Both the government and medical community have tried to reduce the social stigma associated with mental illness in recent decades but those efforts appear to have failed.

“Americans continue to get more sophisticated in their understandings of what causes mental illness,” said Bernice A. Pescosolido, who led the new research.

“But that did not translate into greater tolerance and in some cases, it looked like it backfires” she added.

Data was mined from almost 2,000 Americans who had been interviewed regarding their attitudes toward mental illness,  as part of the biannual General Social Survey by researchers from the University of Chicago.

The percentage of respondents from 1996 to 2006, who believed depression was a mental condition, rose from just over half to nearly two thirds. For schizophrenia, a rise 76 to 86 percent was recorded.

However, in the case of drinking, two thirds of people blamed “bad character” in 2006, up from half in 1996.

The majority of respondents said they did not want a person with schizophrenia or depression to marry into their family, proving very little change in social stigma.

“If people think it is biological or genetic, they are seeing people in a different ‘class’ and with some permanence that could impact their ‘family line,’” said Pescosolido.

“We need to think about new ways to think about ‘difference’ and tolerance,” she added.

“The focus should not be on competencies and community integration and ‘everybody has something’ they live with and have successful lives”.

The FDA intends to regulate the products as drugs in to assert its jurisdiction over electronic or e-cigarettes, battery-powered devices that enable users to inhale a vaporized liquid nicotine solution rather than harmful tobacco smoke.

In a news briefing, FDA representative Michael Levy said the warnings were for violations of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, including making unsubstantiated claims and substandard manufacturing practices.

The act states a company is not allowed to claim its drug can treat a disease, including nicotine addiction, unless the drug’s safety and effectiveness have been proven.

However, all five companies issued with the warnings claim their products help users stop smoking.

“We are interested in finding out whether e-cigarettes can be proven safe and effective,” added Levy. “That is why we sent out the letter to the Electronic Cigarette Association”.

The five companies named in the letters are E-CigaretteDirect LLC; Ruyan America Inc; Gamucci America, also known as Smokey Bayou Inc; E-Cig Technology Inc and Johnson’s Creek Enterprises LLC.

The action only concerns the companies issued with warning letters, but Levy confirmed the FDA will evaluate the marketers of e-cigarettes on a case-by-case basis.

“We have not made a decision to remove all e-cigarettes from the market,” Levy said.

In January, a US judge granted a preliminary injunction which barred the Obama administration from attempting to regulate e-cigarettes and stop them from being imported into the country.

The drug, Eldepryl (which has the generic name selegiline), is used in pill and patch form to treat Parkinson’s disease, depression, and dementia.

Selegiline can help maintain keep levels of brain chemicals like dopamine strong because they are reduced when nicotine becomes absent.

“That’s why we hoped that selegiline might reduce the cravings and urges associated with quitting and thus help make it easier to quit,” said Dr. Joel D. Killen of Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, one of the researchers who conducted the study.

Killen and his colleagues randomly gave 243 adult smokers a patch containing either selegiline or a placebo patch for further investigation.

The participants were told to start using the patch on the day they made the decision to quit smoking and to then use one patch every 24 hours for eight weeks.

When the eight weeks had ended, 26 percent of the patients who used a selegiline patch had been abstinent for at least the past week but almost 30 percent of the placebo group had not smoked for the same period of time.

At 25 weeks, 17 percent of the selegiline group and 19 percent of the placebo group were abstinent and around 20 percent of people in both groups were abstinent after 52 weeks.

However, gender differences were evident with 28 percent of women abstinent at 52 weeks compared to 16 percent of men.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21 percent of US adults, approximately 46 million people, smoke and often multiple attempts are required before a smoker successfully quits.

More than 4,800 patients across a 40-month study showed taking low doses of omega-3 fatty acids in margarine did not significantly reduce rates of serious heart attacks and other cardiovascular events.

Previous studies had suggested omega-3 helped hearts stay healthy and the margarines used in the study were developed for the Dutch researchers by Unilever, a food and consumer goods giant.

However, doctors are unlikely to change clinical practice because a large number already prescribe omega-3 fish oil capsules to reduce triglycerides, a type of blood fat linked to blocked arteries.

“It will be viewed as a largely negative study”, said Scott Wright of the Mayo Clinic in the US, who was not involved in the study, “and people who are enthusiasts for omega fatty acids will continue to be enthusiasts and people who are skeptics will continue to be skeptics”.

Daan Kromhout of Wageningen University, who led the study, argued the lack of efficacy could be a result of the drug treatment patients were receiving as well as the margarines.

A total of 85 percent participants were also on cholesterol-lowering statins in addition to blood pressure and blood-thinning tablets.

“We found the cardiovascular mortality rate in the study population was only half that expected”, he said, “probably because of their excellent treatment”.

All the male and female participants in the Dutch study were aged between 60 and 80 and had suffered a heart attack approximately four years beforehand.

Embryonic stem cells are seen as the most powerful type of cells but are controversial due to being harvested from human embryos when they are just a few days old.

“This technology bypasses the need for using human embryos,” said Tamir Rashid of Cambridge’s laboratory for regenerative medicine, who led the study. “The cells we created were just as good as if we had used embryonic stem cells”.

Liver disease ranks as number five in the top causes of death in developed nations after cardiovascular, cancer, stroke, and respiratory diseases.

It accounts for almost 25,000 deaths a year in the USA and experts say that in the UK, liver disease death rates among young and middle-aged people are increasing at between 8 to 10 percent annually.

Rashid said that scientists have so far never been able to grow liver cells in a lab, despite 40 years of trying, making it very difficult to conduct proper research into liver disorders.

Alternatives are needed urgently due to a shortage of donor liver organs, he added.

