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ROCHESTER, New York -- Somnolence, edema, and hallucinations in patients with early-stage Parkinson's disease may be related as much to co-morbid disease and other factors as they are to medication.

TORONTO -- Prostate cancer and colorectal cancer appear to have a common genetic risk factor.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Heart attack death rates are lower overall at hospitals ranked "America's Best" in cardiac care by U.S. News and World Report than at other hospitals, but not every one was a stellar performer, researchers said.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Two-thirds of nursing home residents here did not receive regular eye exams despite the fact that 57% of the residents had evidence of visual impairment.

MONTREAL -- Delayed diagnosis of childhood cancer continues to confound efforts to achieve the best possible clinical outcomes, a review of the pediatric oncology literature suggests.

LYONS, France -- Infertile women who use complementary or alternative therapies are about 20% more likely to have persistent reproductive problems than non-users, investigators reported here.

LYON, France -- As the complexity of assisted reproduction techniques increases, so does the frequency of umbilical cord abnormalities, Belgian investigators reported here.

BALTIMORE -- About half of children who develop autism may be diagnosable by 14 months of age, researchers found in a small study that dropped the bar for early diagnosis by six months.

HOUSTON -- Standard helical PET-CT cardiac imaging produces false-positives 40% of the time, although most of the errors can be identified and corrected before inappropriate treatment.

NEW YORK -- Cardiac surgery can be performed safely in many patients with mild liver cirrhosis, and in select patients with moderate cirrhosis, according to investigators here.

WASHINGTON -- Medicare's Part B physician fee schedule will be cut 9.9%, starting next January, the government has announced, prompting anguished warnings from the AMA of decreased access to medical services for seniors.

BOSTON -- Testing for cystatin C appears to be as good as, if not better than, standard measures of kidney function to predict mortality risk in advanced chronic kidney disease, researchers found.

STANFORD, Calif. -- Compared with nifedipine (Procardia), magnesium sulfate was significantly more likely to cause serious maternal site effects when used to prevent preterm labor.

NEW YORK -- Showing evidence of a link between environmental factors and migraine, investigators here found that a higher family income may protect adolescents against migraine -- if they have no genetic predisposition to it.

A 38-year-old HIV-infected man with a CD4+ cell count of 4/µL and an HIV RNA level of more than 750,000 copies/mL was admitted to the hospital after 1 month of painful right neck swelling and 1 week of dysphagia.

Pain is recognized as a significant disability in HIV-infected persons.

Both HIV and its treatment, particularly protease inhibitors, can cause dyslipidemia similar to that seen with the metabolic syndrome. The most notable effects are elevated triglyceride levels and decreased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, with or without elevated low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels.

Elevated fasting triglyceride levels and low levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) are the hallmarks of HIV-associated dyslipidemia. Despite the perception of many HIV-infected patients and their clinicians, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels among persons infected with HIV-even those receiving antiretroviral therapy––tend to be lower than those in uninfected controls.1,2 During antiretroviral therapy, increases in all lipid parameters are common; however, it is dramatic rises in triglyceride levels that for a number of reasons can be of the most concern.