Public Health
Obama to Republicans: ‘You think we’re stupid?’
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President Barack Obama said he challenged Republicans to try to repeal his landmark healthcare reform in private budget talks last week, taunting his opponents with a question: “You think we’re stupid?”
In one of three political fund-raisers for his re-election campaign on Thursday night, Obama spoke candidly to supporters about the closed-door White House conversations that led to a deal that barely avoided a shutdown of the U.S. government.
He said he warned Republicans he would veto any legislation passed by Congress that sought to defund his 2010 healthcare overhaul. Republicans, who took control of the U.S. House of Representatives later that year, had vowed to kill the law.
Rising star of brain found to regulate circadian rhythms
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The circadian system that controls normal sleep patterns is regulated by a group of glial brain cells called astrocytes, according to a study published online on April 14th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. Neuroscientists from Tufts University School of Medicine found that disruption of astrocyte function in fruit flies (Drosophila) led to altered daily rhythms, an indication that these star-shaped glial cells contribute to the control of circadian behavior. These results provide, for the first time, a tractable genetic model to study the role of astrocytes in circadian rhythms and sleep disorders.
According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, more than 40 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders. Some sleep disorders arise from changes to the internal clock that is modulated by environmental signals, including light. Biologically, the internal clock is known to be composed of a network of neurons that controls rhythmic behaviors. Rob Jackson and his team previously had found that normal circadian rhythms require a glial-specific protein. In the new study, the team demonstrates that glia, and particularly astrocytes, are active cellular elements of the neural circuit that controls circadian rhythms in the adult brain.
“This is significant because glia have been traditionally viewed as support cells rather than independent elements that can regulate neurons and behavior. Neurons have had center stage for some time but current research is establishing the role of glial cells in brain function,” said Rob Jackson, PhD, professor of neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM) and member of the genetics and neuroscience program faculties at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts. Jackson is also the director of the Center for Neuroscience Research (CNR) at TUSM.
Periodontal stem cell transplantation shows promise
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Periodontal ligament stem cells (PDLSCs) have been found to be the most efficacious of three kinds of clinically tested dental tissue-derived stem cells, reports a study published in the current issue of Cell Transplantation (20:2), freely available on-line.
According to researchers in Seoul, South Korea, transplantation of PDLSCs into beagle dogs modeled with advanced periodontal (gum) disease that affected their premolars and molars, which are morphologically similar to the corresponding areas in human dentition, was most effective. PDLSCs showed the best regenerating capacity of the periodontal ligament (which attaches the tooth to the alveolar bone in which the teeth sit), alveolar bone, cementum (material that comprises the surface of a tooth’s root), peripheral nerve and blood vessels when compared to similar transplants using dental pulp stem cells (taken from the center of teeth) or periapical follicular stem cells (taken from the developing root).
“Periodontitis, characterized by bone resorption, periodontal pocketing and gingival inflammation, is the most common cause of tooth loss in adults and affects 10 to 15 percent of adults worldwide,” said corresponding author Dr. Pill-Hoon Choung of the Seoul National University School of Dentistry. “Our study sought to evaluate the effectiveness of autologous stem cell transplantation (i.e. transplant of a patient’s own cells) using three kinds of autologous dental stem cells similar to mensenchymal stem cells.”
Is beauty found in the whites of the eyes? ‘Red eyes’ associated with the sad and unattractive
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Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, but a new study reveals that the reverse is also true; unattractiveness is in the eye of the beheld. Research published in Ethology finds that people with bloodshot eyes are considered sadder, unhealthier and less attractive than people whose eye whites are untinted, a cue which is uniquely human.
“Red, ‘bloodshot’ eyes are prominent in medical diagnoses and in folk culture”, said lead author Dr. Robert R. Provine from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “We wanted to know if they influence the everyday behaviour and attitudes of those who view them, and if they trigger perceptions of attractiveness.”
Bloodshot eyes occur when the small blood vessels of the usually transparent conjunctiva membrane on the surface of the eye become enlarged and congested with blood, giving a red tint to the underlying sclera, the “white” of the eyes. Redness of the sclera is believed to be a general but important sign of a person’s emotional and biological state.
Scientists call for new atomic risk strategy
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New ways need be found to communicate to the public the true risks of radiation from crises like the one at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant without fanning overblown fears of an “apocalypse,” scientists say.
Communication has to get across statistics about risks and at the same time address peoples’ real fears, especially when they concern atomic power which has associations with the Cold War and the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Many experts say Japan’s March 11 tsunami, which has so far left 28,000 people dead or missing, is likely to have a greater impact on public health in Japan than radiation leaking from the stricken plant.
