Health Highlights: Aug. 6, 2008

The study included people in families with a rare inherited disorder called Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS), which increases the risk of developing certain types of cancer in childhood and early adulthood. The researchers found that people with LFS have greater variation in their DNA than people without the condition, the Canadian Press reported.

People with LFS have more copy number variations (CNVs), the duplication or deletion of large segments of DNA, said the researchers. They also noted that most people with LFS have a mutation in a gene that normally stabilizes DNA. The study found that people with this mutation in blood cells had a much higher rate of CNVs than people without the mutation.

"So it would imply that people who have a mutation in this gene and are susceptible to cancer have inherently regions of their DNA which are duplicated or deleted and therefore are unstable. And that may have something to do with the mechanism by which they develop cancer," said study leader Dr. David Malkin of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, the CP reported.

-----

Another Malaria Vaccine To Begin Human Testing

A malaria vaccine that showed promise in tests on animals is ready for testing in people, according to an international team of scientists. Currently, there is no vaccine for malaria.

The new vaccine worked well in mice and is expected to begin small-scale human safety trials next year, BBC News reported.

The vaccine targets the "blood stage" of malaria, in which parasite numbers rapidly increase in the bloodstream after bursting out of cells. The researchers believe the vaccine can trigger a massive immune response against the malaria parasite at this stage. In mice, the vaccine reduced malaria parasite levels by 70 percent to 85 percent. The findings appear in the journal Nature.

Some experimental malaria vaccines are already being tested on people in malaria-affected countries, BBC News reported.

-----

Medicare OK'd Fake Suppliers: Report

Medicare approved two fake companies to supply wheelchairs and other equipment, even though the phony firms had no inventory or clients, says a Government Accountability Office report released Monday.

The bogus companies in Maryland and Virginia were set up by government investigators looking into fraud problems afflicting Medicare, Bloomberg news reported.

"If real fraudsters had been in charge of the fictitious companies, they would have been clear to bill Medicare from the Virginia office for potentially millions of dollars of false supplies," the GAO said.

Billing tests for the fake Maryland company weren't completed because the investigators didn't receive the necessary passwords from Medicare, Bloomberg reported.

In the fiscal year ending March 2007, Medicare made about $1 billion in improper payments on canes, prosthetic devices, wheelchairs, and other equipment. Medicare says it's implementing new billing oversight requirements for medical suppliers, according to Bloomberg.