Washington, October 09, 2008 drug ranolazine is a safe and effective treatment for chronic stable angina and adds to the treatment options for patients with this condition. Heart disease continues to be the largest cause of death in the US, where 9.1 million people have the condition, some three percent of the population. For every patient admitted to hospital with a heart attack, there are 30 angina patients. There are a wide variety of angina treatments including Beta blockers, statins, aspirin, and diet ... Read More

Can folic acid cause cancer? Supplements of vitamin B are thought to increase the risk of bowel cancer, warns Jennifer Swift Shirley Sepstrup's busy job in a hospital lab in East Sussex left her with little time to cook, so she often relied on convenience foods, hoping that her daily multivitamin pill would make up for any dietary deficiencies. But when a colonoscopy showed that, at 52, she had developed bowel cancer - like her father, uncle and grandfather - she had ... Read More

The concentrated extract of dried broccoli sprouts cuts down the development of bladder tumours by more than half, according to a new study. The findings, published in the latest issue of the journal Cancer Research, validate studies suggesting that cruciferous vegetables like broccoli are associated with reduced risk of bladder cancer. "Although this is an animal study, it provides potent evidence that eating vegetables is beneficial in bladder cancer prevention," said Yuesheng Zhang of Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the study's senior investigator. There ... Read More

By JENNY HOPE -  Just one cup of tea a day could reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease by almost three-quarters, say researchers. Scientists studied more than 63,000 Chinese men and women.Those who drank at least 23 cups of black tea a month were 71 per cent less likely to develop the neurological condition. The research, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, was unusual in analysing the health benefits of black tea - drunk by the majority of Britons - rather than ... Read More

Avian flu (bird flu) Dr Trisha Macnair Cases of bird flu in humans have been happening sporadically since the late 1990s. Currently, it does not pose a major threat as it cannot pass easily from one human to another. The risk is if the virus mutates and triggers a global flu pandemic. As 2005 began, the deaths of two young boys in Vietnam were overshadowed by the disastrous tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean. But the boys' deaths, from a strain of ... Read More

Japanese professor Yoji Kimura believes laughter is a weapon that in healthy doses can end the world's wars. The only problem is finding a way to measure it. And so the expert on communications has invented a machine to chart out laughter and a new unit of "aH" to calculate it. "We have found that children laugh more freely, releasing 10 aH per second, which is about twice as much as an adult," Kimura, a professor at Kansai University in the western ... Read More