| 09/11/2009 |
| Daily Telegraph |
| By: Presswatch |
| GPs told to stop giving antibiotics for minor ailments |
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GPs will be told to stop prescribing antibiotics to patients with coughs and colds because a rise in drug-resistant hospital bugs is putting vital health services at risk. Scientists fear the growth in the number of drug-resistant infections like MRSA is being fuelled by the routine prescription of antibiotics, even when they will not benefit the patient. All GPs are to receive a letter next week from the European Centre of Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). |
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| 09/11/2009 |
| Daily Mail |
| By: Presswatch |
| Side-effects alert for all statin users |
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Health warnings are to be issued over popular cholesterol-lowering drugs after evidence that thousands of users suffer side effects such as depression and sexual problems. Some doctors have criticised delays by the Government's drug safety watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. More than six million adults who are prescribed statins by their GPs will be told about five new 'undesirable effects' in leaflets issued with packets of the drugs. These are sleep disturbances, memory loss, sexual dysfunction, depression and a rare lung disease that can kill if left untreated. |
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| 09/11/2009 |
| Daily Telegraph |
| By: Presswatch |
| Too much gym can affect a woman's fertility, say experts |
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Exercising too hard in the gym can reduce a woman's chances of having children in the short term, a study suggests. Even after taking other factors, such as age, weight, marital status and smoking into account, figures showed those who trained the hardest were three times more likely to have fertility problems than those who exercised moderately. The findings were made by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology after a study of 3,000 women. |
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| 09/11/2009 |
| The Independent |
| By: Presswatch |
| Early test found for Alzheimer's |
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A multi-tasking test can help avoid confusion between symptoms of depression and early Alzheimer's, research suggests. One way to tell the conditions apart is to ask patients to perform two mental tasks at the same time. People with Alzheimer's performed significantly worse than healthy people or those with chronic depression, according to the study by University of Edinburgh scientists. People developing Alzheimer's suffer from mild levels of impaired reasoning and memory that are easily mistaken for signs of depression, with the result that many patients are misdiagnosed and fail to receive early treatment that could help. |
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| 09/11/2009 |
| Daily Mirror |
| By: Presswatch |
| MS risk for obese teens |
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Obese teenage girls run a greater risk of developing multiple sclerosis. An American study asked nearly 240,000 nurses for their weight and height at the age of 18 and charted their progress over 40 years. Those with a body mass index of 30 and over were found to be more than twice as likely to develop the disease of the nervous system. Study leader Kassandra Munger, of the Harvard School of Public Health, said: "Weight during adolescence, rather than childhood or adulthood, is critical in determining risk." |
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| 09/11/2009 |
| Daily Telegraph |
| By: Presswatch |
| 'Double whammy' of flu at Christmas |
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Britain faces a double whammy of influenza this winter, with swine flu and seasonal outbreaks of the virus spreading in waves, according to European health experts. The NHS has been told to prepare for its busiest winter for infectious diseases as the H1N1 pandemic returns with a vengeance after a summer lull, followed by high rates of familiar strains of flu over Christmas and the New Year. Prof Angus Nicoll, the head of the influenza programme at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), said that swine flu cases were rising across Europe. |
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| 09/11/2009 |
| By: Presswatch |
| NHS and Health Sector News |
| The Times reports that treatment centres run by the private sector are profiting from NHS funding by taking on less risky patients while being paid the same rate as publicly funded hospitals, a study suggests. Patients treated in centres that carry out thousands of planned procedures, such as hip and knee replacements, to relieve pressure on the NHS are less likely to come from deprived areas, have fewer diagnoses and undergo fewer procedures than those treated in NHS hospitals, according to analysis of more than 3.3 million patient records funded by the Department of Health. The Guardian reports that Take Care Now, a private company that hired a foreign doctor who accidentally killed a patient on his first UK shift as a locum has had a contract with Cambridgeshire NHS terminated early due to new safety concerns. |
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