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Bill Would Allow Federal Funding For Needle Exchange Programs
House Democrats on Friday as part of a spending measure to fund the Departments of Labor and HHS for fiscal year 2010, "unveiled legislation to lift a ban on federal funding for needle-exchange programs, a shift to try to reduce [HIV infections] but one that will probably spark a fight," Reuters/Boston Globe reports (7/11). The ban has been included in the annual spending bill in previous years. House Appropriations Committee Chair David Obey (D-Wis.) said, "Scientific studies have documented that needle exchange programs, when implemented as part of a comprehensive prevention strategy, are an effective public health intervention for reducing [HIV] infections and do not promote drug use" (Reuters, Pelofsky, 7/10). "The move is in keeping with a pledge [President] Obama made during the primaries to remove the prohibition on such funding, although the ban was carried in his budget request this year," CQ Today reports (Wolfe, 7/10). However, "Republicans are girding for a fight over the ban and lawmakers could try to restore it as the legislation moves through the House during the next two weeks," according to Reuters (7/10). The bill also addresses sex education and "appears to continue Democrats" slow march away from funding abstinence-only sex education," CQ reports (7/10).

Automated Tissue Engineering On Demand
Skin from a factory - this has long been the dream of pharmacologists, chemists and doctors. Research has an urgent need for large quantities of "skin models", which can be used to determine if products such as creams and soaps, cleaning agents, medicines and adhesive bandages are compatible with skin, or if they instead will lead to irritation or allergic reactions for the consumer. Such test results are seen as more meaningful than those from animal experiments, and can even make such experiments largely superfluous.
News of the day
AICR And Giant Food Encourage Consumers To Shop For Health, Eat For Life
The American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) is launching a new campaign in partnership with Giant Food. The campaign, called Shop for Health, Eat for Life, will run in all Giant food stores from June 19 to July 2, 2009.
Cardiovascular

Migraine Sufferers Benefit From Forehead Lifts

Migraine headaches are a drain - not only on the estimated 30 million Americans who suffer from them, but on the economy, too. Because pain and other symptoms caused by migraine headaches can be quite severe, it is projected that nearly $13 billion is spent every year in headache treatment and loss of time from work, which no one can afford these days. But according to a new study in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), there is hope for severe and frequent migraine sufferers who can"t find relief in conventional remedies. "Nearly one out of four households, including 18 percent of women, suffer from migraines and many patients are not only eager, but desperate to stop the pain," said ASPS Member Surgeon and study author Bahman Guyuron, MD, professor and chairman, department of plastic surgery, University Hospitals Case Medical Center. "In this study, we"ve shown that surgical treatment of migraine headaches is safe, effective, and that this reasonably short operation can have a colossal impact on the patients" quality of life - all while eliminating signs of aging for some patients, too." For nearly a decade, researchers have been testing the concept that migraines are caused when a person"s trigeminal nerve branches are irritated. When the muscles around these branches are incapacitated, the headaches stop, which is why some patients have found relief from the "freezing" effect of Botox treatments. However, according to this study, removal of these muscles or "triggers," offers an easily attainable and permanent fix. In this double-blind, placebo controlled clinical trial, researchers (including a plastic surgeon and two neurologists) from Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, identified the three most common trigger sites and then randomly assigned 75 patients to either the actual (49 patients) or sham-surgery groups (26 patients). Patients then completed questionnaires and underwent either a real or perceived deactivation operation on their predominant migraine trigger site, which for most patients, was similar to that of a traditional forehead lift. One year later, 57 percent of the patients in the actual surgery group reported complete elimination of migraine headaches, compared with only 4 percent in the sham surgery group. Furthermore, 83 percent of the actual surgery group observed at least a 50 percent reduction in migraines. And while there was a high (57 percent) incidence of symptom improvement in the sham surgery group, which has been similarly reported in other studies and could be attributed to the placebo effect, among other things - researchers point out that the difference in migraine improvement and elimination reported by the two groups was statistically significant. "Though one might not think to look to plastic surgeons to treat migraines, we are commonly involved in peripheral nerve surgery and treat nerve-related pain, so this is a meaningful addition to the field of reconstructive plastic surgery," said Dr. Guyuron. "And I can say that these procedures are the most rewarding for me, because these are the patients that come back and report that their lives have been changed." According to ASPS statistics, nearly 5 million reconstructive plastic surgery procedures were performed in 2008. ASPS Public Relations American Society of Plastic Surgeons


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