Health Highlights: Jan. 18, 2010

Jan. 19 -- Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

FDA Wants to Tighten Tanning Bed Regulations

Stricter regulation of tanning beds will be discussed at public meetings beginning in March, says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

"We don't recommend using them at all, but we know people do use them so we want to make them as low-risk as possible," Sharon Miller, the FDA's UV radiation specialist, told the Associated Press.

Currently, the FDA regulates tanning beds as "Class I devices," a low-risk classification that includes bandages. While tanning beds do carry some warnings about skin cancer risk, the FDA has decided the warning labels should be more visible to consumers and include stronger wording about the risks.

No new science justifies increased FDA regulation, according to the Indoor Tanning Association, the AP reported.

Last summer, the World Health Organization's cancer division declared that tanning beds definitely cause skin cancer. This came after an analysis of numerous studies showed that people who use tanning beds in their teens and 20s have a 75 percent increased risk of melanoma, the deadliest type of skin cancer.

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New Bone Marrow Transplant Technique Promising: Study

U.S. scientists say they've conducted the first human tests of a new technique that may eventually eliminate the need to find matching donors for patients who need bone marrow transplants.

The team at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle found a way to manipulate a signaling pathway in order to greatly multiply the number of umbilical cord stem cells available for transplant, BBC News reported.

The technique proved successful in initial animal studies and subsequent tests in human patients. The study appears in the journal Nature Medicine.