Pain clinics and physiotherapists have been using large, complex pieces of equipment with cables to relieve back or joint pain but a company says they have developed a breakthrough in anti-pain treatments. They claim people suffering from headaches will soon be able to use this technique to treat them at home rather than depend on drugs with numerous side-effects.

The technique is called CEFALY(R) and was demonstrated for the first time at the international medical fair MEDICA in Düsseldorf last November. A polish company (Medic-Mar http://www.medicmar.com.pl) has made Poland the first country where Cefaly is available for patients suffering from headaches.

They say their technological breakthrough is two-fold, involving miniaturization and perfect precision.

The pharmaceutical industry is currently facing some key challenges, like an increase in drug development costs, a decrease in the number of drugs being approved and scrutiny from regulatory authorities. Patients themselves are also demanding more effective and safer drugs.

Pharmacogenomics says they can help to guide drug development and therapy by correlating gene expression with a drug's efficacy.

A researcher from the University of Leicester has identified what looks to be the oldest archaeological evidence for chemical warfare--from Roman times.  At the meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, Simon James presented CSI-style arguments that about twenty Roman soldiers, found in a siege-mine at the city of Dura-Europos, Syria, met their deaths not as a result of sword or spear, but through asphyxiation.

Adelaide researchers say they have made a world breakthrough in treating premature babies at risk of developmental disorders.  A six-year study led by Dr Maria Makrides from the Women's and Children's Health Research Institute and Professor Bob Gibson from the University of Adelaide has demonstrated that high doses of fatty acids administered to pre-term infants via their mother's breast milk or infant formula can help their mental development.

The findings were published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Last year a  study by Mathews, Johnson and Neil (2008) in their article "You are What your Mother Eats" that was published in the April 22, 2008 Proceedings of the Royal Society B implied that children of women who eat breakfast cereal are more likely to be boys than girls.

Forsyth Institute scientist Peter Jezewski, DDS, Ph.D., says that duplication and diversification of protein regions ('modules') within ancient master control genes is key to the understanding of certain birth disorders. Tracing the history of these changes within the proteins coded by the Msx gene family over the past 600 million years has also provided additional evidence for the ancient origin of the human mouth.