Republicans challenge influential seniors group
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Republicans in the U.S. House Friday accused the AARP of gaining financially from President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, which the influential elderly advocacy group supported.
Republican members of a House Ways and Means subcommittee grilled AARP Chief Executive Officer Barry Rand and AARP President Lee Hammond on the non-profit organization’s health insurance operations. Rand defended the group’s policy positions and said money received from insurance licensing agreements is used to pay for its social-welfare mission.
Republicans argued that the group would gain financially by cutbacks in the law to the Medicare Advantage program that delivers Medicare health benefits through private insurers.
Research finds ‘dispense as written’ prescriptions may add $7.7 billion to annual health care costs
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Approximately five percent of prescriptions submitted by CVS Caremark Pharmacy Benefit Management (PBM) members in a 30-day period during 2009 included a “dispense as written” (DAW) designation. This practice – whereby doctors or patients demand the dispensing of a specific brand-name drug and not a generic alternative – costs the health care system up to $7.7 billion annually, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard University, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and CVS Caremark. Moreover, these requests reduce the likelihood that patients actually fill new prescriptions for essential chronic conditions.
In a study published this week in the American Journal of Medicine, the researchers demonstrate that DAW designations for prescriptions have important implications for medication adherence. They found that when starting new essential therapy, chronically ill patients with DAW prescriptions were 50 to 60 percent less likely to actually fill the more expensive brand name prescriptions than generics. “Although dispense as written requests would seem to reflect a conscious decision by patients or their physicians to use a specific agent, the increased cost sharing that results for the patient may decrease the likelihood that patients actually fill their prescriptions,” the researchers said.
“This study shows that dispense as written requests are costing the health care system billions,” said William H. Shrank, MD, MSHS, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard, and the study’s lead author. “The further irony is that patients with prescriptions specifying a certain brand seem less likely to fill their initial prescriptions, adding to the medication non-adherence problem.”
Researchers develop a halometer that tests alterations in night vision
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Researchers from the Department of Optics of the University of Granada, belonging to the Laboratorio de Ciencias de la Visión y Aplicaciones, have developed a programme for testing alterations in night vision, and the tool required to implement it, which has been named “halometer”.
This instrument consists on a software named Software Halo v1.0, and a computer where the mouse is used as a response button, and a chin cup with a forehead holder to fix the observer’s position. Software Halo v1.0 was initially presented as freeware available on LabVisGra’s website at http://www.ugr.es/local/labvisgr and at the University of Granada’s institutional repository at http://digibug.ugr.es/handle/10481/5478. Nevertheless, it was recently released by the Free-Software Bureau of the University of Granada so, it has become a scientific freeware application.
This software was developed by a group coordinated by Rosario González Anera, receiving technical support of the Granadian company Seven Solutions and of an ophthalmological clinic set in Madrid and named Novovision. The research group was integrated by researchers José Juan Castro, Carolina Ortiz and Aixa Alarcón, and receives fundings from the regional government of Economy, Innovation and Science of the Junta de Andalucía.
Injured patients fare slightly better on weekends
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Injured patients who are treated by trauma teams at hospitals are less likely to die when they are admitted on weekends versus weekdays, new research from Pennsylvania shows.
The results contrast with studies of intensive care units and stroke patients that have revealed a “weekend effect,” in which patients landing in the hospital from Friday night to Monday morning are more likely to have complications or die (see Reuters Health reports, July 6, 2010 and November 1, 2010).
The researchers looked at records from Pennsylvania hospitals, including more than 90,000 patients over a 5-year period. All the patients came in with an injury, for instance from a gunshot or car accident.
Commentary on Unique Contributions of Different Types of Evidence to Research Conclusions
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Charles H. Hennekens, M.D., DrPH, the first Sir Richard Doll Research Professor of Medicine in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University, has published a commentary for clinicians in this week’s issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). In the commentary titled “Statistical Association and Causation: Contributions of Different Types of Evidence,” Hennekens describes the unique contributions, as well as strengths and limitations, of different types of evidence to research conclusions. According to Science Watch, Hennekens was the 3rd most widely cited medical researcher in the world from 1995-2005, and five of the top 20 were his former trainees and/or fellows.
