Elderly patients who are prescribed a conventional, or first-generation, antipsychotic medication are at an increased risk of death from cardiovascular or respiratory diseases as compared to those who take an atypical, or second-generation, antipsychotic medication, according to a study funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The new study, “Potential Causes of Higher Mortality in Elderly Users of Conventional and Atypical Antipsychotic Medications,” recently posted online in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, adds to growing evidence that conventional antipsychotics may not be safer than atypical anitpsychotics for the elderly. Researchers had previously identified that such second-generation medications may pose increased mortality; the new study compares specific causes of death among elderly patients newly started on conventional vs. atypical antipsychotics.

Religious groups can help deliver cost-effective social services, says Bob Wineburg, a social work professor at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), but Obama’s proposal, which would build on Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative, would create more problems than it solves.

Wineburg’s been doing research on partnerships between social service agencies and churches/synagogues for about 20 years and in the 1990s looked at partnerships in the Greensboro, N.C., area.

Now he's working with Ram Cnaan from the University of Pennsylvania, for the United Way of Delaware, and says their findings mirror what Wineburg found in Greensboro – that mainline service agencies overwhelmingly seek out churches and other faith organizations to help them deliver services. That's an efficient arrangement, Wineburg says, and one that deserves federal backing – but not when the money starts with those small congregations.

Codeine is commonly used for pain relief and is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics as being compatible with breastfeeding. Following numerous reports through the Motherisk counseling service and the tragic death of an infant who died from an overdose of morphine acquired from breast milk, Dr. Gideon Koren and his team, located at SickKids and The University of Western Ontario, investigated these negative reactions.

Codeine is a 'prodrug' which means that on its own it is relatively inactive. The pain relieving attributes are only activated when it is metabolized, or transformed by the body into a more active pain relieving compound, morphine. Some individuals have a genetic variance which causes them to metabolize codeine at a rapid rate, producing significantly more morphine in their system than most of the population. While this genetic predisposition is rare, women who possess it and who take codeine for pain while breastfeeding can end up exposing their babies to high levels of morphine through their breast milk. This can cause babies to experience central nervous system depression as a result.

Public health campaigns intended to reduce unhealthy behaviors like binge drinking and eating junk food often focus on the risks of those behaviorsb but a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests a relatively simple but surprisingly effective strategy to improve consumer health based on common sense: like the risky behavior with an 'out' group.

Authors Jonah Berger from the University of Pennsylvania and Lindsay Rand from Stanford University found that linking a risky behavior with a group that the targeted audience doesn't want to be associated with caused participants to reduce unhealthy behaviors.

The studies began by identifying groups of people who study participants liked, but with whom the participants would not want to be confused — "outgroups." In the first study, the participants were undergraduates and the "outgroup" was graduate students. When participants were led to believe that graduate students consumed more junk food, they chose 28% fewer junk-food items than participants who thought their group ate more junk food.

Scientists at Aston University in Birmingham, UK are carrying out a unique study using the eyes to detect early signs of health problems which could lead to diabetes, and they’re looking for volunteers to help.

A team of scientists from Aston’s Ophthalmic Research Group (ORG) are looking for healthy 20-65 year olds to take part in a free health check - results of which could help in detecting risk for diabetes or early diabetic changes. The scientists are particularly interested in the differences in these factors between the South Asian community and Caucasian population in Birmingham.

Business veterans claim you cannot teach ‘experience’ but a group of European researchers say you can. They developed software that helps players acquire real-life skills and realistic experiences through game playing. But this game is no executive toy.

The interactive software, ChangeMasters, has caught the imagination of business colleges in the USA and elsewhere and it has prompted interest in corporate Europe as well.

The researchers believe it gives students real-world skills through ‘experience.’ “Experience is the best and simplest way to learn anything, that is why it is so valued in the business world,” explains Professor Albert Angehrn.