Melbourne, Feb 26 : Forget about diets, exercise and other weight-loss methods, for LAP band surgery is a cheaper way to fight obesity and diabetes, according to a new study.

The first of its kind Victorian study by Monash and Deakin universities has found that gastric banding can also provide more healthy years to highly obese patients, while saving the system thousands of dollars in ongoing costs.

The findings come in line with calls by doctors for weight-loss surgery to be subsidised.

Washington, February 26 : Experts at the Children's Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP) say that an individual's lifetime risk of stroke can now be predicted with the aid of a new statistical model.

During a study, they used genetic information from 569 hospital patients, and showed that their predictive model could estimate an individual's overall risk of cardioembolic stroke - the most common form of stroke - with 86 percent accuracy.

"For complex diseases like stroke, it's not just a single mutation that will kill you. More likely it is an interaction of many factors," explains CHIP researcher Dr. Marco Ramoni, an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and senior author of the study reported in the journal Stroke.

Washington, Feb 26 : Women who are fertile for more than 39 years and have natural menopause are at a lower risk of contracting Parkinson's disease, says a new study.

The study, which will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 61st Annual Meeting in Seattle, April 25 to May 2, 2009, provides evidence that longer exposure to the body's own hormones may protect women from the disease.

London, Feb 26 : A new study has suggested that heart-healthy diets that reduce calorie intake - regardless of differing proportions of fat, protein, or carbohydrate - can help overweight and obese adults achieve and maintain weight loss.

During the study, researchers found similar weight loss after six months and two years among participants assigned to four diets that differed in their proportions of these three major nutrients.

Siliguri (WB), Feb 26: Authorities in West Bengal have said about 5,000 birds would be culled after Siliguri reported cases of H5N1 strain of bird flu virus.

The cases were sent to a testing lab in Bhopal and results were positive. Officials said they would begin culling soon.

"The culling operation will be carried out within a three kilometers radius. We have not yet received information on bird census. Tentatively 5,000 need to be culled," said Kausturi Sengupta, acting Sub Divisional Officer, Siliguri.

London, February 26 : An international study suggests that HIV is evolving so rapidly to escape the human immune system that it may prove very difficult to develop a vaccine that keeps pace with the changing nature of the virus.

The researcher behind the study have revealed that they have found HIV to be able to adapt rapidly to counter human genes controlling immune system molecules that can target it for destruction.

They, however, insist that that finding would not affect the impact of anti-HIV medicines.