Public Health
Nearly 6 million older Americans fall each year-report
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A survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that 5.8 million adults aged 65 and older fell at least once in 2006, and for 1.8 million of these individuals, the resulting injury required a doctor visit or restricted activity.
“The effect these injuries have on the quality of life of older adults and on the US healthcare system reinforces the need for broader uses of scientifically-proven fall-prevention interventions,” investigators emphasize in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report for March 7. According to the report, one of the most effective interventions is exercise.
Gender differences in language appear biological
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Although researchers have long agreed that girls have superior language abilities than boys, until now no one has clearly provided a biological basis that may account for their differences.
For the first time—and in unambiguous findings—researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Haifa show both that areas of the brain associated with language work harder in girls than in boys during language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on different parts of the brain when performing these tasks.
“Our findings – which suggest that language processing is more sensory in boys and more abstract in girls—could have major implications for teaching children and even provide support for advocates of single sex classrooms,” said Douglas D. Burman, research associate in Northwestern’s Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
Highly Involved Patients Don’t Always See Better Health Outcomes
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Patients who prefer to be highly involved in their treatment don’t necessarily have better luck managing chronic health conditions, a new study suggests.
A research team based at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Iowa City Health Care System and the University of Iowa surveyed 189 veterans with high blood pressure to determine the patients’ preferences for involvement in their health care. They discovered those who wanted an active role in their treatment had higher blood pressure and cholesterol over a 12-month span than those who wanted a less active role.
The study, published this week in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, was led by Austin Baldwin, a post-doctoral fellow in the Center for Research in the Implementation of Innovative Strategies in Practice (CRIISP) at the VA Iowa City Health Care System and an adjunct assistant professor of psychology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
U.S. cancer death rate down but 565,650 seen in 2008
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The U.S. death rate from cancer has continued a steady decline that began in the early 1990s but it will still kill a projected 565,650 Americans this year, the American Cancer Society said on Wednesday.
The death rate from lung, colorectal, prostate, breast and other cancer types fell in 2005, the most recent year for which figures were available, but not as much as in 2003 and 2004, the group said. The actual number of cancer deaths rose.
The cancer death rate for men has fallen by 18.4 percent since peaking in 1990 and for women has fallen by 10.5 percent since peaking in 1991. Cancer is the No. 2 cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease.
Should Doctors Advocate Alternative Sources of Nicotine?
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Should doctors suggest alternative sources of nicotine to people who are unable to give up cigarettes, asks this week’s BMJ?
Smoking currently kills over 100,000 UK citizens each year, predominantly from lung cancer, heart disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, writes John Britton, Professor of Epidemiology at City Hospital, Nottingham. Currently 77% of UK smokers want to quit, and 78% have tried and failed, mainly because of nicotine addiction.
He argues that health professionals should strongly advise smokers to quit all nicotine use, and do all they can to support this. However, for those who try repeatedly and fail, or for those who are not ready to stop using nicotine, switching to a medicinal nicotine product is the logical best option.
U.S. back pain costs rise but pain still there
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The total cost of treating back pain in the United States has risen 65 percent in the past decade, but after all the pricey treatments, many people are still left with an aching back and an increasingly empty wallet, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
They said treating spine problems in the United States costs $85.9 billion a year, rivaling the economic burden of treating cancer, which costs $89 billion.
Higher spending on prescription drugs, more advanced diagnostic tests and more frequent outpatient visits helped drive the increases, as well as greater patient demand for treatment and more use of spinal fusion surgery and instruments, they said.
Australia Day award for infertility expert
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An infertility expert whose scientific interest was sparked while growing up on a sheep station is among those recognised this Australia Day.
Professor Jock Findlay of Prince Henry’s Institute in Melbourne, has been made an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) for his contribution to the field of reproductive endocrinology.
It is the latest in a line of honours for Findlay, who is one of the original collaborators on a paper in the journal Nature that reported the first successful in vitro fertilisation pregnancy using hormone replacement to prepare the uterus.
A Good Fight May Keep You and Your Marriage Healthy
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A good fight with your spouse may be good for your health, research suggests.
Couples in which both the husband and wife suppress their anger when one attacks the other die earlier than members of couples where one or both partners express their anger and resolve the conflict, according to preliminary results of a University of Michigan study.
Researchers looked at 192 couples over 17 years and placed the couples into one of four categories: both partners communicate their anger; in the second and third groups one spouse expresses while the other suppresses; and both the husband and wife suppress their anger and brood, said Ernest Harburg, professor emeritus with the U-M School of Public Health and the Psychology Department, and lead author. The study is a longitudinal analysis of couples in Tecumseh, Mich.
Heart Patients Find Education Programs Lead to Better Health
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Older women heart patients benefit from educational programs as a supplement to clinical care to help significantly lower cardiac symptoms, lose weight and increase physical activity, a new study shows.
Different program formats produce different results for this notoriously difficult to treat patient population.
The new research from the University of Michigan suggests that if hospitals and clinicians offered specially designed group or individual programs, depending on the desired outcome, female heart patients over 60 would need less health care and have a better quality of life.
Quit Smoking? Move to California
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Sun. Sand. Surf. And no smoking. California’s attitude toward smoking may be the best recipe for success when trying to quit. New research shows that social pressure plays a key role in getting smokers to quit.
By analyzing the smoking patterns of Asian immigrants from countries where smoking is socially acceptable, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have shown that smokers are far more likely to try to quit when living where smoking is not socially acceptable. And the more these smokers try to quit, the more they succeed.
One hundred arrested for not having toilets
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Local authorities have arrested at least 100 Ugandans for failing to build toilets in their homes in the midst of a cholera epidemic that has killed 8 people and infected 164, state media reported Wednesday.
“We cannot watch as people die (of cholera),” northwestern Bulisa district administrator Norbert Turyahikayo told the New Vision daily, justifying the arrest of Ugandans found to have huts with no pit latrines Tuesday.
Health needs higher for kids of abused moms
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Children whose mothers have a history of abuse by intimate partners have higher health care needs than children whose mothers have no history of abuse, according to a study conducted at Group Health, a Seattle-based health plan.
These needs—expressed in terms of the cost of providing care and use of health services—were higher even if the abuse occurred before the children were born, the research team found. Scientists from Group Health Center for Health Studies, Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center (HIPRC), and Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute conducted the study, which appeared in the December 2007 issue of the journal Pediatrics.
Exercise more to live longer: study
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Following national recommendations for physical activity can lengthen your life, results of a study indicate.
In the study, people 50 to 71 years old who got at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity at least five days a week—as recommended in U.S. national guidelines—were 27 percent less likely to die over the next six or seven years, Dr. Michael F. Leitzmann of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland and colleagues found.
Workplace opportunities and stresses are both increasing
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Teamworking and other modern employment practices can put as much strain on a woman’s family relationships as working an extra 120 hours a year, an extensive study of the British workforce funded by the Economic and Social Research Council suggests.
The research finds that while British employers have maintained long-term career relationships with employees in spite of competitive market pressures, they have devised ways of extracting more effort and higher performance. These practices include team-based forms of work organization, individual performance-related pay, and policies that emphasize the development of individual potential.
Research unveils new hope for deadly childhood disease
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Investigators at the University of Rochester Medical Center have uncovered a promising drug therapy that offers a ray of hope for children with Batten disease – a rare neurodegenerative disease that strikes seemingly healthy kids, progressively robs them of their abilities to see, reason and move, and ultimately kills them in their young twenties.
The study, highlighted in the January edition of Experimental Neurology, explains how investigators improved the motor skills of feeble mice that model the disease, helping them to better their scores on successive coordination tests.