This study increases the chances that alternatives can be found, either by developing new drugs or by using cell-based therapy, whereby cells from patients afflicted with genetic diseases are “cured” and transplanted back.

Liver diseases can be caused by alcohol abuse or infections such as hepatitis, or inherited.

The prescription drug, called ella, is made by French company HRA Pharma and will be sold in the United States by Watson Pharmaceuticals.

Ella has been shown to prevent pregnancy for up to five days and is first emergency contraceptive approved since a five-year battle under the Bush administration ended with limited over-the-counter sales and age checks by pharmacists for a rival pill.

The Food and Drug Administration said it cleared ella based on two clinical trials that showed the drug was safe and effective.

While morning-after pills have not been particularly lucrative, they have been the cause of controversy, especially in the USA.

Conservatives, Republicans and other critics have argued making another morning-after pill available and one that works even longer after sex will  promote promiscuity even further.

“The FDA opted against including the critical fact that ella can cause an abortion on a baby already implanted in its mother’s womb in the drug labeling information,” said Jeanne Monahan, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council.

However, Democrats, women’s groups and other advocates say the pills offer women much-needed options to plan their families.

“Every woman deserves every option available to prevent an unplanned pregnancy” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, “and there are many reasons why a woman may face the risk of unintended pregnancy – from failure or improper use of birth control, to sexual assault”.

The team based at the Archives of Neurology also said it may also be possible to help identify the early signs of the disease in healthy people.

“The unexpected presence of the Alzheimer’s disease signature in more than one-third of cognitively normal subjects”, wrote Geert De Meyer of Ghent University in Belgium, “suggests that Alzheimer’s disease pathology is active and detectable earlier than has heretofore been envisioned” .

The research accurately detected Alzheimer’s in 90 percent of patients with the disease by measuring traces of beta amyloid and tau, two proteins associated with the telltale plaques and tangles that develop in the brains of patients suffering Alzheimer’s.

They could also detect 100 percent of people with memory impairments who go onto to develop Alzheimer’s disease within five years and detected Alzheimer’s proteins in 36 percent of people with normal brain functionality.

At this moment, only an autopsy can confirm a person has Alzheimer’s which is fatal and incurable deterioration of the brain. More than 26 million people around the world currently have the disease.

Doctors are able to diagnose Alzheimer’s by ruling out other causes of memory loss, such as a stroke, tumors and heavy consumption of alcohol.

During the investigation, they discovered 90 percent of those with Alzheimer’s had the disease pattern in their spinal fluid. This pattern was also there in 72 percent of those with mild impairment and 36 percent of those who were normal.

The two approaches represent huge strides forward in the field of regenerative medicine but both require a lot more investigation before they can be attempted on humans.

The two studies also suggest it may be possible to mend broken organs inside the body of a patient, rather than needing to use transplants or artificial devices.

A team based at the University of California’s Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease created beating heart cells from more ordinary cells called fibroblasts in one of the studies.

It is known by those involved in stem cell research how to reprogram such ordinary cells by adding three or four genes to revert them to an embryonic-like state. The next step is to fine-tune such induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells and teams are working on it.

Dr. Masaki Ieda and colleagues discovered genes that, in a developing embryo, change an immature cell into a beating heart cell or cardiomyocyte, which takes this approach a stage further.

“Scientists have tried for 20 years to convert non muscle cells into heart muscle”, Ieda, now based at the Keio University School of Medicine in Japan, stated. “but it turns out we just needed the right combination of genes at the right dose”.

Ieda’s team reported in journal Cell the transformed cells converted into beating heart cells within one day after being planted into live mice.

The research suggested the risk of developing gestational diabetes in a future pregnancy increases with each previously affected one  – up to 57 percent after two pregnancies from 41 percent after one complicated by gestational diabetes.

The report in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology stated approximately four percent of the women developed gestational diabetes during their first pregnancy and this figure coincides with the American Diabetes Association estimated rate.

Compared to women without previous gestational diabetes, these women were believed to be around 13 times more likely to develop it again during their second pregnancy.

This figure rose to 26 times for women in their third pregnancy who had two previous cases rose compared to those with no history of gestational diabetes.

Asians, Hispanics and Pacific Islanders were almost twice as likely to develop gestational diabetes compared with white women, after considering other factors such as age and education.

The relatively high level of rice consumption attributes to the elevated sugar and insulin levels wh has the potential to trigger the condition.

The study did not take into account other lifestyle factors such as weight.

“Early identification of at-risk populations and the timely initiation of a (post-delivery) lifestyle intervention may help to prevent gestational diabetes and related adverse pregnancy outcomes,” said lead researcher Darios Getahun.

The team, based in Columbia University in New York, the University of Missouri and Clemson University in South Carolina reported the rabbits required only a single compound, known as a “growth factor” to rebuild their joint tissue.

The researchers claimed this type of joint would operate more naturally and last longer than a metal joint.

In a published report in the Lancet medical journal, the researchers noted how they set out to use biomaterial made out of polycaprolactone and hydroxyapatite to make an artificial joint.

“It is U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved to use the materials for bone regeneration.” said Jeremy Mao, who led the study.

The researchers created a replica of a rabbit’s leg joint and infused the porous bone scaffold with a growth factor which is a compound that stimulates cell growth.

A total of 10 rabbits were fitted with the enhanced new joint and were hopping about after approximately three to four weeks.

In contrast, of the 10 rabbits used in the study, only a few fitted with an unenriched scaffold could move normally and three rabbits with a surgically damaged joint limped permanently.

“It was a surprise finding,” said Mao. “They expected it would take more work to get the body to coat the artificial bone with fresh cartilage.

“At this the whole joint really has undergone substantial breakdown,” Mao said, speaking about the technique that could benefit advanced arthritis patients.

Around 27 million people in the USA suffer from osteoarthritis according to Arthritis Foundation.