Public Health
Exercise shoes focus attention on walking
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Call them toners, shapers, or rocker bottoms, those exercise shoes with the distinctive thick, rounded soles are flying off the shelves and onto the feet of even the most clodhopper-averse walkers.
Experts don’t agree on whether these shoes are any better than regular running shows, but they concur that whatever gets you moving is a good thing.
“I tell people to make your bottom half your better half,” said Denise Austin, a fitness expert and spokesperson for Skechers Shape-ups. “They make you feel like you’re walking on sand. The second you put them on you think ‘good posture. They make you more aware than regular shoes.”
High-risk pools an early test for health overhaul
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When James Howard was diagnosed with brain cancer in March he did not know how he would pay for radiation treatments costing $87,000 and $2,300 a week for chemotherapy.
At the time of his diagnosis, Howard was insured by UnitedHealth Group Inc, a policy for which he paid because his employer, Hennessey Performance near Houston, Texas, did not provide healthcare insurance for its employees.
After his diagnosis, UnitedHealth revoked Howard’s policy on the grounds that his was a pre-existing condition. A Texas high-risk insurance pool would have paid for his treatments, but only after a year.
China says no evidence of contamination in milk
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China’s health ministry said on Sunday that it had found no evidence of contamination in milk powder after an investigation into reports that it had caused baby girls to show signs of premature sexual development.
The ministry tested products made by Chinese baby-formula maker Synutra International as well as 20 other brands across the country to compare the level of estrogen in dairy products.
The probe focused on three cases in Wuhan, a populous city in central China’s Hubei province, as well as six cases in five other provinces.
Tackling cancer among poor doesn’t have to cost dear
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The growing burden of cancer in developing countries could be reduced without expensive drugs and equipment, scientists said Monday, but it requires a global effort similar to the fight against HIV/AIDS.
In a study in The Lancet, scientists from the United States, who have formed a Global Task Force on Expanded Access to Cancer Care and Control in Developing Countries (GTF.CCC), said cancer is now a leading cause of death in poor nations but is often neglected in health authorities’ prevention and treatment plans.
While only about 5 percent of global resources for cancer are spent in developing countries, the burden of the disease is far greater there than in rich nations, with up to 80 percent of cancer deaths each year occurring in poorer nations.
Admitting errors doesn’t increase lawsuits: study
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New research hints that when doctors are open about their mistakes, patients don’t file more lawsuits and the healthcare system doesn’t shell out more money in claims.
While many doctors agree that admitting to medical errors and apologizing to patients is the most ethical way to go, some worry that opening up will make an injured patient more likely to sue.
But researchers who examined the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) showed that this was not the case, and hope their example encourages more hospitals to go the way of full disclosure.
On-the-job injuries hurt home health care industry
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Training can alleviate some of the pain that occupational injuries bring to the long-term care industry, according to Penn State researchers. The study looked at injuries among home health aides.
Home health aides typically visit patients’ homes to assist with activities of daily living, such as bathing, dressing and eating. Many people enrolled in home health care have multiple health challenges, which can result in erratic and sometimes violent behavior. Home health aides also engage in manual labors like lifting patients. These aides are often injured multiple times on the job and these injuries affect more than just the employees. Home-health-care organizations and the long-term-care industry suffer from the effects of these occupational injuries, the researchers report at the 2010 Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Montreal.
“In our research, we saw a cascading effect,” said Deirdre McCaughey, assistant professor of health policy and administration. “Employees who had no training or did not believe their training prepared them well had more injuries. Those employees were also much less likely than non-injured employees to recommend their organization as a place at which to work or seek services.”
Experts roll out malaria map, urge mosquito study
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Nearly 3 billion people, or two-fifths of the world’s population, were at risk of contracting malaria in 2009 and closer study of the mosquito’s life cycle is needed to combat the disease, researchers said in two reports.
In the first study, scientists mapped out the geographical spread of Plasmodium vivax—the most common parasite that causes malaria—using reported cases of malaria and details on temperature and aridity.
“We estimate that the global population at risk of P. vivax malaria in 2009 was 2.85 billion people. Regionally, the great majority of this population (91 percent) resides in central and southeast Asian countries,” wrote Simon Hay, a zoologist at the University of Oxford who co-authored the study.
Researchers find 95 genes affecting cholesterol
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A scan of the full human DNA sequence has turned up 95 genes that affect blood cholesterol, including a few affected by drugs on the market and others that might be the basis of new drugs, researchers said on Wednesday.
Their findings demonstrate that regulating cholesterol levels is even more complex than many people knew but also point to some short-cuts to prevent heart disease.
The variations they found account for between a quarter and a third of the inherited variation in cholesterol levels and triglycerides, the researchers report in the journal Nature. Diet and exercise can also greatly affect cholesterol levels.
