AP - When aging hampers memory, some people's brains compensate to stay sharp. Now scientists want to know how those brains make do —in hopes of developing treatments to help everyone else keep up.
AP - The House on Monday urged health agencies to expand research into postpartum depression problems that affect up to one-fifth of new mothers and can, if untreated, lead to more serious psychoses. Democrats also accepted a GOP-backed provision that approves a National Institutes of Mental Health study into the psychological consequences of abortions.
AP - When a patient gets a new prescription filled, there's a fair chance a pharmacist will be looking over the doctor's shoulder, more or less. Increasingly, pharmacists are aggressively reviewing prescriptions —mainly those for expensive, chronic conditions —and counseling patients and intervening with their doctors to head off costly, potentially deadly problems.
AP - Medtronic Inc. is stopping distribution of wires that connect some of its defibrillators to patients'hearts after learning they may have contributed to five deaths.
AP - Only 60 percent of AIDS patients in Africa still take the drugs they need to stay alive two years after starting treatment, researchers reported, noting a grim reason many stopped: death.
Reuters - Patients who undergo weight-loss stomach surgery have a higher death rate than is true for the general population, including more suicides, perhaps linked to depression, researchers said on Monday.
AP - The Vatican said Saturday it has suspended a monsignor from a senior post at the Holy See after an Italian TV program using a hidden camera recorded him making advances to a young man and asserting that gay sex was not sinful.
AFP - More than half of Kenya's 102,000 children with HIV lack access to anti-retroviral drugs, a key setback in the fight against AIDS, the country's top physician said Monday.
HealthDay - MONDAY, Oct. 15 (HealthDay News) -- An international team of scientistshas developed a blood test that could reveal which patients with mildcognitive impairment will go on to develop Alzheimer's disease.
AFP - US cancer death rates dropped by a yearly average of 2.1 percent from 2002 to 2004 -- nearly double the rate of the preceding decade -- according to a study by the country's top cancer research groups.
