In Iraq and other war-torn regions of the world, landmines cause widespread and devastating injury to combatants and civilians alike. The journal, Pain Medicine, has devoted a special issue to examining the social and physical impact of landmines and the treatment of pain caused by landmine injury.

Special courts that sentence people with mental illness who are convicted of misdemeanors and low-level felonies to treatment instead of jail have the potential to save taxpayers money, according to a RAND Corporation study conducted for the Council of State Governments Justice Center.

Contrary to popular wisdom, heart disease is not primarily a male disease, and is in fact statistically far more deadly when it occurs in women. Most women are not aware that heart disease is the number one killer of women, far greater than any other disease.

"Alcohol cues" are reminders of drinking. Researchers already know that both stress and alcohol cues can produce cravings and relapse in abstinent alcoholics. New findings indicate that stress and cues work on the brain differently to influence craving, perhaps producing an additive effect, which may in turn decrease the chances of treatment success.

Scientists from Universitй Laval's Faculty of Medicine have succeeded in producing neurons in vitro using stem cells extracted from adult human skin. This is the first time such an advanced state of nerve cell differentiation has been achieved from human skin, according to lead researcher Professor Franзois Berthod.

A newly released study suggests that the majority of cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) among patients undergoing treatment for the disease may be due to new infections, not acquired resistance. If confirmed in future studies the research, in the March 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, may drive a major shift in strategy for controlling TB.

Using gene chips to profile tumors before treatment, researchers at Harvard and Yale Universities found markers that identified breast cancer subtypes resistant to Herceptin, the primary treatment for HER2-positive breast cancer. They say this advance could help further refine therapy for the 25 to 30 percent of breast cancer patients with this class of tumor.

University of Rochester scientists, while investigating the two most frequent types of mutations in cancer, discovered a possible new route to treatment that would take advantage of the mutations instead of trying to repair them. The research is reported online this week in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

A new class of targeted anti-cancer drugs that blocks the human epidermal growth factor (HER) receptor family shows promise in prolonging the lives of patients with recurrent prostate cancer, a new Cedars-Sinai study shows. The drug, a molecular targeted compound called pertuzumab, works by binding to and inhibiting the function of HER2 receptors, interrupting a key pathway that leads to cancer growth.

Two critical characteristics of breast cancer that are important to treatment can be identified by measuring gene expression in the tumor, a research team led by scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reports in Lancet Oncology online.

Researchers have discovered that the same genetic regulator that triggers growth of stem cells during brain development also plays a central role in the development of the lethal brain cancer malignant glioma. In experiments on mice with such gliomas, they showed that knocking out the function of a particular regulatory protein, Olig2, almost completely eliminated tumor formation.

A powerful two-gene test distinguishes between a pair of nearly identical gastrointestinal cancers that require radically different courses of treatment, researchers report this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.