Traveling by car increases global temperatures more than by plane, but only in long term
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Driving a car increases global temperatures in the long run more than making the same long-distance journey by air according to a new study. However, in the short run travelling by air has a larger adverse climate impact because airplanes strongly affect short-lived warming processes at high altitudes. The study appears in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-weekly journal.
In the study, Jens Borken-Kleefeld and colleagues compare the impacts on global warming of different means of transport. The researchers use, for the first time, a suite of climate chemistry models to consider the climate effects of all long- and short-lived gases, aerosols and cloud effects, not just carbon dioxide, resulting from transport worldwide.
They concluded that in the long run the global temperature increase from a car trip will be on average higher than from a plane journey of the same distance. However, in the first years after the journey, air travel increases global temperatures four times more than car travel. Passenger trains and buses cause four to five times less impact than automobile travel for every mile a passenger travels. The findings prove robust despite the scientific uncertainties in understanding the earth’s climate system.
Pass child nutrition bill: Michelle Obama
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First Lady Michelle Obama is calling on the Congress to pass legislation to improve nutritional standards and help fight childhood obesity in American schools.
“We owe it to the children who aren’t reaching their potential because they’re not getting the nutrition they need during the day,” she wrote in the Monday edition of the Washington Post.
“And we owe it to our country - because our prosperity depends on the health and vitality of the next generation.”
Gender-bending fish on the rise in southern Alberta
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Chemicals present in two rivers in southern Alberta are likely the cause of the feminization of fish say researchers at the University of Calgary who have published results of their study in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.
“What is unique about our study is the huge geographical area we covered. We found that chemicals – man-made and naturally occurring – that have the potential to harm fish were present along approximately 600 km of river,” says paper co-author Lee Jackson, executive director of Advancing Canadian Wastewater Assets, a research facility that develops and tests new approaches for treating wastewater which will be located at the City of Calgary’s new Pine Creek Wastewater Treatment Centre. “The situation for native fish will likely get worse as the concentration of organic contaminants will become more concentrated as a response to climate change and the increase in human and animal populations,” adds Jackson.
The study focused on two rivers in the South Saskatchewan River Basin: The Red Deer and Oldman rivers, located in southern Alberta, Canada.
Weight issues move up need for walkers, canes, other devices
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Obese older adults are more likely to use walkers, canes and other mobility devices at a younger age, and may run the risk of using them incorrectly, according to new research from Purdue University.
“Baby Boomers are coming of age and obesity is an epidemic for this population as well,” said Karis Pressler, a doctoral student in sociology and gerontology and the project’s lead author. “This research shows that if obesity continues at this rate, we are going to see an increase in the use of assistive devices, which can be costly to individuals and the health-care system. Reliance on assistive devices can affect everyday life in multiple ways, from how you bathe, to how you dress, to how you move.
“If people don’t want to be reliant on these devices in the future, they need to realize how obesity heightens one’s risk of becoming disabled and affects how a person will compensate for that disability.”
Frustration grows as AIDS science, politics clash
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An international AIDS conference has exposed a gulf between scientists and politicians on how to tackle the deadly HIV pandemic.
Despite promises from governments around the world to pursue evidence-based policies, AIDS experts are frustrated at a refusal to adapt to new ways of looking at HIV and the people most at risk of contracting it.
It is a stance that displays discrimination and criminal negligence, says Julio Montaner, president of the International AIDS Society, who has led a drive at the conference to get politicians to wake up to the evidence.
Relationships hold key to spiritual care
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Relationships hold the key to giving terminally ill patients the spiritual care they need. However, researchers have pinpointed a mismatch between patients’ expectations and understanding when it comes to spirituality, and what medical and family caregivers offer. New recommendations to improve this situation appear today, in the journal Palliative Medicine, published by SAGE.
The terms ‘spirituality’ and ‘spiritual care’ are becoming buzzwords in palliative care. But although most terminally ill patients rate care for their spiritual needs as very important, the professionals caring for them often have trouble defining what that means.
Using the definition of spirituality ‘a personal search for meaning and purpose in life, which may or may not be related to religion,’ Cardiff University’s Adrian Edwards together with Hong Kong based researchers Naomi Pang, Vicky Shiu and Cecelia Chan scoured the palliative care literature to create a systematic meta-study of spirituality. They incorporated qualitative data from 19 studies on 178 patients and 116 healthcare providers in their analysis.
Colorado man delivers pizza and saves a life
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A laid off paramedic who turned to delivering pizzas to make ends meet is credited with saving the life of a man who went into cardiac arrest just as a pizza was delivered to his door.
Christopher Wuebben, 22, was delivering a pizza late last week to the suburban Denver home of George Linn, when he heard the man’s wife screaming for help, according to Wuebben’s boss, John Keiley.
“Chris told the woman that he was trained in CPR and knew what to do,” Keiley, owner of Johnny’s New York Pizza, said on Tuesday. “He got him on the floor and brought him back to life before the fire department showed up.”
