Top Medical News: Cheese Lowers BP, Bees Treat Prostate Cancer, Black Pepper Fights Fat, & More

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1. Cheese, please: Could a little Grana Padano drop your BP?: Integrating a type of Italian cheese, Grana Padano, into the usual diet of mildly hypertensive patients not taking any ACE inhibitors or angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs) resulted in a significant drop in mean blood pressure of 7 to 8 mm Hg compared with control patients, preliminary research shows.

2. Indian drug giant Cipla slashes cancer drug prices: Indian generic drug giant Cipla said Friday it had slashed by up to 76 percent prices of three anti-cancer medicines in what it called a "humanitarian" move and promised to cut the costs of more products.

3. Beastie Boy dead at 47: What is salivary gland cancer?: It's extremely rare for people to be diagnosed with salivary gland cancer. Most Americans who get it are older than 55.

4. Discrepancies on Medical Bills Can Leave a Credit Stain: As patients assume more of the responsibility for costs, complex billing and more aggressive collection by providers are resulting in negative credit report data that lingers for years.

5. Black Pepper May Help Fight Fat: Pungent Ingredient in Black Pepper Targets Fat Cells

6. Rising Obesity Rates Might Mean More Rheumatoid Arthritis: A new study suggests that severe weight gain might raise the risk for rheumatoid arthritis — a painful, chronic ailment — especially among obese women.

7. Nanotechnology In Medicine: Huge Potential, But What Are The Risks?: Nanotechnology promises to revolutionize drug delivery, gene therapy, diagnostics, and many areas of research, development and clinical application.

8. Amish farm kids remarkably immune to allergies-study: Amish children raised on rural farms in northern Indiana suffer from asthma and allergies less often even than Swiss farm kids, a group known to be relatively free from allergies, according to a new study.

9. Dental dilemma: Do kids need sealants?: Dental sealants are recommended for children when their permanent molars come in, but only a fraction of kids actually get them, say dentists who call the process one of the most under-used treatments to prevent decay in adult teeth.

10. Squirrel tests positive for plague at California campsite: A ground squirrel trapped at a popular campground in southern California has tested positive for plague.

11. Guidelines on cardiovascular disease prevention in clinical practice launched at EuroPRevent2012: The latest cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention guidelines have been overhauled to produce a user friendly document with concise messages that awards greater weight than ever before to evidence from clinical trials and observational population studies.

12. FDA says study overestimated non-compliance with data-reporting laws: US drug regulator finds no evident harm caused by sponsors failing to post drug-trial data.

13. Beehive Extract Shows Potential as Prostate Cancer Treatment: An over-the-counter natural remedy derived from honeybee hives arrests the growth of prostate cancer cells and tumors in mice, according to a new paper from researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine.