About one in five young adults in their late 30′s received a flu shot during the 2009-2010 swine flu epidemic, a University of Michigan (U-M) study released Jan 24 says.
But about 65 percent were at least moderately concerned about the flu, and nearly 60 percent said they were following the issue very or moderately closely.
Using survey data collected from approximately 3,000 young adults during the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza epidemic, this second of three parts in a U-M Generation X Report explores the first serious infectious disease Americans ages 36-39 ever …

Pacific International Marketing, in cooperation with the Food and Drug Administration and California Department of Public Health, has issued a recall of more than 6,000 cartons of cilantro due to potential salmonella contamination. The recalled cartons were distributed in California, Arizona, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Indiana, South Carolina and Missouri.
No illnesses have been reported to date, but salmonella can cause serious, sometimes fatal infections in the elderly, very young children and those with weakened immune systems. Healthy people infected with salmonella may experience fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. Click …

A team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has devised a new method for making complex molecules. The reaction they have come up with should enable chemists to synthesize new varieties of a whole subclass of organic compounds called nitrogen-containing heterocycles, thus opening up new avenues for the development of novel pharmaceuticals and natural products ranging from chemotherapeutic compounds to bioactive plant materials such as morphine.
The team – led by Brian Stoltz, the Ethel Wilson Bowles and Robert Bowles Professor of Chemistry, and Doug Behenna, a scientific …

Drugs already approved for clinical use across a variety of therapeutic categories can be screened to identify effective agents for thyroid cancer according to a recent study accepted for publication in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). These findings could rapidly be implemented into a clinical trial to test how effective the treatment would be.
The discovery of new chemical agents capable of modulating a disease is a long and expensive process. An alternative approach that is just beginning to be explored is the potential repurposing of …

In a bid to protect an important class of antibiotics for treating humans and reduce the development of drug resistance, the US Food and Drug Administration has banned certain uses of cephalosporins in food-producing animals. The federal agency announced on Wednesday that the prohibition order comes into effect on 5 April.
The ban is intended to stop the use of “extra label” or unapproved use, of cephalosporins in what the FDA describes as the “so-called major species of food-producing animals” such as cattle, pigs (swine), chickens and turkeys.
Use of antibiotics in …