New York Daily News Swine flu no worse than seasonal flu for most victims, study says Los Angeles Times More children and young adults were hospitalized as a result of pandemic H1N1 influenza than is normal for seasonal flu, but that was simply because those groups were disproportionately infected, not because the symptoms were worse, researchers said … More Americans are told to get flu vaccine MarketWatch H1N1 Pandemic Flu Even Milder Than Seasonal Strains BusinessWeek Flu shots available earlier than usual this year Dallas Morning News WebMD

Nature.com (blog) Federal judge continues to dis human embryonic stem cell research Los Angeles Times Last month, Judge Royce Lamberth of the US District Court in Washington, DC, threw the entire field of human embryonic stem cell research into doubt when he ordered the National Institutes of Health to stop funding research projects involving the cells … Judge Won't Lift Block on Stem Cell Research Funding MedPage Today Judge denies request to lift injunction on stem cell research Washington Post Judge won't let stem cell money keep flowing The Associated Press AFP

The National Institutes of Health will launch a multi-year study this fall to look at the potential health effects from the oil spill in the Gulf region.

To help advance research on how genes affect responses to medicines, the National Institutes of Health is spending $15 million over five years to expand a key resource, the Pharmacogenomics Knowledge Base (PharmGKB), http://www.pharmgkb.org/.

Telegraph.co.uk Osteoporosis Drugs Tied to Esophageal Cancer ABC News A second look at British registry data indicates that esophageal cancer may be more common after all in patients taking oral bisphosphonate drugs, a type of drug used to treat osteoporosis, for long periods. … Osteoporosis Drugs May Be Linked to Cancer Risk WebMD Osteoporosis drugs linked to cancer Celebrities With Diseases Osteoporosis drugs linked to esophageal cancer Food Consumer U.S.

A chemical that rid mice of malaria-causing parasites after a single oral dose may eventually become a new malaria drug if further tests in animals and people uphold the promise of early findings. The compound, NITD609, was developed by an international team of researchers including Elizabeth A. Winzeler, Ph.D., a grantee of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

“Newborn babies should not be given sugar as pain relief,” read the headline in The Guardian . The newspaper said the routine use of tiny amounts of sugar before minor medical procedures is common practice but “it does not work and may damage their brains”. Current medical guidelines recommend that babies swallow sucrose (sugar) solution before minor hospital procedures, such as the newborn heel prick blood test , as sugar solution is safe and effective at reducing pain they will feel.

On average, a lower blood pressure goal was no better than the standard blood pressure goal at slowing progression of kidney disease among African-Americans who had chronic kidney disease resulting from high blood pressure, according to results of the African-American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension (AASK), the largest and longest study of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in African-Americans.

The National Institutes of Health announced today that it has awarded the first new grants under the Biomedical Research on the International Space Station (BioMed-ISS) initiative, a collaborative effort between NIH and NASA. Using a special microgravity environment that Earth-based laboratories cannot replicate, researchers will explore fundamental questions about important health issues, such as how bones and the immune system get weak.

An international consortium today published a third-generation map of human genetic variation, called the HapMap, which includes data from an additional seven global populations, increasing the total number to 11 populations.