Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

States Unveil Imported Prescription Drugs Program

Illinois and Wisconsin joined forces Monday to launch the first state-sponsored program to help residents buy cheaper prescription drugs from both Europe and Canada, despite federal regulations banning such programs, the Associated Press reported.

The program, which is called I-SaveRx, uses a Canada-based clearinghouse; it claims it can save residents 25 percent to 50 percent off U.S. retail prices on about 100 prescription medications, the AP said.

"Now, the nearly 13 million people who live in Illinois and the more than five million people who live in Wisconsin will have the opportunity to save hundreds -- and in some cases even thousands -- of dollars each year on the high cost of their medicine," Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said in a prepared statement announcing the program.

To use the program, people can go to an Internet site, www.I-SaveRx.net, to be linked to the Canadian clearinghouse administered by CanaRx, a drug benefits manager that operates a network of online pharmacies, the AP said.

By including pharmacies in Ireland and Great Britain, I-SaveRx differs from programs in other states that help residents buy less-expensive prescription drugs from Canada.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration opposes the importation of prescription drugs from other countries, citing safety concerns. The FDA had no immediate comment on the I-SaveRx program, the AP said.

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Cancer Society Offers Online Mammogram Reminder

As part of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, the American Cancer Society is offering an interactive mammography reminder on its Web site.

The tool is designed to increase the number of women who follow the society's guideline of yearly mammograms beginning at age 40. It's also designed to address a growing problem -- while many American women are getting initial mammograms, relatively few are getting them every year, according to the society.

To access the reminder, go to a special page -- www.cancer.org/mammogramreminder -- on the society's Web site and insert an e-mail address, and choose a delivery date. Then each year, the mammogram reminder will send an e-mail message to you or another recipient reminding them to: "Please, schedule your mammogram today."

A recent study published in the society's journal Cancer found that only a fraction of women who need mammograms get them every year. The study authors concluded that the "need to find ways to encourage women to start screening may be less critical than the need to encourage them to return promptly once they have begun screening."

"We've done a good job of telling women it's important to get a mammogram," said Robert Smith, the society's director of cancer screening. "But we still need to convince women that they must continue to have yearly mammograms to reap the benefits of early detection."

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Virus Sickening Military Recruits

A respiratory virus affecting U.S. military recruits has killed four so far this year and has sickened thousands more. Moreover, the Seattle Times reports, the Pentagon once routinely administered a vaccine against this adenovirus, but abandoned the program to save money.

The virus affects as many as one in 10 recruits at the nation's eight basic training centers, the newspaper concluded from an analysis of military records. More than 30 years ago, the military contracted with drugmaker Wyeth Laboratories to produce two pills to ward off the germ. But the program was abandoned in 1996, when the Pentagon refused Wyeth's $5 million demand to upgrade the company's aging production facility, the newspaper said.

A vaccine replacement program, stymied by military bureaucratic delays, means there will be no inoculation available until at least 2007, the Times report said.

A total of six recruits have died since vaccine production was halted, including four this year alone, the newspaper said. The virus also has sickened at least six children of service members. The germ is expected to kill an additional six to 10 recruits before a new vaccine is available, according to Pentagon documents obtained by the Times.

An unidentified top military official deemed the vaccine lapse "a major screw-up," the newspaper said.

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Research on Smell Wins Nobel Prize for Americans

Insight into our sense of smell -- how we perceive and remember odors -- has won the Nobel Prize in medicine for American researchers Dr. Richard Axel and Linda Buck.

The pair studied the genetics of how a family of "receptor" proteins in the nose recognizes and transmits odor information to the brain. Once the molecules of an odor reach the nose, these receptors are activated, allowing people to recognize and form memories of some 10,000 different odors, the Nobel Assembly said in a statement announcing the winners.

Axel, 58, is a research professor at Columbia University in New York. Buck, 57, works at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Both reported finding the genes for odor receptors in 1991, when Buck worked in Axel's laboratory, the Associated Press reported. They have since worked independently.

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U.S. Fire Deaths Rose in 2003

Deaths from fires jumped 16 percent in 2003, reversing a trend of steady decline over the prior two decades, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) said.

Somewhere in the United States, fire occurs an average of once every 61 seconds, the nonprofit advocacy and educational group said. A civilian is hurt in a fire every 29 minutes, and dies every 134 minutes. And four out of five fires start in the home, the group said in a statement.

Americans tend to underestimate their risk of being hurt or injured in a fire, according to a survey the NFPA commissioned to mark Fire Prevention Week, which starts Monday. While 31 percent of Americans polled said they felt most at risk for tornado and 27 percent named fire, the latter poses a far greater risk, the NFPA said in a statement. Tornadoes kill an average of 70 people annually, while 3,925 people died in fires last year, the group said.

The NFPA reminded people to test their smoke detectors, emphasizing that the alarms aren't working in an average of one in five American homes.

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Flu Shot 6 Months Apart for Toddlers Seems Effective

The flu vaccine is just as effective for toddlers if given six months apart as it is when administered twice in the autumn, new research shows.

Researchers from Duke University Medical Center and the University of Washington presented their findings over the weekend at the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in Boston.

According to a Duke University news release, the study compared the immune response in toddlers aged 6 to 23 months who received a flu shot in the spring and one in the fall, to the response of those who received fall shots separated by one month. The results: Children given spring-fall shots up to six months apart were as well-protected as those who received two shots in the fall, the researchers said. Better yet, a parent survey showed that 66 percent preferred the split schedule.

Last Updated: Oct-04-2004