Ex-President Bush Hospitalized, Released After Golf Game
Former President George H. W. Bush was released from a hospital Monday in Rancho Mirage, Calif., after being admitted Sunday for dizziness and dehydration while playing golf.
"President Bush was playing golf in 94-degree heat and became dizzy and dehydrated," hospital spokeswoman Louise Fasana told CBC news. "Bush was released from Eisenhower [Medical Center] this morning and will resume his full schedule today."
The president's father, 82, was staying at the estate of Leonore Annenberg, wife of the late Walter Annenberg, according to local news reports. The estate, dubbed "Sunnylands," has a nine-hole golf course.
The 41st president is an avid golfer and stayed at the Annenberg estate in 1995, when he played in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, along with the former President Gerald R. Ford, and then-President Bill Clinton.
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Jury Awards $20 Million in Vioxx Lawsuit
A New Jersey jury ruled Monday that Vioxx caused an Idaho postal worker's heart attack and that he and his wife should receive $20 million in damages.
Frederick "Mike" Humeston, 61, took the arthritis painkiller intermittently for knee pain caused by a shrapnel wound he received during the Vietnam War, the Associated Press reported. The Boise resident suffered a heart attack in September 2001, several months before the drug manufacturer Merck put a stronger warning about cardiovascular risks on Vioxx's packaging.
The jury decided that Merck was negligent and did not provide adequate warning about potential cardiovascular risks associated with Vioxx. It awarded $18 million in compensatory damages to Humeston and $2 million to his wife, Mary.
In the next phase of the trial, jurors will decide whether punitive damages should also be assessed against Merck, the AP reported.
Merck faces thousands of lawsuits over Vioxx, which was taken off the market in September 2004 after the drug maker's own research showed that Vioxx doubled the risk of stroke and heart attack. So far, Merck has won nine cases and lost five.
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Regis Philbin to Have Triple Bypass
Television star Regis Philbin announced Monday that he's going to have triple bypass surgery this week. Philbin made the announcement as he talked with co-host Kelly Ripa on their show "Live with Regis and Kelly.
Philbin, 75, told Ripa he didn't really want to have the operation, CNN reported.
"But they tell me. I had a second opinion. So they are all in agreement that it should be the bypass. And so that's what I'm going to do. So, you know, I'm going to do it this week, and come back when I'm ready," Philbin said.
Philbin has appeared in numerous talk and game shows, including "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," over the past 40 years, CNN reported.
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Long Hours at Desk Raise DVT Risk: Study
People who spend long hours at their desks may be at even greater risk for potentially deadly blood clots called deep vein thrombosis (DVT) than passengers on long flights, concludes a study by researchers at the Medical Research Institute in Wellington, New Zealand.
They analyzed the cases of 62 people admitted to hospital for treatment of DVT and found that 34 percent of them were office workers who spent long periods of time seated at their desks. Passengers on long-distance flights accounted for just 21 percent of patients, Agence France Presse reported.
Some of the office workers in this study sat at their desks/computers for a total of 14 hours a day and went for stretches of three to four hours without getting up from their chairs.
DVT -- the formation of a blood clot in a deep vein -- most commonly occurs in the legs. The clots can break free and travel through the bloodstream to the lungs, heart or brain and cause breathing problems, chest pain, or even death from a stroke or heart attack.
The study found that DVT was most common among workers in call centers and in the information technology industry, AFP reported. The study will be published in the New Zealand Medical Journal and will be presented later this month at the annual conference of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand.
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Fruit Fly Findings May Yield Drugs for Liver Disease, Diabetes
U.K. scientists have identified cells responsible for breaking down fat in fruit flies, a finding that may help in the development of new treatments for liver diseases and diabetes in humans.
The process used by the fruit fly cells to break down fat is similar to that in humans. The researchers said studying the process in fruit flies may speed up the creation of new drugs to treat humans, BBC News reported.
The scientists at the U.K. National Institute for Medical Research found that specialized cells called oenocytes break down fat in fruit flies. The study appears in the journal Nature.
"These findings reveal that flies have an equivalent to our liver and that they store, process and burn fat in a way that is strikingly similar to us," said lead researcher Dr. Alex Gould. "We hope that a Drosophila (fruit fly) model of fatty liver disease will help us to accelerate the rate at which chemical compounds can be tested for use as new drugs for human liver diseases."
Gould and his colleagues also found that fruit flies share more than 20 "fat burning" genes with humans, BBC News reported.
"These discoveries may help us understand more about how our own bodies store and burn fat," Gould said.
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Why Are Teenagers So Contrary? It May Indeed be 'Raging Hormones'
If you ever wondered why the teenage world seems to exist in an arena of topsy-turvy mood swings and turmoil, scientists at the State University of New York's (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center may have found the answer.
In an article published in the current edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers say they've discovered that the hormone THP -- which usually acts as a tranquilizer in stress situations -- does exactly the opposite for those going through puberty.
According to a Downstate Medical Center news release, SUNY scientists, led by Sheryl S. Smith, a professor of physiology and pharmacology, found that a brain receptor called GABA-A acts exactly the opposite in teenage brains compared to how it receives the THP hormone in adult brains. Instead of calming a person during a time of high anxiety, the GABA-A receptor appears to increase a teenager's stress, the researchers found.
What makes it act this way still needs to be studied, the researchers say, but the theory is indeed that adolescent "raging hormones" may play a role.
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