Free Republic

Long-term, low-dose antiviral treatment reduces the risk for potentially vision-damaging bouts of inflammation and infection, as well as pain, which occur when shingles affects the eye, according to research. Shingles occurs when the varicella-zoster virus, which causes chickenpox in children, lies dormant for decades in nerve cells and then starts multiplying again for reasons unknown. In about 8% of new shingles cases each year, the virus awakens in the nerve that supplies the forehead and eye, a condition called herpes zoster ophthalmicus, or HZO. Shingles causes keratitis when it affects the cornea, and iritis when inside the eye, with both...

WASHINGTON -- GlaxoSmithKline LLC will pay $3 billion and plead guilty to promoting two popular drugs for unapproved uses and to failing to disclose important safety information on a third in the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history, the Justice Department said Monday. Accompanying the criminal case was a civil settlement in which the government said the company's improper marketing included providing doctors with expensive resort vacations, European hunting trips, high-paid speaking tours and even tickets to a Madonna concert. The $3 billion combined criminal-civil fine will be the largest penalty ever paid by a drug company, Deputy...

NEW YORK - Her trip to Rwanda has been postponed, but Paris Hilton is still determined to use her celebrity status for good causes. "I want to travel the world," the 26-year-old socialite says in an interview posted on the Web site of the syndicated entertainment TV show "Extra." "I feel like there's a lot I can do, and a lot I can do to help." The Playing for Good Foundation announced last week that Hilton's philanthropic trip to Rwanda has been postponed due to restructuring of the children's charity. On her itinerary: visits to schools and health-care clinics. Hilton...