Public Health
A stronger future for the elderly
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Experts at The University of Nottingham are to investigate the effect of nutrients on muscle maintenance in the hope of determining better ways of keeping up our strength as we get old.
The researchers, based at the School of Graduate Entry Medicine and Health in Derby, want to know what sort of exercise we can take and what food we should eat to slow down the natural loss of skeletal muscle with ageing.
The team from the Department of Clinical Physiology, which has over 20 years experience in carrying out this type of metabolic study, need to recruit 16 healthy male volunteers in two specific age groups to help in it’s research.
McCain and Obama on same side in US war on cancer
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If there is one war John McCain and Barack Obama agree on, it’s the one against cancer.
Thirty-seven years after President Richard Nixon launched the “war on cancer,” the two U.S. presidential candidates agree on a need to fight the disease that kills more than 560,000 Americans each year.
The close personal ties each candidate has to the disease ensures that cancer advocates will find support in the White House regardless who wins the Nov. 4 election.
McCain, the 72-year-old Republican presidential nominee, survived multiple skin cancers. Democratic nominee Barack Obama, 47, lost his grandfather to prostate cancer and watched his young mother die from ovarian cancer.
Want to live a long life? Run
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People who want to live a long and healthy life might want to take up running.
A study published on Monday shows middle-aged members of a runner’s club were half as likely to die over a 20-year period as people who did not run.
Running reduced the risk not only of heart disease, but of cancer and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, researchers at Stanford University in California found.
WHO publishes how-to guide on fighting AIDS
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What is the best way to set up an AIDS testing clinic? Which are the best drugs to give to people infected with HIV? The World Health Organization released a one-stop guidebook on Tuesday to help low- and middle-income countries seeking to battle the pandemic.
It includes advice on distributing condoms, guidance on counseling and lists of the available tests for diagnosing HIV.
“This document responds to a long-standing country need,” WHO’s HIV/AIDS Department Director, Dr. Kevin De Cock, said in a statement.
Olympics-Doping: Russia denies “systematic” doping
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The Russian team on Wednesday denied accusations of systematic doping among its athletes and questioned the timing of the announcements days before the Beijing Olympics that several of them had failed drugs tests.
Some of the country’s leading medal hopes, including track and field athletes, a cyclist and a race walker, have been expelled or suspended from the Games in the past week after failed tests and accusations of switching urine samples.
The head of Russia’s athletics federation on Wednesday said doping was “a sporting crime” and called for criminal charges against athletes who use banned performance enhancing drugs.
Surgical Errors Cost Nearly $1.5 Billion Each Year
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Potentially preventable medical errors that occur during or after surgery may cost employers nearly $1.5 billion a year, according to new estimates by HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
In a study published in the July 28 issue of the journal Health Services Research, AHRQ’s William E. Encinosa, Ph.D., and Fred J. Hellinger, P.D., found that insurers paid an additional $28,218 (52 percent more) and an additional $19,480 (48 percent more) for surgery patients who experienced acute respiratory failure or post-operative infections, respectively, compared with patients who did not experience either error.
The authors also found these additional costs for surgery patients who experienced the following medical errors compared with those who did not:
Current Stats Severely Underestimate Costs of Medical Errors
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Medical errors drive hospital costs up and while many seek ways to reduce these mistakes, not all fully understand their financial effects.
A new review suggests that current statistics on medical mistakes might not be comprehensive because they do not factor in all inpatient costs or include readmissions and patient care for the 90 days following surgery.
“Many hospitals are struggling to survive financially,” said study co-author William Encinosa, Ph.D. “The point of our paper is that the cost savings from reducing medical errors are much larger than previously thought.”
UK watchdog urges doctors to cut antibiotics
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British doctors should slash the number of times they prescribe antibiotics for respiratory tract infections because the drugs rarely help, the country’s drug cost watchdog said on Wednesday.
This means doctors in the state’s health system should not prescribe antibiotics for most cases of sore throats, colds, bronchitis or other types of respiratory infections, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE, said.
They should also delay writing such prescriptions and reassure people the drugs are not needed immediately and would make little difference because most respiratory infections are viral, the new guidelines said.
U of T discovers environmental factors linked to sex ratio of plants
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Environmental factors can transform the ratio of females to males in plant populations according to new research out of the University of Toronto.
The study conducted by Ivana Stehlik, a lecturer, Jannice Friedman, a PhD candidate, and Spencer Barrett, a professor, involved a novel approach using genetic markers (known DNA sequences) to identify the sex of seeds. The team investigated six natural populations of the wind-pollinated herb Rumex nivalis in the Swiss Alps and mapped the distance between females and neighbouring males. They then measured the amount of pollen captured by female flowers and collected seeds from the plants when they were mature.
