safety
profile,” said Robert Moellering, M.D., a professor of medicine at Harvard
Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “Now with the
discovery of a new generation of macrolides having high potency against
hospital-acquired pathogens and a distinct resistance profile relative to
other hospital antibiotics, there is a tremendous new opportunity to
explore their use within not only the community, but the hospital setting
as well.”

“In our in vitro studies, EDP-322 demonstrated good potency against
both hospital- and community-acquired MRSA, even against highly
drug-resistant MRSA strains,” explained Yat Sun Or, Ph.D., Senior Vice
President of Research and Development at Enanta. “The potency of EDP-322
against hospital-acquired MRSA, community-acquired MRSA, and other
gram-positive pathogens, combined with the convenience of oral
administration, has the potential to uniquely position EDP-322 among
marketed MRSA drugs in both the hospital and community settings.”

Phase 1a Study Design

The Phase 1a, double-blind, placebo controlled study for EDP-322
announced today is a single ascending dose trial in healthy volunteers.

About Enanta’s Bicyclolide Research Program

Bicyclolides posses a reengineered back-bone structure of traditional
macrolide antibiotics. The discovery of Bicyclolide effectiveness against
MRSA and VRE infections is part of Enanta’s broad antibiotic research
program. Enanta has applied several research strategies to develop these
new classes of antibiotics, including innovative medicinal chemistry
approaches to create novel and proprietary chemical structures. Enanta has
applied its chemistry approach to create a promising pipeline of
anti-infective drugs and a vast intellectual property estate.

About MRSA

More than 130,000 people each year need hospital care for MRSA
infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Staphylococcus aureus is a bacterium that can live harmlessly on human skin
and is found in the nose of 20 to 40 percent of healthy individuals, but
can sometimes cause infections when exposed to broken skin. MRSA is a
particular type of the bacteria that has developed resistance to many
antibiotics, including methicillin, making it difficult to treat.

About Enanta

Enanta Pharmaceuticals is a research and development company that uses
its novel chemistry approach and drug discovery capabilities to create best
in class small molecule drugs in the anti-infective field. At the heart of
Enanta is its commitment to innovative chemistry that surpasses traditional
medicinal chemistry approaches. Enanta is developing novel protease,
polymerase, and cyclophilin-based inhibitors targeted against the Hepatitis
C virus (HCV). Additionally, the Company has created a new class of
macrolide antibiotics, called Bicyclolides, which overcomes bacterial
resistance. Antibacterial focus areas include superbugs, respiratory tract
infections, and intravenous and oral treatments for hospital and community
MRSA. Enanta is a privately held company with offices in Watertown, MA.
More information about the company can be found at http://www.enanta.com.

Zyvox is a registered trademark of Pfizer Inc. and CUBICIN is a
registered trademark of Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Enanta Pharmaceuticals
http://www.enanta.com

Other news:

• New vaccine to combat breast cancer
• Prescription ‘Ultras’: Newest Preteen High
• ASH Applauds Surgeon General Steven Galson’s Call To Action To Prevent And Reduce Deep-Vein Thrombosis And Pulmonary Embolism

 Some 2.3 million
children a year, mostly from low- to middle-income families, have no health
care coverage to pay for preventive or other medical needs, even though at
least one of their parents is insured, according to a new study supported
by HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Center
for Research Resources, part of HHS’ National Institutes of Health.

The new study, published in the Oct. 22/29, 2008, online issue of JAMA,
is one of the first to examine the characteristics of uninsured children
under age 19 whose parents were insured all year. These children account
for a quarter of the estimated 9 million uninsured children in the United
States.

Researchers led by Jennifer DeVoe, M.D., of the Oregon Health & Science
University in Portland, studied 2002-2005 national data from AHRQ’s Medical
Expenditure Panel Survey and found that children from low-income families
where at least one parent had health insurance were more than twice as
likely to be uninsured at some point during the year as were similar
children from high-income families. They were also 73 percent more likely
to be uninsured for more than 6 months. In 2005, a typical, low-income
family of four earned between roughly $24,000 and $39,000, whereas the
typical high-income family of four earned more than $77,000 a year.

Children from middle-income families — those earning between $39,000
and $77,000 a year for a typical four-member family — had a 48 percent
greater chance of being uninsured with at least one insured parent at some
point during the year compared with high-income children and had a 56
percent higher likelihood of being uninsured for over 6 months.

“These findings add to our understanding of children’s health care
coverage gaps,” said AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D. “When children
are insured, they have improved access to a regular source of care,
including preventive health services.” Dr. Clancy added that some of the
low-income uninsured children likely qualify for public coverage, but their
parents may not be aware of their eligibility.

The researchers also found that:

— Children living with an insured single parent had two times the odds of
being uninsured at any point during the year as children living with two
married people of whom at least one was insured and more than twice the
odds of having a coverage gap lasting 6 months or more.

— Children with at least one parent who did not complete high school were
44 percent more likely than children whose parent or parents were high
school graduates to be uninsured at any point during the year, and they
had 87 percent greater odds of being uninsured for more than 6 months.

— Hispanic children had a 65 percent higher probability than non-Hispanic,
white children of being uninsured at some point during the year with an
insured parent and an 80 percent greater chance of being uninsured for
more than 6 months.

— Children whose parents had Medicaid or other public insurance were 54
percent less likely to be uninsured at any point during the year than
children with privately insured parents and 59 percent less likely to be
uninsured for more than 6 months.

— Children living in the South and those in the West had 70 percent and 52
percent greater odds, respectively, of being uninsured at some point
during a year with a parent covered all year, compared to children
living in the Northeast. They also had an 83 percent and 49 percent
greater likelihood, respectively, of being uninsured for more than 6
months.

The study was supported in part by the Biostatistics Shared Resource of
the Oregon Health & Science University and the Oregon Clinical
Translational Research Institute, which is part of a national Clinical and
Translational Science Award consortium funded through the National Center
for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health.

Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality
http://www.ahrq.gov

DEHRADUN: Uttarakhand health
department officials are trying to verify claims of Yoga guru Ramdev of having
found the “Sanjivini Booti” mentioned in the Ramayana.

Health
Minister Ramesh Pokhariyal Nishank has already asked Ramdev to allow
verification process of the new herb.

“We are trying to verify the
importance of the new herb being found by Baba Ramdev’s team,” a top health
department official has said.

The health department is also
consulting the National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI), which has done lot
of research on the “Sanjivini Booti”.

In the wake of the claims, the
health department, which is also pursuing to find the herb, are unsure whether
it would continue its research programme to find the “Sanjivini” in the
Himalayas.

“Sanjivini Booti” (Biological name Selaginella
bryopteris) belongs to the carboniferous period, which existed about 300 million
years ago.

It took less than a week for a team of Ramdev’s Divya Yog
Trust to find the herb from the Himalayas.

With Acharya Balkrishna,
a member of the Trust who was part of the team that found the herb, openly
displaying the new find, a controversy is brewing up whether the “booti” is
real.