NEWS: Health and Medical

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The rate of tuberculosis among Canada's 55,000 Arctic Inuit people is catastrophically high and much more must be done to combat the lung disease, activists said on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius ratcheted up the pressure on health insurance companies on Wednesday, urging them to forgo short-term profits to make coverage more affordable and to stop fighting the Obama administration's reform effort.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A serious bout with a stomach bug can raise a child's risk of having irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) later on, new research shows.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Music class may help improve certain types of sound perception in deaf children who have cochlear implants, a new study hints.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The number of New Yorkers who die of cocaine overdose appears to go up when the temperature surpasses 75 degrees, a new study suggests.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Inoculating children against flu protects more people of all ages in the larger community, probably because young people tend to spread viruses through physical play, Canadian researchers said on Tuesday.

Panera Bread customers around the country soon will be able to tally calories for their smokehouse turkey panini and broccoli cheddar soup with just a glance at the menu board

The Orphan Drug Act has been around since 1983 offering tax incentives and competition protection for drugs aimed at treating rare diseases. But there have been relatively few orphan drugs developed, so the FDA is beating the bushes for more participation.

FDA staffers recently ran a two-day workshop in Claremont, Calif., to help drug developers fill out the application to get orphan-drug status, the WSJ says in an article this morning. Another workshop is planned for the University of Minnesota in August and there’s talk about doing one in Europe.

There are roughly 350 orphan drugs currently approved, covering about 150 rare diseases. The core requirement for orphan status is that the medicine treats a disease affecting fewer than 200,000 Americans, a limited market that often makes such treatments very expensive. Last year, 250 requests for orphan designation were filed with the FDA, and 160 received it.

Of course, getting more applications doesn’t mean more drugs will make it through the FDA approval process, orphan status or not, the WSJ notes. But the FDA officials with the orphan program hope that increasing the application pool will boost the chances of getting more rare-disease treatments to market.

The first workshop drew 29 potential sponsors, three-quarters of which said they had never filed an orphan-drug application before. Not that the process is really that hard. “It’s not ‘War and Peace,’ ” an FDA official told the WSJ. “The applications are six or seven pages.”

Case history bonus: See here for the story of a mother seeking orphan status for a drug to help her twin girls with a rare but deadly cholesterol metabolism disorder.

A 32-year-old Kentucky woman who said she didn't know that she was pregnant delivered her newborn son on the floor of her laundry room by herself and even cut the umbilical cord.

The leader of an assisted suicide group charged with helping a 58-year-old Georgia man with cancer kill himself says he's looking forward to a trial that he hopes will validate the group's work.

It’s crunch time in the fight over a health-care bill, so groups for and against the legislation are getting ready for a final push before congressional votes that could come later this month.

These efforts take money, of course, and advocate groups have put together war chests, much of it slated to go to advertising. Here are some of the spending plans outlined in a WSJ report this morning:

• A business coalition backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups will allocate between $4 million and $10 million on anti-bill ads. They will be targeted against several dozen Democratic lawmakers with the message that the changes would cause job losses.
• Another anti-overhaul group, Americans for Prosperity, will use radio and TV ads in about 21 House districts, spending $350,000. It also plans rallies at lawmakers’ district offices.
• Some labor unions and progressive groups called Health Care for America Now are running $70,000 in TV ads in Washington. The ads tell Congress to “listen to us, not the insurance companies. Pass health-care reform now.”
• Seniors group AARP, a heavy spender on TV ads backing a revamp earlier, now is concentrating on contacting constituents in districts with wavering lawmakers to boost support for the bill.

Meanwhile, the health insurance industry is starting to show ads on cable TV networks aimed at blunting White House criticism of insurance rate increases, USA Today reports. The industry group America’s Health Insurance Plans says it’s spending at least $1 million on the ads, but won’t elaborate.

More than $200 million was spent on ads during the overhaul debate last year, making the health-care fight the largest single advocacy campaign ever, according to Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks issue advertising. Spending on both sides was about equally split last year, the group tells the WSJ.

Photo of Washington protest Tuesday by Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Healthier men, no matter their age, are going to have better sex more frequently and desire it more often than healthier women.

I have been diagnosed with chronic sinusitis. It would seem like every six months or so, I have an episode where I am unable to go to work for about three days because I develop a temperature, swollen lymph nodes, (recently, swollen, inflammed tonsils) headaches and skin flora on my scalp. How is skin flora associated with sinusitis? Will this ever stop?

People sensitive to the taste of fat tend to eat less of it and are less likely to be overweight, according to Australian research that found human tongues can detect fatty tastes.

When men are under stress, instead of preferring women who resemble themselves as they normally do, they choose dissimilar women, researchers now find.

Men have shorter life spans than women on average, but when it comes to sexual life expectancy, the guys have the advantage.

About 16 percent of Americans between the ages of 14 and 49 are infected with genital herpes, making it one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases, U.S. health officials said on Tuesday.

The parents of 3-year-old conjoined twins face a difficult decision — because their daughters are growing too big for the heart they share, Sky News reported.

FDA staff members are doing something unusual. They are leaving Washington to help drug makers take a crucial step in developing drugs for rare diseases.

Can wine help you digest your meal?