Hennekens explains how each type of evidence contributes to a different piece of the puzzle and cautions against over interpretation of studies not designed in advance to test a particular research question. He further explains which type of evidence can be used to conclude whether there is a valid statistical association, as well as how to rely on the totality of evidence to judge causality. Hennekens also emphasizes that when the totality of evidence is sufficient, health care providers can make the most rational decisions for individual patients, and policy makers can make the most rational decisions for the health of the general public.
Blue Shield California withdraws planned rate hikes
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Blue Shield of California, a nonprofit health insurer, has withdrawn plans to raise rates for its individual and family policies this year, citing a commitment to make reform work and keep costs down.
The insurer, which has 340,000 individual and family-plan members in California, had filed with state officials earlier this year to raise rates by as much as 59 percent.
Blue Shield said the previously proposed increases reflected a two-year cumulative average increase of about 30 percent.
Banana peels get a second life as water purifier
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To the surprisingly inventive uses for banana peels — which include polishing silverware, leather shoes, and the leaves of house plants — scientists have added purification of drinking water contaminated with potentially toxic metals. Their report, which concludes that minced banana peel performs better than an array of other purification materials, appears in ACS’s journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.
Gustavo Castro and colleagues note that mining processes, runoff from farms, and industrial wastes can all put heavy metals, such as lead and copper, into waterways. Heavy metals can have adverse health and environmental effects. Current methods of removing heavy metals from water are expensive, and some substances used in the process are toxic themselves. Previous work has shown that some plant wastes, such as coconut fibers and peanut shells, can remove these potential toxins from water. In this report, the researchers wanted to find out whether minced banana peels could also act as water purifiers.
The researchers found that minced banana peel could quickly remove lead and copper from river water as well as, or better than, many other materials. A purification apparatus made of banana peels can be used up to 11 times without losing its metal-binding properties, they note. The team adds that banana peels are very attractive as water purifiers because of their low cost and because they don’t have to be chemically modified in order to work.
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New study shows government spending preferences of Americans
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In its 27th survey of American spending priorities since 1973 conducted as part of its General Social Survey (GSS), NORC at the University of Chicago Wednesday released a report on its most recent findings. By a notable margin, education and health care were the top two spending priorities of Americans. And Americans are consistent in that: those two categories have finished in the top two in each of the ten surveys since 1990.
The spending priorities report is derived from recently released data of the 2010 General Social Survey which NORC has conducted for forty years. The GSS is a biennial survey that gathers data on contemporary American society in order to monitor and explain trends and constants in attitudes, behaviors, and attributes. NORC makes the high-quality data easily accessible to scholars, students, policy makers, and others. Over 16,000 research uses in articles, textbooks, monographs, dissertations, etc. have been documented. The GSS is supported by the National Science Foundation and it is the second most-referenced survey in America after the U.S. Census.
Rounding out the top ten spending priorities were (3) assistance to the poor (4) halting crime, (5) Social Security, (6) the environment, (7) dealing with drug addiction, (8) childcare, (9) drug rehabilitation, and (10) law enforcement. Finishing lowest in priority, as it has in every survey since 1973, is foreign assistance. The study surveys public preferences on twenty-two spending categories.
What doctors (and patients) can learn from air traffic controllers: What’s that you say
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A review of 35 years of scientific medical studies confirms that the social and emotional context of the doctor–patient relationship have yet to be incorporated into the equation when it comes to health care.
In spite of its strong endorsement over a decade ago by the influential Institute of Medicine report, “Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century,” which highlighted the benefits of care that is respectful of and responsive to patients’ needs, values and concerns, patient-centered medicine has not become part of the mainstream.
A review of the medical literature from 1975 to April 2010 found that less than one percent of the 327,219 randomized controlled studies published in peer-reviewed journals over the past 35 years included patient-centered care trials. “Behaviorally–Defined Patient-Centered Communication – A Narrative Review” appears in the February 2011 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine
University of Miami scientists track great hammerhead shark migration
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A study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science details the first scientific research to successfully track a great hammerhead shark using satellite tag technology.
Rosenstiel Schhol Research Assistant Professor Neil Hammershlag and colleagues tracked one of the nomadic sharks for 62 days to uncover its northeast journey from the coast of South Florida to the middle of the Atlantic off the coast of New Jersey. The straight line point-to-point distance of 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) represents a range extension for this species. The data also revealed the shark entering the Gulf Stream current and open-ocean waters of the northwestern Atlantic Ocean.
“This animal made an extraordinary large movement in a short amount of time,” said Hammerschlag, director of the R.J. Dunlap Marine Conservation Program at the UM Rosenstiel School. “This single observation is a starting point, it shows we need to expand our efforts to learn more about them.”