“The plant has strongly female-biased flowering sex ratios in these populations. We wanted to find out the mechanism causing the bias,” said Barrett. “We found that where there were more males surrounding females, females captured more pollen, matured more seed and produced more strongly female-biased offspring.”
Analysis of Quickly Stopped Rx Orders Provides New Tool for Reducing Medical Errors
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By studying medication orders that are withdrawn (“discontinued”) by physicians within 45 minutes of their origination, researchers at The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have demonstrated a systematic and efficient method of identifying prescribing errors. The method, they say, has value to screen for medication errors and as a teaching tool for physicians and physicians-in-training. The report is published in the July/August 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
Dr. Ross Koppel and colleagues at Penn’s Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology used a hospital’s computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system to track prescriptions that were discontinued within 45 minutes. They found the rate of errors among the quickly stopped orders was 66%. The Rx problem may have been detected by the ordering physician, another physician, a pharmacist, or a nurse, but the prescribing physician issues the stop order.
Firefighters threaten strike over weighty issue
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British firefighters have threatened to go on strike after bosses fired a veteran Scottish colleague for being overweight.
Fire Brigades Union branch secretary Alan Paterson said that 22-year veteran Kevin Ogilvie should have been reassigned to other duties after he was found to be too heavy to fight fires. The union has decided to hold a ballot for strike action.
“Our members have taken action because they deem that sanction far too severe. The man hasn’t committed any crime,” Paterson told Reuters.
High failure rate seen after some ACL repairs
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Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction using a replacement ligament from a cadaver has a high failure rate in young, active adults, according to a study reported Thursday at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine conference in Orlando, Florida.
The ACL is a key ligament inside the knee that helps keep it stable. Located in the center of the knee joint, it runs from the thigh bone to the shin bone through the center of the knee. Typically, tearing the ACL occurs with a sudden direction change. To repair a torn ACL, a surgeon replaces the damaged ligament with a new one, either from a cadaver or the patient’s own body.
Among 64 patients younger than age 40 with high activity levels who had ACL reconstruction with a cadaver replacement ligament and were followed for a minimum of 2 years, the grafted ligament failed in 15 (23.4 percent). Graft failure was defined as need for repeat ACL reconstruction due to injury or graft failure or poor scores on a combination of orthopaedic outcome measures.
Members of Consumer-driven Health Plans Choosing Less Care
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Consumer-driven health plans (CDHP)—hailed since their inception in 2000 as a tool to help control costs—are resulting in members forgoing care and discontinuing drugs to treat chronic medical problems, according to two newly published studies.
Under employer-offered CDHPs, members pay up-front deductibles either out-of-pocket or from a dedicated health-care account before insurance coverage begins. Proponents—including President Bush and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain—argue that consumers in a market-oriented approach will make better health-care choices and drive health-care costs down by doing cost comparisons and accessing information about their conditions. Critics argue that people will instead opt out of important care.
The new research—published in Health Affairs and led by two University of Oregon policy experts—offers partial fuel to critics: Many CDHP enrollees were more likely to quit taking drugs that control high blood pressure and cholesterol-lowering medications than were participants with over medical coverage, said Jessica Greene, professor of health policy in the UO’s department of planning, public policy and management.
Pneumonia Most Common Reason for Hospitalization
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More than 1.2 million Americans – roughly equivalent to the population of Dallas – were hospitalized for pneumonia in 2006, making this lung infection the most common reason for admission to the hospital other than for childbirth, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Treating pneumonia cost hospitals $10 billion in 2006. The disease, which can be especially deadly among the elderly, occurs when the lungs fill with fluid from infection or inflammation caused by bacteria or a virus.
AHRQ’s new analysis of 2006 hospitalizations estimated admissions and hospitals’ costs for other common conditions:
It pays to go in an Indian public toilet
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It pays to use a toilet in southern India, as residents are earning close to a dollar a month by using public urinals, a scheme launched by authorities to promote hygiene and research in rural areas.
Dozens of people are queuing up to use toilets in Musiri, a remote town in Tamil Nadu state, where authorities have succeeded in keeping street corners clean with the new scheme, The Times of India newspaper said on Sunday.
“In fact, many of us started using toilets for urination only after the ecosan (ecological sanitation) toilets were constructed in the area,” said S. Rajasekaran, a truck cleaner.
