University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers report a 50 percent reduction in the number of deaths among kidney hemodialysis patients who are given a new drug that helps prevent excess phosphorus from accumulating in the bloodstream. “The drug, lanthanum carbonate, is effective. It’s well-tolerated, and patients find it reasonably easy to take,” said Dr. William Finn, nephrologist and professor of medicine at UNC.

Study findings will be presented Saturday (Nov. 2) at the Amer

Generating rainfall for deserts using wind power and seawater is the subject of a new research project.

The idea involves the installation at sea of specially designed wind turbines. The turning motion of the rotors would be harnessed to pump seawater along the turbines’ hollow blades. The water would then be forced out through slits as a fine spray. These drops would evaporate, with salt falling back into the sea and a cloud of water vapour drifting inland, increasing the probabilit

The best thing since sliced bread may be bread crust: Researchers in Germany have discovered that the crust is a rich source of antioxidants and may provide a much stronger health benefit than the rest of the bread.

This is good news for those who like to complement their holiday meals with bread stuffing, which is rich in crust, but bad news for those who prefer to remove crusts from their bread, as they may be sacrificing healthful antioxidants. The research findings are scheduled to appe

Authors of an article in this week’s issue of THE LANCET-the first of a series of four articles assessing the role of the pharmaceutical industry in medicine-are critical of the way in which multinational pharmaceutical companies manipulate the provision of information, and say that this contributes to a distortion of medical research.

Joe Collier and Ike Iheanacho from Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin, London, UK, comment on how the pharmaceutical industry spends more time and resources o

Research scientists at INSERM, CNRS and the Institut Curie, in collaboration with physicians, have used a mouse model to demonstrate the efficacy of an innovative therapeutic approach to Ewing`s sarcoma: the combination of human interferon (alpha or beta) and a common anti-tumor agent, ifosfamide.

Their results were published in the November 2002 issue of Oncogene and point to an interesting lead in the development of a less intensive and more effective therapeutic strategy for Ewing`s sarc

Secretin is active in a brain region implicated in autism

Researchers from the Brain Imaging Center at McLean Hospital and Repligen Corporation (Nasdaq: RGEN) reported today the results of a clinical trial designed to assess the neurological activity of secretin by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results demonstrate for the first time in humans, that secretin is active in the central nervous system and that it potentiates activity in the amygdala, a region of the bra