Public Health
Disease risk eases in parts of flooded Pakistan
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The risk of outbreaks of disease has eased in parts of flood-hit Pakistan as water recedes from many areas, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday, but the hard-hit south remains a worry.
The floods that began six weeks ago have inflicted havoc from the northwest to the far south of the country, destroying villages, bridges, roads, damaging millions of acres of cropland and displacing millions of people.
The government and aid agencies have warned of the spread of epidemics, particularly of water-borne diseases such as cholera, in the flood-stricken areas.
Prepared Patient: Uncovering Your Health Risks
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At various points in our lives, we’re curious about our health risks, wondering about our susceptibility for everything from high cholesterol to a deadly inherited disease. We might want to learn more about our risks when we reach a certain age or experience a bout of bad health; when we hear about a friend or co-worker coping with a dreaded illness; or read the latest headlines about disease research.
People can choose many paths to find out more about their personal risk(s) of disease, including community health screenings, health assessments provided by a doctor or an employer, or online calculators offered by hospitals, insurance providers and nonprofit health groups.
But the information and usefulness of these sources can vary, and may leave you with more questions than answers. For some, these first forays into sorting out personal risks can be more distressing than helpful.
White Americans living longer with muscular dystrophy than African-Americans
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A new study shows that white men and boys are living longer with muscular dystrophy due to technological advances in recent years, but that the lives of African-American men and boys with muscular dystrophy have not been extended at the same rate. The research will be published in the September 14, 2010, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Muscular dystrophy is a group of inherited muscle diseases that often lead to early death due to respiratory or heart failure.
“More research is needed to determine the causes of this difference between whites and African-Americans with muscular dystrophy so it can be addressed,” said study author Aileen Kenneson, PhD, who conducted the study while with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Possible contributing factors could be differences in the types of muscular dystrophy, environmental or genetic factors, other health conditions such as high blood pressure, individual social and economic factors or access to and use of treatment options.”
National study finds 70 percent increase in basketball-related traumatic brain injuries
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A new study conducted by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital examined basketball-related injuries treated in emergency departments among children and adolescents between the ages of 5 and 19 from 1997 to 2007. According to the study, more than 4 million basketball-related injuries were treated in emergency departments during the 11-year study. While the number of injuries decreased 22 percent over the course of the study, the average number of injuries per year (375,350) remained high.
Data from the study, being released online September 13 and appearing in the October 2010 issue of Pediatrics, revealed that traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), which carry significant risk, increased 70 percent over the study period despite the overall downward trend in basketball injuries.
“We found a dramatic increase in the number of basketball-related TBIs over the 11-year study period,” said study co-author, Lara McKenzie PhD, principal investigator at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. “In addition, the proportion of TBIs doubled for boys and tripled for girls during this time. Many athletes do not recognize the symptoms of concussions or do not report them to coaches and trainers. Educating athletes, coaches and parents to recognize and report on suspected concussions is vital to managing them effectively and helping to prevent future injuries.”
Zimbabwe court frees U.S. health workers on bail
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A Zimbabwe court released on bail on Monday six health workers, including four from the United States, accused of dispensing AIDS drugs without a licence.
The six, who were each freed on $200 bail, are members of a Californian-based Christian volunteer health service which runs two clinics in Zimbabwe working with AIDS orphans and HIV positive patients.
Zimbabwe has one of the highest HIV rates in the world and the destruction of its public health system during a decade of economic crisis has left it largely dependent on donor organisations and church-based institutions for essential health services.
Artificial “skin” materials can sense pressure
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New artificial “skin” fashioned out of flexible semiconductor materials can sense touch, making it possible to create robots with a grip delicate enough to hold an egg, yet strong enough to grasp the frying pan, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.
Scientists have long struggled with a way to make robotic devices capable of adjusting the amount of force needed to hold and use different objects. The pressure-sensitive materials are designed to overcome that challenge.
“Humans generally know how to hold a fragile egg without breaking it,” said Ali Javey, an electrical engineer at the University of California Berkeley, who led one of two teams reporting on artificial skin discoveries in the journal Nature Materials.
Two men “ran illegal sperm donor agency”
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Two men earned 250,000 pounds through an unlicensed fertility company matching sperm donors with women trying to conceive, a court heard on Monday.
Under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, a licence is needed by anyone wanted to “procure, test or distribute” any sperm or eggs.
The two defendants are the first to be prosecuted under the Act, the Press Association reported.
Walking helps keep body and brain young
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Everyone knows that walking limbers the aging body, but did you know it keeps the mind supple as well?
Research shows that walking can actually boost the connectivity within brain circuits, which tends to diminish as the grey hairs multiply.
“Patterns of connectivity decrease as we get older,” said Dr. Arthur F. Kramer, who led the study team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
US again funding controversial stem cell research
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The U.S. government said it was resuming work on controversial human embryonic stem cell research on Friday after an appeals court ruled in its favor.
In the latest legal back-and-forth on the issue, a U.S. appeals court on Thursday granted an Obama administration request to temporarily lift a judge’s ban on federal funding of research involving human embryonic stem cells.
More legal action is pending but the National Institutes of Health said it would resume work that had been suspended.
USDA knew of problems at egg recall farm: report
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U.S. Department of Agriculture experts knew about sanitary problems at one of the two Iowa farms at the center of a massive nationwide egg recall, but did not notify health authorities, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Bacteria found in chicken feed used at the two Iowa farms was linked to a salmonella outbreak that prompted the recall of more than a half billion eggs, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said last month.
The Journal said USDA daily sanitation reports viewed by it underscored the regulatory gaps that may have contributed to delays in discovering salmonella contamination.
More doctors no panacea for healthcare: report
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Medicare patients with more doctors to choose from do not necessarily get more or better care, researchers reported on Thursday in an analysis demonstrating how complicated U.S. healthcare reform will be.
The Dartmouth Atlas analysis questions the Obama administration’s hopes that health insurance reform legislation passed in March will do much to improve U.S. healthcare by helping 32 million more Americans get health insurance and providing more primary care.
They found huge variations in the quality of medical care across the country and even patients who should in theory have plenty of opportunity to see a doctor are not faring better health-wise.
Do kids, men need folic acid from a pill?
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With the advent of folic-acid supplementation of certain foods, few Canadians are now getting too little of the B vitamin, a new study estimates—in findings that question the need for children and men to get additional folic acid from vitamins.
The study does not challenge the need for women of childbearing age to take folic acid supplements, researchers say, since they need extra amounts of the vitamin to reduce the risk of having a baby with neural tube defects—birth defects of the brain or spine, including spina bifida.
Nor should women older than 70 feel a need to cut back on folic acid: they were the one group the study found to have a high rate of inadequate folate/folic acid intake. (Folate is the natural form of the B vitamin, found in foods such as spinach, asparagus, dried beans and peas, and orange juice; folic acid is the synthetic form used in vitamin supplements and added to certain “fortified” foods, including wheat flour and breakfast cereals.)
Can money buy happiness? Maybe, up to $75,000
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Can money really make you happy? Not really, but up to about $75,000 a year can ease the pain of life’s stresses, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
A survey of 1,000 Americans shows they are overall fairly happy, and more money equals more satisfaction up to a point, Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton of the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University in New Jersey found.
“More money does not necessarily buy more happiness, but less money is associated with emotional pain,” they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Fines of $7 in “tough” new China anti-smoking rules
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China’s “toughest” ever smoking ban, which aims to stop people lighting up during November’s Asian Games, will carry fines of $7, state media said on Wednesday, a limited deterrent to smokers in one of China’s richest cities.
People found smoking in offices, conference halls, elevators and certain other public spaces will be fined 50 yuan ($7.36), though “businesses not meeting their obligations” will be fined up to 30,000 yuan, the official Xinhua news agency said, calling it “the nation’s toughest smoking ban.”
Guangzhou is one of China’s wealthiest cities, with a per capita GDP of more than $10,000, so individual 50 yuan fines are unlikely to have much impact on most residents unless there are armies of enforcers combing the city.
Study finds more Americans bypassing their personal physician when immediate treatment required
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Only 45 percent of the 354 million annual visits for acute care in the United States are made to patients’ personal physicians, as Americans increasingly make busy emergency departments, specialists or outpatient care departments their first point of contact for treatment of new health problems or a flare up of a chronic condition like asthma or diabetes.
The findings, which appear in the September edition of Health Affairs, do not bode well for the nation’s already busy and frequently undermanned emergency rooms. While fewer than five percent of doctors across the U.S. are emergency physicians, they handle more than 28 percent of all acute care encounters - and more than half of acute care visits by the under-and uninsured.
According to co-authors including Steven Pitts, MD, associate professor of medicine in the Emory School of Medicine and a staff physician at Emory University Hospital Midtown, and Arthur Kellermann, MD, the Paul O’Neill Alcoa Chair in Policy Analysis at the RAND Corporation and previous associate dean for health policy at Emory University, health reform provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that advance patient-centered medical homes and accountable care organizations are intended to improve access to acute care. However, the challenge for reform, according to study authors, will be to succeed in the complex acute care landscape that already exists.
