Health | WPN World People News

Drug addiction might someday be cured with a simple treatment to "wake up" a dysfunctional region of the addict's brain. Researchers report they were able to eliminate drug-seeking behavior in cocaine-addicted rats by stimulating a part of their brain known as the prefrontal cortex with laser light. Investigators also discovered they could reverse the effect, turning rodents that were not addicted to cocaine into drug-seekers.

High blood pressure is the leading risk factor for death in the WHO South-East Asia Region, claiming 1.5 million lives each year.

Could drug addiction treatment of the future be as simple as an on/off switch in the brain? A study in rats has found that stimulating a key part of the brain reduces compulsive cocaine-seeking and suggests the possibility of changing addictive behavior generally. The study, published in Nature, was conducted by scientists at the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the University of California, San Francisco.

A landmark ruling by India’s high court this week struck down a bid by Swiss drugmaker Novartis to extend patent protection for its cancer drug, Glivec.

A child’s risk for developing an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is not increased by receiving “too many vaccines too soon,” according to a new study published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

Although previous scientific evidence has shown that vaccines do not cause autism, more than 1 in 10 parents refuse or delay vaccinations for their young children. A main safety concern of these parents is the number of vaccines administered, both on a single day and over the course of a child’s first 2 years of life.