Health Research: Future vaccine may help lower blood pressur ♦ Cocaine addiction, craving and relapse ♦ Moderate drinking in later years may damage heart

Cocaine addiction, craving and relapse One of the major challenges of cocaine addiction is the high rate of relapse after periods of withdrawal and abstinence. But changes in our DNA during drug withdrawal may offer promising ways of developing more effective treatments for addiction. Withdrawal from drug use results in reprogramming of the genes in the brain that lead to addictive personality

Changing diagnosis codes will challenge emergency medicine Emergency medicine faces special challenges during this fall's changeover in how medical diagnoses are coded. Nearly a quarter of all ER clinical encounters could pose difficulties’

Future vaccine may help lower blood pressure long-term A DNA vaccine helped lower blood pressure for up to six months, reduced tissue damage to the heart and blood vessels associated with hypertension in rats, investigators report. If future research shows the vaccine is a viable treatment option in humans, it could improve high blood pressure levels

Moderate drinking in later years may damage heart Moderate to heavy alcohol intake later in life may be associated with subtle changes in the structure and efficiency of the heart. Women may be particularly vulnerable to negative cardiac effects of alcohol at moderate to higher levels of consumption.

New findings about mechanisms underlying chronic pain reveal novel therapeutic strategies A critical role for a class of cells present in the brain and spinal cord, called microglia, has been discovered for those in pain. Researchers have found microglia to neuron signaling to be crucial in the development of pain hypersensitivity after injury, but also for one of the paradoxical effects morphine and other opioids sometimes produce, called hyperalgesia, which is an increase in pain sensitivity.