Body

Vienna, Austria, Friday 16 April: Results of a German study presented today at the International Liver CongressTM 2010, the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Liver in Vienna, Austria, have shown that overall, treatment with high dose (23-28mg/kg/d) ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) is no more effective than placebo in the treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), the most advanced form of non-alcoholic liver disease associated with cirrhosis of the liver .

Vienna, Austria, Thursday 15 April: Results from a multinational phase II study presented today at the International Liver CongressTM 2010 have shown that treatment with the caspase inhibitor GS-9450 can reduce markers of liver damage in patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH – the most serious form of non-alcoholic liver disease) as demonstrated by reduced levels of alanine (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferases (AST), hepatic enzymes that indicate cell damage.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – When crises such as the recent Toyota recalls occur, public relations practitioners develop strategies to minimize damage to company images. University of Missouri researchers have found that consumers blame an organization for crises more when customers are injured, as opposed to when members or employees of the organizations are injured. In the study, MU researchers also concluded that the identity of the injured in a crisis is more important to consumers when determining blame than the actual seriousness of the crisis.

Vienna, Austria, Friday 16 April 2010: Results from two French studies presented today at the International Liver CongressTM 2010 press conference will help inform clinical practice in the treatment of patients with severe or acute alcoholic hepatitis.

Vienna, Austria, Friday 16 April: Results of an international clinical study conducted in Europe and the US presented today at the International Liver CongressTM 2010, the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Liver in Vienna, Austria, have identified a genomic portrait able to predict recurrence in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the fifth most common cancer in men .

Vienna, Austria, Friday 16th April 2010: Results from two studies presented today at the International Liver CongressTM 2010 have shown that treatment with extracorporeal devices may not confer a survival advantage for severe liver failure patients, despite positive dialysis effects. However, results among a small sub-group of patients show promise.

A firewall is the safety barrier between a computer network and the outside world. Individuals, companies and large organizations alike rely on a firewall being robust enough to fend off hackers attempting to break into a computer system. However, managing the firewall rules that decide between online friend and foe has proved to be complex, error-prone, expensive, and inefficient for many large-networked organizations, according to a research team writing in the International Journal of Internet Protocol Technology.

Researchers in China are reporting that they have found a way to determine which somatic cells -- or differentiated body cells -- that have been reprogrammed into a primordial, embryonic-like state are the most viable for therapeutic applications.

Disabled children in the UK are more likely to likely to live with low-income, deprivation, debt and poor housing. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Pediatrics found that disabled children, particularly those from black/minority ethnic/mixed parentage groups and lone-parent households experience higher levels of poverty and personal and social disadvantage than other children.

A common virus that causes wheezing and pneumonia claims the lives of up to two hundred thousand children worldwide each year, a study has found.

The research, conducted by the University of Edinburgh, also showed that about 3.4 million children require hospital treatment for severe lung infection caused by the bug – respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

RSV – which infects most children before the age of two – usually causes mild cold-like symptoms, but can lead to serious illness in babies who are born prematurely or who have congenital heart disease.

Prejudice towards obese people is rife among trainee health professionals, but can be modified, new research has found.

The study, published in the journal Obesity, says weight-based discrimination by the public has increased by 66% over the past decade with anti-fat prejudice among health professionals found to be high in western nations, and often exceeding that found within the general population.

This week, the BMJ questions the existence of a new bowel condition in autistic children dubbed "autistic enterocolitis" by Dr Andrew Wakefield and colleagues in a now infamous and recently retracted paper published by the Lancet in 1998.

In a special report, journalist Brian Deer tries to unravel the journey of the biopsy reports that formed the basis of the study, while an accompanying editorial asks does autistic enterocolitis exist at all?

Banning trans fats from all foods in the UK would prevent thousands of heart attacks and deaths every year, and would be a simple way to protect the public and save lives, say two senior doctors on bmj.com today.

Their views follow calls by public health specialists to eliminate the consumption of industrially-produced trans fats in the UK by next year.

Commissioning in the English NHS is a failing system that needs to be abandoned, says a public policy expert in an editorial published on bmj.com today.

Professor Calum Paton from Keele University argues that since 1991, purchasing or commissioning "has mutated through a series of confusing and frequent reorganisations, involving mutually incompatible policies and high costs."

Failure to pursue eradication of polio worldwide given the capacity and opportunity to do so is a violation of ethical principles, foremost among them a "duty to rescue" those in distress, according to ethicists writing in this week's edition of the Lancet.

Claudia Emerson, PhD, Program Leader in Ethics, and Peter A. Singer, MD, Director of the Canadian-based McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health (MRC) at the University Health Network and University of Toronto, present a series of compelling arguments that completing polio eradication is an ethical imperative.