KENNETT SQUARE, PA - The Associated Press reported Marguerite Harris and her staff provide prenatal care and child immunizations, write prescriptions, and diagnose and treat diabetes to sniffles.  No one at Project Salud is a doctor.  The center is run by nurse practitioners, registered nurses with special training and advanced degrees whose numbers in the U.S. have risen from 30,000 in 1990 to 115,000.  Nurse-managed primary care units have risen to about 250 from a handful 15 years ago.  The change reflects factors that include a drop in the number of doctors choosing primary care as a specialty, a drop expected to continue.  The supply of general practice physicians is falling as the U.S. baby-boomer population is aging and in greater need of medical care, and nurse-run centers are helping to bridge the gap.  Nurse practitioners can perform many of the duties of primary care doctors, such as physical exams, diagnosing and treating common health problems, prescribing medications, ordering and interpreting X-rays, and providing family planning services.

WASHINGTON - The Dow Jones Newswires reported Americans taking on a greater share of rising health-care costs should check to see if this means they qualify for a tax break on their medical expenses.  The federal government lets people deduct medical expenses to the extent that they exceed 7.5% of adjusted gross income, or income after certain adjustments, such as IRA contributions.  A family earning $50,000 a year would have to spend more than $3,750 in out-of-pocket medical expenses to qualify.  The typical worker with family health coverage spent between $2,320 and $3,250 on insurance premiums in 2005, say researchers at Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.  This figure doesn't include spending on deductibles and co-pays.  If you or a family member face a serious illness or injury, your unreimbursed payments to doctors, hospitals, and others could easily run into thousands of dollars.  You have to itemize deductions on your tax return to take advantage of this break.  You can't include medical expenses paid with funds from tax-advantaged accounts, such as flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts.

TETERBORO, NJ – The Wall Street Journal reported a new way of testing for leukemia and other blood-related cancers offers hope patients may benefit from more sensitive assessments done more often, eliminating some painful bone marrow biopsies.  The tests, developed by Quest Diagnostics Inc. and available to doctors, takes a new approach to testing for some forms of leukemia and lymphoma - cancer of the blood and lymph system.  Instead of extracting cancerous cells from tissue in patients' bones, these tests check the blood plasma for telltale debris from cancer cells.  Because tests are done on blood samples, they can be performed without subjecting the patient to painful and expensive extraction of marrow.

COLUMBUS, OH - Newswise reported the first U.S. human gene therapy trial aimed at Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) was launched at Columbus Children’s Hospital (CCH).  Asklepios Biopharmaceutical Inc. (AskBio) noted neurologist Dr. Jerry Mendell gave an injection of AskBio’s Biostrophin, with a functional gene for the muscle protein dystrophin, to Andrew Kilbarger, 8, of Lancaster, OH.  Dr. Mendell is co-director of the MDA clinic at CCH; professor of pediatrics, neurology, and pathology at Ohio State University’s College of Medicine, and head of the Neuromuscular Research Program and Gene Therapy Center at CCH’s research institute.  DMD is a genetic disease that begins in early childhood, causes progressive loss of muscle strength, and usually leads to death in the 20s from respiratory or cardiac muscle failure.  It occurs when a gene on the X chromosome fails to make the essential muscle protein dystrophin.

CHICAGO - The Associated Press disclosed loneliness in people over 50 raises greatly their risk of high blood pressure, researchers say in a study underscoring health advantages of friends and family.  The loneliest people studied had blood pressure readings up to 30 points higher than those who weren't lonely, suggesting loneliness can be as bad as being overweight or inactive, researchers said.  As more than nine million Americans over 50 often feel isolated or left out, the study could have substantial public health implications if it can be shown reducing loneliness can lower blood pressure, said Richard Suzman, director of a behavioral research program at the National Institute on Aging, which helped fund the study.

NEW YORK - Garlic, recognized for healing powers in ancient times, has been rediscovered by medical scientists, with new evidence of efficacy against cancer and heart disease, Newswise reported.  Dr. Richard Rivlin, of New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, was guest co-editor of a special peer-reviewed supplemental issue to the Journal of Nutrition.  It had 35 articles representing the latest research on garlic - findings presented at a symposium at Georgetown University.  Hippocrates, considered the Father of Medicine, used garlic as an essential component of one of his therapies.

SEATTLE - Newswise reported rare syndromes such as Tay-Sachs, Fabry, and Gaucher come from enzyme deficiencies and typically have crippling, even fatal, consequences from very early ages.  Some University of Washington scientists developed a relatively simple process to find enzyme deficiencies in newborns that will allow treatment to begin before too much damage is done.  The technique uses a spot of blood from a baby's heel and dried on a paper card.  A 2-millimeter section is punched out of the spot, rehydrated, and the target enzymes are incubated.  They’re and measured using tandem mass spectrometry, a means of determining a substance's chemical makeup.  The sample can be screened for perhaps 15 enzyme deficiencies concurrently, and typically will take less than two days.  The method has been effective in detecting seven diseases - Krabbe, Pompe, Niemann-Pick, Gaucher, Fabry, Tay-Sachs, and Hurler - associated with enzyme deficiencies within lysosomes, which break down large molecules in most cells.