Abbott Laboratories hopes to win the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval to launch its new device – MitraClip that has been designed to improve leaky heart valves without undergoing any major surgery. In a key study released Sunday, the device was found to meet all safety and effectiveness goals.

International trials of Novartis AG’s blood pressure pill Diovan and diabetes drug Starlix show, which they neither prevent heart attacks, strokes or deaths in high-risk patients, nor the development of heart disease or diabetes, respectively.

These results only serve to highlight the difficulty in finding drugs for preventing both heart disease and diabetes. Which is why, researchers recommend preventing and treating two of the most common chronic medical conditions, by focusing on exercise, eating a healthy diet, two proven methods for better health.

Alarmed by the unjustified use of potentially cancer-causing CT scans, the Medicare watchdog and senior radiologists have been prompted to call on doctors to stop ordering scans, indiscriminately.

Medical research finds over 400 new cases of cancer diagnosed in Australia every year, can be attributed to diagnostic radiology. Despite this, there has been an increase of 12% a year in the number of computerised tomography scans, known to generate far more radiation than X-rays.

Increasingly, knee replacements are becoming one of the most common surgeries in America, as painful arthritis wears out the original knee which has to be replaced. According to a 2008 paper in Arthritis Care & Research, first-time knee replacement surgeries have risen 63% between 1997 and 2004, with researchers estimating if the pace keeps up, by 2015 some 1.4 million such surgeries will have been performed.

President Barack Obama’s healthcare bill has rallied support from Support from the Catholic Health Association, a group representing Catholic hospitals, which could prove helpful in persuading anti-abortion lawmakers to vote for the overhaul, providing critical votes in the House.

Carol Keehan, the group’s Chief Executive writing on the association’s web site says though the legislation is far from perfect, however, it is the first big step toward providing health care coverage to all Americans, making an important difference to millions of people.

The debate over prostate specific antigen (PSA), the most commonly used prostate cancer screening procedure continues to grow, ever since its discoverer called it a costly public health disaster.

Richard Albin, who discovered the screening tool four decades ago, in a commentary in The New York Times, said it is not only ineffective, but costs far more now.

The PSA test, a standard screening for men since the 1990s is not recommended by the American Cancer Society that urges doctors to discuss risks and limitations of the test with their patients.

Dealing another blow to parents blaming vaccines for their children’s illness, a special U. S. court ruled Friday, vaccines containing thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative cannot cause autism on their own.

Ending an Oregon family’s quest for reimbursement, the special U. S. Court of Federal Claims ruled vaccines were not responsible for causing William Mead’s autism.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Friday, a boxed warning will be added to Plavix, an $8-billion-a-year anti-clotting drug sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Sanofi-Aventis SA, warning about reduced effectiveness in patients who are poor metabolizers of Plavix.

People whose bodies cannot effectively convert Plavix to its active form are known as poor metabolizers, with an estimated 2% to 14% of the population being poor metabolizers of Plavix.