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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s health care plan would cost too much and create more regulation, while Republican John McCain’s plan would leave 60 million Americans without health insurance and reduce coverage, experts said last week.

Community-based health programs aimed at diet, exercise, smoking prevention and other known risk factors for chronic diseases could cut health-care costs in the United States by $16 billion a year, at a cost of 10 dollars per patient/year, a new report says.

Pioglitazone (Actos) may prevent or delay progression to diabetes for patients with pre-diabetes by 81%, researchers found.

Aspirin-like compounds (salicylates) can claim another health benefit: increasing the amount of insulin produced by otherwise healthy obese people. Obesity is associated with insulin resistance, the first step toward type 2 diabetes.

Women had higher expectations of the benefits of self-management along with more depressive symptoms

Candesartan and amlodipine are similarly effective in preventing cardiovascular events in high-risk hypertensive patients, the results of a study suggest. However, candesartan is more effective for the prevention of new-onset diabetes.

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A lifestyle implementation trial was designed for the primary care setting. The goal was to determine whether findings from the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study (DPS),[1] which demonstrated a 58% reduction in diabetes with lifestyle intervention, could be replicated in a real-world clinical setting.

Aspirin does not prevent heart attack for women to the same extent that it does for men, researchers affirmed.

More evidence that lower doses of aspirin are just as effective in preventing cardiovascular events as higher doses comes from a systematic review.