Norovirus Vaccine for Cruise Ship Virus? Hope For Future Treatment?

Norovirus Vaccine for Cruise Ship Virus? Researchers may soon roll out a vaccine to prevent people from catching the norovirus, the “winter vomiting bug” or “cruise ship virus,” blamed worldwide for outbreaks on cruise ships or on planes and in hospitals, schools and prisons during the winter.

That is, if the researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, are able to improve an experimental vaccine developed for the first time against the highly contagious virus that brings sudden cramping, vomiting and diarrhea to three million people across the world every year.

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Patient Bar Codes in the UK: Good or Bad? Useful or Scary?

Patient Bar Codes in the UK: Good or Bad? Useful or Scary? It may seem like a scene straight out of sci-fi movie, but yes, all patients in the United Kingdom will be processed with barcodes by 2013.

The National Health Service announced this week that patients in all four publicly funded health care systems across the U.K. will be given barcoded wristbands. Like product barcodes, these will be read by handheld scanners.

The nationwide barcoding system is meant to cut down the risk of patients being mistaken for someone else or of being given the wrong medication—mix-ups that are common in clinics and hospitals throughout the world.

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Rivaroxaban: Game Changing Anti-Stroke Drug?

If you are suffering from atrial fibrillation, a new drug may soon be part of your therapeutic choices to improve your condition. According to a news report on the Los Angeles Times, an experimental blood thinner called rivaroxaban has been found to be “at least as good at preventing strokes as the old warhorse warfarin”.

Rivaroxaban was found to sharply reduce the risk of major bleeding among stroke patients.

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C-Difficile Drug Resistant Superbug Infections on the Rise

Despite big variations in the way health authorities monitor drug resistant infections with superbug Clostridium difficile, one thing is clear: infections are rising in Europe and are widespread.

A Europe-wide study, published in journal The Lancet, claims that the incidence of C-difficile infections in hospitals had risen to 4.1 per 10,000 patient days in 2008 from 2.45 per 10,000 patients days in 2005.

During the study, researchers followed up patients after three months and found that 22 percent of them had died, and C-difficile infection had played a part in 40 percent of those deaths.

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Afinitor Approved by FDA for SEGA

Novartis’ cancer drug Afinitor has gained the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat patients with subependymal giant cell astrocytoma (SEGA) associated with tuberous sclerosis (TS), a rare genetic disorder.

Afinitor (everolimus) was approved under the FDA’s accelerated approval program. This program allows patients to have an earlier access to the drug even while confirmatory clinical trials are still being conducted.

An FDA news release tells us more about a study involving 28 patients to test the safety and effectiveness of the drug in treating SEGA: Continue reading “Afinitor Approved by FDA for SEGA”