The Partnership for Prescription Assistance (PPA), sponsored by America's pharmaceutical research companies, is a central clearinghouse that connects individuals who are uninsured or lack adequate healthcare coverage to programs that provide prescription medicines for free or nearly free. The PPA is the largest private-sector patient assistance effort helping people in need who qualify obtain their medicines through more than 475 public and private patient assistance programs, including 180 programs offered by pharmaceutical companies. Since its launch in April 2005, the PPA has helped more than 4.3 million individuals find programs, but many more could benefit if they were only aware that help was available.

A woman's brain uses estrogen to balance food intake with energy output - and to tell fat where to go. That's why women not only gain weight after menopause, but also why the weight they gain goes to the wrong places, suggest Deborah J. Clegg, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Cincinnati. Clegg and colleagues used female rats, silencing estrogen receptors from a specific part of the brain that controls food intake, energy expenditure and fat distribution.

High dietary intake of tomato juice may lower LDL cholesterol and increase its resistance to oxidation. In a study involving 21 healthy subjects put on a high tomato diet, results indicate that increased dietary intake of tomato products may exert heart protective effects. The high tomato diet was associated with significant reductions in total cholesterol (5.9%) and LDL cholesterol (12.9%), compared with a low tomato diet. The reductions in total and LDL cholesterol were positively correlated with the increases in serum lycopene, beta-carotene, and gamma-carotene concentrations.

Spanish researchers have found that people with bipolar disorder face an increased risk ofdeveloping the metabolic syndrome. In the past, metabolic syndrome was also found to be more common in schizophrenia. The metabolic syndrome is a common mix of connected problems, which include obesity, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes/insulin resistance, and high cholesterol levels. These problems are important, because they markedly increase a person's risk of heart attacks and strokes.