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Boy with rare disease gets new skin

LONDON (AP) — Doctors treating a critically ill boy with a devastating skin disease used experimental gene therapy to create an entirely new skin for most of his body in a desperate attempt to save his life. Two years later, the doctors report the boy is doing so well that he doesn’t need any medication, is back in school and even playing soccer. “We were forced to do something dramatic because this kid was dying,” said Dr. Michele De Luca of the University of Modena in Italy, who got a call for help from the German doctors treating the boy. The boy, then 7, was ...

Drugstore pain pills as effective as opioids in ER patients

CHICAGO (AP) — Emergency rooms are where many patients are first introduced to powerful opioid painkillers, but what if doctors offered over-the-counter pills instead? A new study tested that approach on patients with broken bones and sprains and found pain relievers sold as Tylenol and Motrin worked as well as opioids at reducing severe pain. The results challenge common ER practice for treating short-term, severe pain and could prompt changes that would help prevent new patients from becoming addicted. The study has limitations: It only looked at short-term pain relief in the ...

Move over, dodgeball: Schools pump up physical education with choices

By Carolyn Thompson Associated Press You won’t find gym class on the schedule in upstate New York’s Victor school district. What you will see: kayaking, rock climbing, mountain biking, dance, self-defense, archery and in-line skating — all under the heading of physical education. The teachers say it’s a more fitting description of lessons meant to last well beyond the class bell. “We want our kids as they walk out of these halls in grade 12 to be active for life,” said Ron Whitcomb, the district’s director of health, physical education and athletics. With the ...

Baby gene therapy study offers hope for fatal muscle disease

WASHINGTON (AP) — A first attempt at gene therapy for a disease that leaves babies unable to move, swallow and, eventually, breathe has extended the tots’ lives, and some began to roll over, sit and stand on their own, researchers reported. Only 15 babies with spinal muscular atrophy received the experimental gene therapy, but researchers in Ohio credited the preliminary and promising results to replacing the infants’ defective gene early — in the first few months of life, before the neuromuscular disease destroyed too many key nerve cells. “They all should have died by ...

Company wins approval for lymphoma drug

NEW YORK (AP) - U.S. regulators have approved a new treatment for people with a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval to AstraZeneca PLC’s Calquence for people with mantle cell lymphoma after chemotherapy or other treatments fail. The British drugmaker is now conducting further testing required by the FDA to confirm the drug’s benefits and risks. Mantle cell lymphoma is a blood cancer that usually strikes middle-aged people and the elderly. By the time it’s diagnosed, it usually has spread to the lymph nodes, bone ...

Doctors: Global warming is taking a toll on people’s health

WASHINGTON (AP) — Global warming is hurting people’s health a bit more than previously thought, but there’s hope that the Earth — and populations — can heal if the planet kicks its coal habit, a group of doctors and other experts said. The poor and elderly are most threatened by worsening climate change, but there remains “glimmers of progress” especially after the 2015 Paris agreement to limit heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new big study published Monday in the British medical journal Lancet. Comparing the report to a health checkup, four ...