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Common Migraine Pain Condition Also Prevalent In Cluster Headache
A pain condition common in people with migraines also has a high prevalence in patients with cluster headache, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Jefferson Headache Center at Jefferson Hospital for Neuroscience.

NHS Confederation Responds To Public Accounts Committee Report On NHS Funding
Nigel Edwards, the director of policy at the NHS Confederation, said, "The surpluses generated by the NHS over the 2007-2008 financial year are a testament to sound financial planning and an awareness on the part of everyone in the service of the need to spend public money carefully.
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Erythropoietin Boosts Brainpower
Healthy young mice treated with erythropoietin show lasting improved performance in learning and other higher brain functions. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology tested the cognitive effects of the growth factor, finding that it improved the sequential learning and memory components of a complex long-term cognitive task.
Endocrinology

Golden Rice An Effective Of Vitamin A

The beta-carotene in so-called "Golden Rice" converts to vitamin A in humans, according to researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Tufts University in an article that appears in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Golden Rice was developed in the early 1990s with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation with the goal of creating rice that had beta-carotene - a vitamin A precursor - in the rice grain. In its current form, Golden Rice contains 35 micrograms of beta-carotene per gram. "We found that four units of beta-carotene from Golden Rice convert to one unit of vitamin A in humans," said Dr. Michael Grusak, associate professor of pediatrics at the USDA/ARS Children"s Nutrition Research Center at BCM and Texas Children"s Hospital. They determined this by feeding five healthy adults a specific amount of specially-labeled Golden Rice and measured the amount of retinol, a form of vitamin A, in the blood. Vitamin A deficiency is prevalent in many parts of the world where poorer community members rely on rice as their major food . People who lack adequate amounts of this vitamin can have vision problems or even blindness as a result. "By incorporating vitamin A into the major crop that is consumed, we would be able to make it accessible to the majority of people in the area," said Grusak. Additional research is necessary before Golden Rice is made commercially available. The next steps of the research include incorporating this technology into the rice grains found in various regions and continuing testing the conversion rates in humans. The study can be found at http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/rapidpdf/ajcn.2008.27119v1. Others who participated in this study include Guangwen Tang, Jian Qin, Gregory G. Dolnikowski and Robert M Russell, all of the Jean Mayer US Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. Funding for this study came from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, a part of the National Institutes of Health. Dipali Pathak Baylor College of Medicine


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