Health Highlights: March 11, 2008

To date, there have been five reported incidents involving the deep fryers, including three reports of damaged countertops and one report of a minor burn injury.

The recalled fryers have a brushed stainless steel exterior, a lid with a window, black handles, and 1/3-gallon capacity. "Cooks" is stamped on the side of the fryers and model number 22016 is printed on the bottom of the fryers, which were sold from August 2007 through January 2008 for about $50.

Consumers with recalled fryers should immediately stop using them and return the fryer to the nearest JCPenney store for a full refund, the CPSC said. For more information, contact JCPenney toll-free at 888-333-6063 anytime.

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Stagnant Funding Threatens U.S. Health Research: Report

If the budget of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) remains stagnant, the country could lose a generation of young researchers and their potential discoveries, which would pose a threat to the future of Americans' health, warns a report released Tuesday by seven leading academic research institutions.

The report,A Broken Pipeline? Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a Generation of Science at Risk, details how five consecutive years of flat funding for the NIH have affected 12 promising junior researchers who specialize in areas such as stem cells, cancer and brain diseases, and kidney disease.

"This is a real problem, discussed at almost every meeting one attends on campus, that can't simply be dismissed," Drew Faust, president of Harvard University, said in a prepared statement.

"This is about the investment that America is -- or is not -- making in the health of its citizens and its economy. Right now, the nation's brightest, young researchers, upon whom the future of American medicine rests, are getting the message that biomedical research may be a dead end and they should explore other career options -- and in too many cases, they're taking that message to heart. The President's latest budget proposal that calls for another year without an increase will only make the problem worse," Faust said.

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HIV Can Hide in Cells for Years

U.S. researchers have found that HIV is able to hide in some of the body's cells for years in order to avoid destruction by antiretroviral drugs. The finding confirms that HIV-positive people must take the drugs indefinitely to maintain control of the virus, which causes AIDS,BBC Newsreported.

The U.S. National Cancer Institute team followed 40 HIV-positive patients and found that 77 percent of them still had low levels of dormant HIV seven years after starting -- and responding well to -- antiretroviral therapy.

The researchers believe that HIV hides in CD4+ cells, which play a role in the immune system. It's likely that HIV infects these cells before the start of antiretroviral therapy and the amount of virus produced by the infected cells is low,BBC Newsreported.

The findings were published in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"It is extremely important that new drugs are developed to eradicate HIV infection as the side effects associated with long-term HIV treatment can be severe," said researcher Dr. Sarah Palmer.