Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE: BSX) announced it has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market its TAXUS(R) Liberte(R) Atom(TM) Paclitaxel-Eluting Coronary Stent System, a highly deliverable, next-generation drug-eluting stent (DES) specifically designed for treating small coronary vessels. It was approved for use in vessels as small as 2.25 mm in diameter and joins the TAXUS(R) Express(R) Atom(TM) Stent as the only drug-eluting stents approved for small vessel use in the U.S. The Company plans to begin a full U.S. launch of TAXUS Liberte Atom next month.
Women who have premature menopause because of medical interventions are at an increased risk of developing lung cancer, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Cancer. The startling link was made by epidemiologists from the Universitç© de Montrç©al, the Research Centre of the Centre Hospitalier de l"Universitç© de Montrç©al and the INRS - Institut Armand-Frappier. "We found that women who experienced non-natural menopause
are at almost twice the risk of developing lung cancer compared to women who experienced natural menopause," says Anita Koushik, a researcher at the Universitç© de Montrç©al"s Department of Social and Preventive Medicine and a scientist at the Research Centre of the Centre Hospitalier de l"Universitç© de Montrç©al. "This increased risk of lung cancer was particularly observed among women who had non-natural menopause by having had both their ovaries surgically removed." 
Scientists at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have published new findings about a cause of a condition at the root of genetic disorders such as Down Syndrome, pregnancy loss and infertility. Called aneuploidy, the condition is an abnormal number of chromosomes, and the research team found that if a mother"s egg cell has a mutation in just one copy of a gene, called Bub1, then she is less likely to have offspring
that survive to birth. The findings appear in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the week of July 13. Sundar Venkatachalam, an assistant professor of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology at UT Knoxville, originally was studying the gene for a possible connection to colon cancer, when he found his lab mice showed strange fertility characteristics. 
A sixteen-month study of consensus-based diagnosis of patients with disorders of consciousness has shown that 41% of cases of minimally conscious state (MCS) were misdiagnosed as vegetative state (VS), a condition associated with a much lower chance of recovery. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Neurology have demonstrated that standardized neurobehavioral assessment is more sensitive than diagnoses determined by clinical consensus. Steven Laureys, from the
University of Liege, Belgium, worked with a team of researchers, including Caroline Schnakers and Joseph Giacino, to compare consensus-based diagnoses of VS and MCS to those based on the JFK Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R), a well-established standardized neurobehavioral rating scale. Laureys said, "Differentiating the vegetative from the minimally conscious state is often one of the most challenging tasks facing clinicians involved in the care of patients with disorders of consciousness.
The Diabetes UK Media Relations Team has been shortlisted as one of five finalists for The Third Sector Excellence Awards in the category of Communications Team. The other finalists competing for one of the industry"s most prestigious awards are the Children"s Society, Crimestoppers Trust, EveryChild and Macmillan Cancer Support. Winners of all the awards will be announced at an awards ceremony on 24 September at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. Paul McDonald,
Head of Media at Diabetes UK, said: "It"s fantastic to have made it through to the final stages of such a prestigious award. "Our job is to raise awareness of diabetes and the profile of the organisation through the media.