LONDON (Reuters) – Ten international drug companies are to team up with scientists from 11 European countries to create a bank of stem cells for a project aimed at speeding up the development of new medicines.

StemBANCC, coordinated by Swiss drugmaker Roche and managed by scientists at Oxford University, aims to use so-called human-induced pluripotent stem cells – derived from people with hard-to-treat conditions – as research tools.

LONDON (Reuters) – Little progress has been made in improving the long-term health of extremely premature babies, and with pre-term births on the rise across Europe, rates of serious disability are likely to increase, doctors said on Wednesday.

A decade of advances in medicine mean more babies born at between 22 and 26 weeks gestation manage to survive, but rates of severe health complications remain as high as they were in 1995, according to research by neonatal specialists in Britain.

LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – Greek hospitals are in such dire
straits that staff are failing to keep up basic disease controls
such as using gloves and gowns, threatening a rise in
multi-drug-resistant infections, according to Europe’s top
health official.

Greece already has one of the worst problems in Europe with
hospital-acquired infections, and disease experts fear this is
being made worse by an economic crisis that has cut health care
staffing levels and hurt standards of care.

LONDON (Reuters) – Greek hospitals are in such dire straits that staff are failing to keep up basic disease controls like using gloves and gowns, threatening a rise in multi-drug-resistant infections, according to Europe’s top health official.

Greece already has one of the worst problems in Europe with hospital-acquired infections, and disease experts fear this is being made worse by a severe economic crisis that has cut health care staffing levels and hurt standards of care.

LONDON (Reuters) – The publisher of a much-criticized study suggesting genetically modified corn caused tumors in rats has come under heavy pressure from scientists to retract the paper and explain why it was ever printed.

The calls follow a report by Europe’s food safety watchdog this week dismissing the study’s findings.

LONDON (Reuters) – A spiraling outbreak of HIV in debt-stricken Greece could run out of control if urgent action is not taken, European health officials said on Friday.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said infections with the AIDS-causing virus among drug users and other high-risk groups were rising fast, and that a failure to act would mean far higher costs in future.

LONDON (Reuters) – Leading mental health experts are calling for school children to be screened for risk of mental illnesses such as depression and have devised a test that reliably identifies those at high risk.

The test can be done on a computer and could be used to alert doctors and psychologists to intervene early, said Barbara Sahakian a professor of clinical neuropsychology at Britain’s Cambridge University.

LONDON (Reuters) – A new virus from the same family as SARS which sparked a global alert in September has now killed two people in Saudi Arabia, and total cases there and in Qatar have reached six, the World Health Organisation said.

The U.N. health agency issued an international alert in late September saying a virus previously unknown in humans had infected a Qatari man who had recently been in Saudi Arabia, where another man with the same virus had died.

LONDON, Nov 23 (Reuters) – Greek authorities must urgently
step up control of mosquitoes and surveillance of infected
people to stop malaria from re-establishing itself in the
crisis-hit country, scientists said on Friday.

Writing in online journal Eurosurveillance, they said recent
outbreaks of the disease in the southern regions of Lakonia and
East Attica were worrying.

LONDON (Reuters) – Criminal behavior in adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drops sharply when they take stimulant drugs like Ritalin to help them to control impulses, scientists said on Wednesday.

A study of more than 25,000 people with ADHD found the number of crimes committed was about a third or more lower in those taking medication, suggesting that encouraging ADHD patients to stay on the pills could cut the risk of crime.