While many people believe that alcohol-impaired (AI) drivers are usually alcoholics, in fact, 80 percent of AI incidents are caused by binge drinkers. A recent study conducted among college students has found that binge drinkers, even when legally intoxicated, nonetheless believe they having adequate driving abilities.

Access to treatment for alcohol dependence (AD) in rural and remote areas is limited. This study evaluated the effectiveness of two pharmacotherapies for AD – naltrexone alone, and in combination with sertraline – among Alaska Natives (ANs) and other Alaskans living in rural settings. Findings indicate that naltrexone is just as effective on its own as it is in combination with sertraline.

Women and men tend to have different types of stress-related psychological disorders. Women have greater rates of depression and some types of anxiety disorders than men, while men have greater rates of alcohol-use disorders than women. A new study of emotional and alcohol-craving responses to stress has found that when men become upset, they are more likely than women to want alcohol.

At first, fruit flies eat like horses. Hatching inside over-ripe fruit where they were laid, they feed wildly in the sugar-rich environment until nature sends them an offer they can’t refuse. To survive, they must leave the fruit, wander off and burrow into the earth where they avoid food as if it were poison. Only then can the larvae grow and hatch into flies that will take wing to lay their own eggs.

Your fate can be determined by tiny events. Imagine you live in the city and you walk everywhere to get exercise – you are healthy and not afraid of getting mugged. You almost never eat breakfast so you don’t stop at the donut shop on the way to work, until one day the manager replaces the girl at the counter with her pretty red-haired younger sister.

FDA says "wait" to dying men.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today announced a new project that expands its efforts to encourage beneficiaries covered by traditional Medicare to take advantage of Internet-based resources to track their health care services and better communicate with their providers.

Mental Illness has a huge toll on lost earnings of American workers. Mental Health report shows that 30 days-off a year due to mood and anxiety disorders cost Americans at least $193 billion a year in lost earnings alone.

Noting that many physicians across the country who lead small practices are at a business breaking point, David M. Dale, MD, FACP, president of the American College of Physicians (ACP) testified today before the House Small Business Committee. Dr. Dale emphasized that practices are medicine’s small businesses, where much of their revenue is tied directly to Medicare’s flawed reimbursement rates and formulas.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis working with diabetic mice have examined in unprecedented detail the immune cells long thought to be responsible for type 1 diabetes.

The radioactive carbon-14 produced by above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s and ’60s has helped researchers determine that the number of fat cells in a human’s body, whether lean or obese, is established during the teenage years. Changes in fat mass in adulthood can be attributed mainly to changes in fat cell volume, not an increase in the actual number of fat cells.

Study findings presented at the May 2008 Pediatric Academic Societies and Asian Society for Pediatric Research Joint Meeting indicate that childhood and adolescent obesity negatively impacts vascular endothelial function, which relates to cardiac health.

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have discovered how an antibiotic works to modulate the activity of a neurotransmitter that regulates brain functions, which eventually could lead to therapies to treat Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, epilepsy, stroke, dementia and malignant gliomas.