When doctors follow guidelines for treating patients after a heart attack, more patients survive, according to a new study from Sweden published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The findings show that "things that we test in clinical trials do work in real life (and) make huge impacts on mortality," said Dr. Debabrata Mukherjee, a cardiologist at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso who wrote a commentary published with the study in JAMA.

An appeals court ruled on Friday the Obama administration can continue using federal money to fund human embryonic stem cell research, a possible avenue toward new treatments for many medical conditions.

The appeals court overturned a ruling by a federal judge who found that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines on such research violated the law because embryos were destroyed and it put other researchers working with adult stem cells at a disadvantage to win federal grants.

KID'S VACCINATION

Fewer parents in Bangladesh now refuse or delay vaccination of their babies than earlier, shows a study.

Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) coverage evaluation survey 2010 finds that parents of six percent children refuse vaccines for their kids while 14 percent make delay in completing the full dose of six vaccines.

The percentage of fully vaccinated children was 79, who completed their doses as per EPI schedule before celebrating first birthday. The percentage was 75 the previous year.

Air pollution triggers more heart attacks than using cocaine and poses as high a risk of sparking a heart attack as alcohol, coffee and physical exertion, scientists said on Thursday.

Sex, anger, marijuana use and chest or respiratory infections and can also trigger heart attacks to different extents, the researchers said, but air pollution, particularly in heavy traffic, is the major culprit.

Bird flu virus has killed 8,600 chickens in a farm in Rajshahi.

Some 8,600 infected chickens were culled of 'Shahi poultry farm' at Dingadoba Ghoshpara in Rajshahi city on Wednesday night.

The owner of the farm Abul Kashem said that the chickens started dying a few days ago. He later informed the livestock officers about the incident.

New cases of Nipah infection have been detected in more northern districts apart from Lalmonirhat, where it killed 17 so far.

The results of lab tests at the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) confirmed five new infections in five districts -– Kurigram, Rangpur, Nilphamari, Lalmonirhat and Dinajpur — on Monday.

There has been no report of any fresh case since Feb 5 at Hatiabandha, jolted by Nipah scare. However, experts cannot rule out person-to-person transmission as the incubation period is not over.

Alcohol causes nearly 4 percent of deaths worldwide, more than AIDS, tuberculosis or violence, the World Health Organization warned on Friday.

Rising incomes have triggered more drinking in heavily populated countries in Africa and Asia, including India and South Africa, and binge drinking is a problem in many developed countries, the United Nations agency said.

Fewer than 1.3 million people will die from cancer in Europe this year as death rates from the disease fall, researchers said Wednesday, except that more women are dying of lung cancer in every country except Britain.

The downward trend in cancer death rates in the region is being driven mainly by falls in breast cancer mortality in women, and lung and colorectal cancer in men.

Nipah has become a nightmare in border district Lalmonirhat of northern Bangladesh as experts grapple to arrest its spread.

Death toll of the fatal virus claimed to 16 on Saturday from 14, although no new cases have been reported until evening.

The virus that killed 14 people at Hatibandha Upazila in Lalmonirhat in the last four days has been identified as Nipah.

Director of the Institute of Epidemiology Diseases Control and Research (IEDCR) Mahmudur Rahman told reporters on Friday afternoon that they have been able to identify the virus through tests.

The outbreak of the virus was first marked a week back in the area. A team of IEDCR started working to identify the cause on Wednesday following a number of deaths.

At least 80 percent adults suffer from low back pain at some point in their lives, hampering their working abilities.

Experts at a seminar in Dhaka on Saturday said that injury, inappropriate sitting or standing posture, and weak muscles cause low back pain, which ultimately leads to work-related disability.

Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Centre for the Disabled organised the seminar held at the National Press Club.

German consumers were warned on Tuesday to look out for potentially contaminated eggs after highly toxic dioxin was found in the feed of poultry and hogs last week, forcing thousands of farms to halt sales.

An official in North Rhine-Westphalia state said more than 100,000 potentially contaminated eggs had been distributed from two farms over the past two week but added that only eggs sold before the problem was first noticed on December 23 could be affected.

Fish oil capsules won't help boost weight loss if you're already dieting and exercising, new research in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows.

Among a group of overweight and obese adults enrolled in a diet and exercise program, those who took omega-3 fatty acids didn't lose any more weight than those given placebo capsules, Dr. Laura F. DeFina of The Cooper Institute in Dallas and her colleagues found.

The government is working on expansion of cardiac treatment across the country, the health minister says.

"The technology and services for ensuring primary life support to cardiac patients will be made available at the district hospitals," A F M Ruhal Haque said on Thursday at a conference on cardiac disease in the city.

National Heart Foundation organised the two-day conference, which was also attended by health state minister cap (retd) Mozibur Rahman Fakir, foundation president justice Chowdhury A T M Masud and general secretary brig (retd) Abdul Malik.

Meat and milk from cloned cattle show no difference in composition from that of traditionally bred cows and so are unlikely to pose a food safety risk, an advisory committee to Britain's food safety regulator said.

The Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes, following an open meeting on Thursday, said that consumers still may want to see effective labeling of products from clones and their offspring partly due to animal welfare concerns.

Loud noise is very hazardous for mental and physical health, an expert has said.

Pran Gopal Dutta, vice-chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU), at a discussion on Thursday said complications due to sound pollution is increasing every day.

People suffer hearing impairment, headaches and insomnia for this reason, Dutta, who is a renowned ENT specialist, said.

The number of malnourished children will hit nine million by the end of the year, according to a new report.

Officials of the Institute of Public Health and Nutrition (IPHN) and Save the Children, at a seminar in Dhaka on Monday, asked the government to include large number of community health workers to prevent the situation from becoming a disaster.

Doctors at a hospital in old Dhaka have withdrawn their strike on Thursday morning, after the authorities had assured them of fulfilling their demands.

Apprentice doctors and medical officers of the city's National Medical College Hospital went on strike from Tuesday night, leaving the 300-bed hospital stranded, after relatives of a patient assaulted several doctors, the hospital authority said.

Deaths from Haiti's cholera epidemic approached 300 on Tuesday, and health experts said the illness would "settle" in the poor Caribbean nation, joining other endemic diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.

The week-old epidemic of the deadly diarrheal disease has so far mostly affected the central Artibonite and Central Plateau regions, with an accumulated 295 deaths and 3,612 cases registered to date, Haitian health authorities said.

WASHINGTON: People who smoke heavily in middle age could more than double their risk for Alzheimer`s disease and other forms of dementia 20 years later, according to research by Finnish experts published in a US journal.

It has been documented that smoking increases the risk of most diseases and mortality, but some studies have shown that smoking can reduce the chances of developing Parkinson`s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.