No trace of a potentially deadly bacteria linked to two recent infant deaths and two other illnesses was found in a popular brand of baby formula, U.S. health officials revealed on Friday.
According to Reuters and the Associated Press (AP), scientists with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tested various brands of powdered, milk-based formula — including Mead Johnson Nutrition Co.’s Enfamil — as well as distilled or nursing water. They found no trace of Cronobacter sakazakii contamination in any of the …

Xinhua news agency reported on Friday that Chinese food safety regulators in the southern city of Shenzhen found carcinogenic mildew in peanuts and cooking oil.
Aflatoxin, the cancer-causing substance, triggered public concern this week after milk giant Mengiu Dairy Co said its Sichuan plant had destroyed products found by a government quality watchdog to contain it.
Aflatoxin occurs naturally in the environment and is produced by certain common types of fungi.
Xinhua said the Shenzhen market supervision bureau had said it found up to 4.3 times the permitted level of aflatoxin in peanuts …

Hanneke Hops wasn’t afraid of dying. What concerned her was growing old and not being able to run marathons, ride horses, or fly planes. So the 56-year-old Hayward, California, woman turned to Alan Mintz, M.D. — a radiologist who founded the Cenegenics Medical Institute in Las Vegas, which specializes in “age management medicine.”
She was prescribed recombinant human growth hormone (HGH), a synthetic version of a pituitary hormone hawked as a miraculous fountain of youth. Though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns that taking HGH poses serious health risks, …

Roche announced today that its product known as Avastin (bevacizumab) has been approved by the European Union for treatment of ovarian cancer. When used in combination with standard chemotherapy (carboplatin and paclitaxel) it will be part of a front-line (first-line following surgery) regime.
Hal Barron M.D., Chief Medical Officer and Head, Global Product Development said :
“Today’s approval of Avastin marks the first major treatment advance in newly diagnosed ovarian cancer in 15 years …
This is the fifth tumor type for which Avastin has been approved in Europe, making it one of …

An Oxford University team is to start safety trials in human volunteers after lab tests showed the vaccine works against all strains of the parasite.
UK scientists recently found the route malaria uses to enter blood cells.
They hope to target this pathway in a new approach to developing a vaccine against malaria, which kills hundreds of thousands of people a year.
Several potential malaria vaccines are already being tested in clinical trials; although no vaccine has yet been licensed for use.
Early clinical trials in Africa suggest a vaccine known as RTS,S appears …