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Terrence Higgins Trust Opens A New HIV And Sexual Health Centre In Nottingham
On 30 July sexual health and HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) will officially open its new centre in Nottingham. The charity has been based in the city since February 2008 from its old site in Lace Market. THT"s new centre on 23 Barker Gate, which is funded by NHS Nottingham City, NHS Nottinghamshire County, Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Council will offer a wider range of services to support people living with HIV and help prevent the rising rates of sexual ill-health.

Federal Program Cracks Down On Medicare Fraud In Houston
A federal program targets Medicare fraud in the Houston area as news of three cases representing at least $35 million in false claims emerged within the past week. The Houston Chronicle reports on the three cases, noting: "These Houston-area scams alleged in two FBI complaints and one Montgomery County indictment were among six reported nationally in a single week - representing at least $285 million in false billings, records showed. "This is an astounding amount," said Houston"s FBI spokeswoman Pat Villafranca. The $285 million is more than four times the amount stolen during robberies of U.S. banks during all of 2008, she said. This month, Houston became the fourth metropolitan area - joining Miami, Los Angeles and Detroit - to create a ramped-up fraud strike force. It goes by the acronym "HEAT," Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team."
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Mouse Study Indicates Immune Cells From Spleen May Be Essential In Healing Heart Attack Damage
It takes a spleen to mend a broken heart - that"s the conclusion of a surprising new report from researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Systems Biology, directed by Ralph Weissleder, MD, PhD. In the July 31 issue of Science the team reports how, in following up an intriguing observation, they discovered an unexpected reservoir of the immune cells called monocytes in the spleen and went on to show that these cells are essential to recovery of cardiac tissue in an animal heart attack model.
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Higher Levels Of A Certain Protein Associated With Lower Risk Of Type 2 Diabetes

Persons with higher levels of adiponectin, a protein that is produced by fat cells and that has anti-inflammatory and insulin-sensitizing properties, have an associated lower risk of type 2 diabetes, according to an analysis of previous studies, reported in the July 8 issue of JAMA. Some studies have suggested several mechanisms through which adiponectin may decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes, although the strength and consistency of the relation between plasma adiponectin and risk of type 2 diabetes has been unclear, according to background information in the article. Shanshan Li, M.D., M.Sc., of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues conducted a review and meta-analysis to assess the consistency of the association of adiponectin levels and risk of type 2 diabetes. The researchers identified thirteen studies with a total of 14,598 participants and 2,623 new cases of type 2 diabetes that met criteria for inclusion in the meta-analysis. The authors found that higher adiponectin levels were associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. This inverse association was consistently observed in whites, East Asians, Asian Indians, African Americans and Native Americans. The results did not differ substantially by method of diabetes ascertainment, study size, follow-up duration, body mass index or proportions of men and women. "Although these epidemiologic studies cannot establish causality, the consistency of the association across diverse populations, the dose-response relationship, and the supportive findings in mechanistic studies indicate that adiponectin is a promising target for the reduction of risk of type 2 diabetes," the authors write. The researchers add that recent studies have shown that adiponectin levels can be increased through pharmaceutical and lifestyle interventions. "In addition, adiponectin levels may be useful for identifying persons likely to benefit most from interventions to treat "dysfunctional adipose tissue" and its metabolic complications. Future studies should also evaluate whether adiponectin is useful for prediction of type 2 diabetes in addition to established risk factors using statistical techniques appropriate for prognostic analyses." JAMA. 2009;302[2]:179-188. Journal of the American Medical Association


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