South Africa ‘devastated’ by halt of HIV vaccine trials
Agence France-Presse English Wire via NewsEdge Corporation :
The supervisor of a major HIV vaccine trial in South Africa voiced “huge disappointment” Saturday after testing was halted in the wake of poor results from sister trials in Australia and the United States.

US pharmaceutical giant Merck announced on Friday that it had halted the trials of its V520 vaccine after a study found it to be ineffective.

“It is a huge disappointment because this vaccine has shown promise all the way through, but it’s only when you get in on these big trials that you start to see how the vaccine behaves,” South Africa trials supervisor Glenda Gray told AFP.

South Africa is home to nearly 5.5 million HIV-positive people.

“Although in earlier studies we saw beautiful immune responses, it doesn’t look like this immune response translates into something that could protect people against HIV infection,” Gray added.

The prototype had been tested on 700 HIV-negative people since February in five South African hospitals.

“It is devastating for us, to say the least, but we have to keep going … we need something that can prevent infection,” said Gray, who also heads AIDS research at the Chris Hani Hospital in Soweto, southwest Johannesburg.

She stressed that the prototype did not have any consequence on the health of those who participated in the study.

“It is sad and… it is a huge disappointment because it is about life and prevention of new infection,” said Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) president Zachie Achmat, the main organisation that helps people living with AIDS in South Africa.

“But it shows that there is proper control on human trials and when something is not effective it can be stopped,” said Achmat, adding, “we want to encourage them to maintain hope.”

You wouldn’t know it by looking at Americans, but life is much more enjoyable if you’re healthy and in good shape. What; you don’t believe me? Okay, allow me to elaborate. When you’re in great shape, you’re able to function easier. This is because your bo…

More: continued here

International medical cover is designed to provide medical coverage for people travelling to exotic locations. By nature it is somehow more flexible compared to the other forms of medical insurance. The speciality of this type of health insurance is that …

More: continued here

You was downright obsessed with your weight for a long time. And like most dieters, you tried everything - low calorie, starvation, the liquid fasts, ephedra, Atkins, South Beach…you name it, you’ve probably tried it. Every body knows that those extra p…

More: continued here

FREEPORT, N.Y. — AGI Dermatics, the bio- pharmaceutical laboratory that pioneered DNA research for skincare, announced DNA Repair Formula was named the best Morning Anti-Aging Treatment at the Annual Allure Best of Beauty Awards which took place on Monday September 17, 2007.

More: continued here

The heart is the most important muscle in our body, it’s our life pump. It is one of the few organs that are expected to work continuously, without rest, for a lifetime.The heart beats about 70 times a minute, 100,000 times a day and about 36 million …

More: continued here

Three or more drinks a day, whether beer, wine or spirits, boost a woman’s risk of breast cancer as much as smoking a pack of cigarettes, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.The relationship between alcohol and breast cancer is known but there has been little data on whether the choice of drink made a difference, they told a European Cancer Conference.

In what the researchers said was one of the largest studies to investigate links between breast cancer and alcohol — found that alcohol itself and the amount a person consumed were key rather than the type of drink.

“Studies have consistently linked drinking alcohol to an increased risk of female breast cancer, but until now there has been little data, most of it conflicting, about an independent role played by the choice of beverage type,” Arthur Klatsky of Kaiser Permanente in California and one of the researchers said.

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer killer of women, after lung cancer. It will be diagnosed in 1.2 million people globally this year and will kill 500,000.

Other studies have shown that light- to moderate alcohol use can protect against heart attacks, though Klatsky said other mechanisms were probably at work.

The heart protection likely comes from alcohol-induced “good” cholesterol, reduced blood clotting and decreased diabetes risk. But for breast cancer, the ethyl alcohol found in all booze likely ups the risk, the researchers said.

The researchers looked at the drinking habits of more than 70,000 women from a variety of ethnic backgrounds who supplied information during health examinations between 1978 and 1985. By 2004, nearly 3,000 of the women were diagnosed with breast cancer.

Among women who drank, the team examined a preference for a type of alcohol and how much of each drink people consumed. They also compared the total amount consumed and compared it to women who drank less than one drink a day.

Women who drank between one and two alcoholic drinks per day increased their risk of breast cancer by 10 percent compared with people who consumed less than one drink each day, the study found. The risk of breast cancer jumped by 30 percent in women who drank more than three drinks a day.

The results were also similar in different age and ethnic groups, the researchers said.

By Michael Kahn

AFP - Providing healthy people with an antiretroviral drug to protect them against HIV infection could drastically slow the spread of the virus in sub-Saharan Africa, US researchers said Tuesday.

More: continued here

People will shop interminably, ask endless questions and spend a lot of money to buy today’s luxuries like big screen TV’s, VCR’s and desktop computers and laptops. And once this sophisticated electronic gear is installed, they impulsively poke at k…

More: continued here

AP - A very early test of an experimental drug seemed to slow the spread of advanced deadly skin cancer in a small study, the drug’s U.S. developer reported in preliminary findings Wednesday.

More: continued here