The economic stimulus bill signed by President Obama contains more than $140 billion in health care spending, designed mostly to ease the recession’s effects on workers and also to boost long-held goals of improving the nation’s health information infrastructure. Most of the money is targeted to programs providing health coverage to low-income families or that [...]

Calorie counts in several classic recipes have crept up over the years, and it may be time for those recipes to go back to the future. That’s according to Brian Wansink, PhD, of Cornell University and Collin Payne, PhD, of New Mexico State University. The serving size and calorie composition of classic recipes needs to [...]

The incidence of potentially dangerous MRSA bloodstream infections associated with intensive care units in the U.S. has been decreasing, a new study shows. That’s contrary to a widespread perception that MRSA infections associated with central-line catheters in intensive care units (ICUs) have been increasing. It is common for the critically ill patients to have central-line [...]

Cancer survivors are more likely than people without serious health problems to be unemployed, a new study indicates. That’s especially true for breast and gastrointestinal cancer survivors, says a report in the Feb. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Factors affecting employment status included discrimination because of illnesses, adverse effects of [...]

Some of the powerful new drugs that offer relief to rheumatoid arthritis sufferers may increase risk of a different kind of suffering: shingles. Members of a class of drugs called TNF-alpha blockers nearly doubled the risk of herpes zoster, better known as shingles, among rheumatoid arthritis sufferers in a 5,040-patient German study. Humira, Kineret, and [...]

Can closing a hole in the heart be an effective treatment for migraines? New research suggests that it may for migraine sufferers with a common heart abnormality known as a patent foramen ovale (PFO). But a researcher who has studied the issue for almost a decade tells WebMD that the jury is still out on [...]

Coffee addicts: Your habit may actually be good for you. Regular coffee consumption reduces the risk of stroke in women, according to a new study. The study, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, shows that women who drank four or more cups of coffee a day had a 20% reduced risk of [...]

Following a call for more aggressive screening and treatment of cholesterol in childhood, a new study published in the journal Circulation shows that about 200,000 U.S. teens and preteens need medication to lower their cholesterol. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended last summer that doctors consider cholesterol-lowering drugs, called statins, for children aged 8 [...]

Pass the olive oil, please. There’s more good news today for people who eat a traditionally Mediterranean diet. American women whose diets are high in monosaturated fat, plant proteins, whole grains, and fish are significantly less likely to develop heart disease and stroke, according to a study published in Circulation. Researchers looked at data on [...]

- A commonly used blood pressure medication may also help erase or subdue fearful memories, researchers report in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience./p pScientists at the University of Amsterdam have discovered that the drug propranolol, a beta-blocker, prevents the return of unpleasant memories. The finding could lead to a new realm of treatments for [...]