Washington, Nov 7 : Researchers from UC Davis Cancer Centre have identified a metabolic deficiency in pancreatic cancer cells that can be used to slow the progression of one of the most fatal cancers.

They have found that pancreatic cancer cells cannot produce the amino acid arginine, which plays an essential role in cell division, wound healing, immune function and hormone regulation.

By depleting arginine levels in cell cultures and animal models, the team was able to significantly reduce pancreatic cancer-cell proliferation.

New York - The World Health Organization on Thursday praised a decision to completely ban smoking and sale of cigarettes inside UN headquarters in New York as well as in other cities.

A smoking ban had been in place, but government delegates attending UN meetings at headquarters in New York, Geneva and Vienna, the three major UN buildings, usually ignore the ban, citing their rights as government officials.

A research by Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, University of Minnesota and the Department of Epidemiology and Cardiovascular Diseases Program, University of North Carolina has revealed that whole grain cereals can ward off heart failure risk. The researchers used data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) for their study. They analyzed the results of baseline exams of more than 14,000 White and African American adults conducted in 1987-89, with follow-up exams completed during 1990-92, 1993-95, and 1996-98. By whole-grain foods the researchers meant oatmeal or grits, whole-grain cold cereal, and whole-grain or dark bread.

Harare  - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government promised it would repay an international donor organisation 6.5 million US dollars that was meant for the country's anti-malaria campaign but disappeared, a local newspaper reported Thursday.

The money was part of a 103-million-dollar grant from the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, 28.5 million dollars of which was destined for the health ministry for prevention and treatment of malaria.

Washington, November 6 (ANI): A new study has revealed that extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is increasingly common and deadlier than previously thought.

The study compared patients with XDR-TB to individuals with other types of multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), and showed that those with the former condition were four times as likely to fail treatment and three times more likely to die.

Published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the study also found that MDR-TB was "a major threat to public health," representing 2.7 percent of new TB cases in South Korea in 2004, up from 1.6 percent in 1994.

London, November 6 : A team of researchers says that the reason why the STEP trial of an experimental vaccine against AIDS failed could be partially because it made some people’s immune cells more vulnerable to HIV infection.

Lead researcher Eric Kremer, of the University of Montpellier in France, said that the research group examined why people participating in the STEP vaccine trial who had previously been exposed to a cold virus, adenovirus 5, seemed more likely to become infected with HIV-1 than those who hadn''''t been exposed to the virus.