Drug companies don’t need to give doctors thousands of dollars in kickbacks to sway them to prescribe their medications and implant their devices. A new study published online in JAMA Internal Medicine shows that doctors who received a free meal from a pharmaceutical company were more likely to prescribe the drug the company was promoting than doctors who received no such meals.
On Monday, Google’s mobile site, as well as its iOS and Android apps, introduced a feature designed to help users find more relevant information on medical symptoms. You don’t have to enter a specific symptom to get information; you can look up something as vague as “my stomach hurts.”
Two pharmaceutical companies have confirmed that human trials for a Zika vaccine will begin within the next few weeks. However, they have confirmed that actual vaccines may not be available for mass consumption for another year or so. [1]
Several companies have competed in a bid to win the right to be the first to test the newfound Zika vaccine on humans. Pennsylvania’s Inovio Pharmaceuticals and South Korea’s GeneOne Life Sciences have been granted access to the first studies due to their success with the vaccine in testing on animals.
A yellow fever epidemic has been declared in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 67 confirmed cases and 1000 suspected. There have been 5 deaths so far.
Yellow fever has been spotted in three provinces, including the capitol city of Kinshasa. Seven of the cases have been indigenous to the region, where 58 were brought in from Angola where it is suspected that the disease originated from.
A very small study, with only 10 subjects, is showing promising results in the treatment of Alzheimer’s. While it was previously thought that memory loss was permanent with this degenerative disease, research is showing that reversal of the symptoms can actually occur if patients follow a specific protocol.
High doses of vitamin D have been shown in a new study to help the immune systems of multiple sclerosis (MS) sufferers.
MS is a chronic, incurable disease that attacks the central nervous system. Symptoms include numbness in the limbs, difficulty walking, paralysis, vision loss, fatigue, and pain.
Obamacare was instituted to make sure that every American had access to healthcare, especially low-income individuals and families. But Obamacare insurance premiums are set to go up yet again. For many, their families will be covered, but it could be a hardship.
In 2017, some of the most popular types of Obamacare health insurance plans want to jack up their prices by 10% or more in 14 major cities, an analysis published Wednesday reveals.
With high-end food profits often being as lucrative as street drug-trade, the problem of ‘fake foods’ continues to persist. One main ‘fake food’ stocking store shelves is olive oil – with fake olive oil being exported from Italy. With first-pressed, real olive oil going for as much as $50 a gallon, food fakers have been adding cheap additives like sunflower or canola oil to real, extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) to produce the same gallon of ‘olive oil’ for as little as $7.
Experts have concluded that it is essential that the population is tested for colon cancer at age 50 and continues to do so every 10 years until the age of 75. However, they have now stated that there is no one screening method that is superior to another, leaving it up to the individual to decide the method with which they are most comfortable. [1]
The same technological advances that brought us the Internet are about to change farming forever, though some say it’s a bittersweet way to make sure the world gets its organic produce on schedule.
The technologies used for the old-paradigm mono-crop are getting more high-tech than ever, but will this affect the slow-food movement, and the desire of consumers to access high quality, non-GM, organic food from their farmer down the lane?
