Beijing - Chinese authorities released a long-awaited health reform action plan last week, but it is only the first step in a long march towards curing endemic problems marring the country's medical system, analysts say. Over the next three years, 850 billion yuan (124 billion dollars) will be spent on lowering the costs of medicines, building and renovating hospitals and clinics, training medical staff, and improving and expanding the current medical insurance scheme.

Washington, Apr 11: Mount Sinai researchers have identified a novel mechanism that might link type 2 diabetes to Alzheimer’s disease.

Lead researcher Dr. Giulio Maria Pasinetti said that the relationship between type-2 diabetes and Alzheimer''s disease is elusive. Not all subjects with type-2 diabetes are affected by Alzheimer''s disease, and similarly, not all Alzheimer''s disease cases are diabetic.

However, recent studies have shown that people affected by type-2 diabetes are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer''s disease dementia. But the reason is not known.

Washington, April 11 : A novel therapy for metastatic prostate cancer has shown considerable promise in early clinical trials by reducing signs of the disease in patients with drug-resistant cancer.

Of 30 men who received low doses of one the drugs in a multisite phase I/II trial designed to evaluate safety, 22 showed a sustained decline in the level of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in their blood.

Washington, Apr 11 : Researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Centre have identified a molecule that prompts damaged heart cells to repair themselves after a heart attack.

The research team led by Drs. J. Michael DiMaio and Ildiko Bock-Marquette has discovered a molecule called, Thymosin beta-4 (TB4), which is expressed by embryos during the heart's development and encourages migration of heart cells.

They showed that introducing TB4 systemically after a heart attack encourages new growth and repair of heart cells as early as 24 hours after systemic injection.

In the mouse study, researchers found that TB4 initiates capillary tube formation of adult coronary endothelial cells in tissue culture.

Washington, April 11 : Johns Hopkins researchers say that several factors may explain why a stay in an intensive care unit (ICU) leads many patients to report depression after they go home, including a high level of organ failure and being given relatively high doses of a benzodiazepine sedative.

"The hope is that as we learn more about the effect of variations in ICU care, we''ll be able to predict which patients are most susceptible to depression, prevent some depression by changing ICU practices, and make sure patients receive adequate mental health monitoring after discharge," says Dr. O. Joseph Bienvenu, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Washington, Apr 11: Researchers from Portland State University have developed what they call a ‘double whammy’ drug that not only kills malaria parasite but also reverses resistance to other drugs.

The drug called acridone derivative has been developed by Jane Kelly and colleagues, and it contains a chemical, which prevents the malaria parasite getting rid of a toxic by-product of feeding on red blood cells.

By combining the new drug with existing ones such as chloroquine and quinine, it inhibits the genetic defence mechanism thus allowing them to do their job.

When the parasite enters the body it attacks red blood cells and take away the haemoglobin, from which they take amino acids as their food.