Better Tests Needed to Pinpoint Memory Problems
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There’s a lot more to memory than the ability to remember a story, who the President is, or what you ate for lunch.
Do you recall who told you the story? How about whether you heard it before or after the President’s inauguration? Do you remember that you planned to meet a friend for lunch tomorrow?
According to new research by scientists at Washington State University (WSU), aspects of memory that record the source of information and the relative timing of events are at least as important to our everyday functioning as the ability to recall specific content.
“These other aspects of memory may actually have greater contributions to what people are reporting in their everyday lives as causing problems,” said Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe, a WSU psychologist and leader of the study.
Young Adults With PTSD May Be More Likely to Attempt Suicide
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Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—but not exposure to traumatic events without the development of PTSD—may be associated with subsequent attempted suicide in young adults, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Approximately 421,200 to 842,400 Americans age 15 to 24 attempt suicide every year, according to background information in the article. “History of a suicide attempt has been identified as one of the best predictors of a future attempt as well as completed suicide,” the authors write. Suicide was the third leading cause of death among U.S. young people in 2005.
Holly C. Wilcox, Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, Baltimore, and colleagues studied 1,698 young adults of a group of 2,311 who had been tracked since entering the first grade in Baltimore public schools. Fifteen years later, 90-minute interviews were conducted with the participants (average age 21) to assess the occurrence of traumatic experiences, suicide attempts and the development of PTSD.
Arthritic heart patients fear exercise, CDC says
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Patients with arthritis and heart disease may be afraid to get the exercise they need to improve their health, U.S. government researchers said on Thursday.
They may not realize that a little exercise will relieve both conditions, the team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The researchers studied data from two national health surveys to find that 57 percent of adults with heart disease have arthritis, too, the team reported in the CDC’s weekly report on death and disease.
White House names new head of AIDS policy office
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President Barack Obama named a Georgetown University health policy expert to head the White House AIDS policy office and coordinate efforts to reduce new HIV infections in the United States, officials said on Thursday.
Jeffrey Cowley, who previously worked for the National Association of People with AIDS activist group, was appointed to head the Office of National AIDS Policy, the White House said.
About 1.1 million Americans are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Clean living could cut one third of common cancers
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Healthier living could prevent about one third of the most common cancers in rich countries and about one quarter in poorer ones, international researchers said on Thursday.
Better diets, more exercise and controlling weight could also prevent more than 40 percent of colon and breast cancer cases in some countries, according to the study which urged governments and individuals to do more to cut the number of global cancer deaths each year.
“At the time of publication, roughly 11 million people worldwide are diagnosed with cancer and nearly eight million people die from cancer each year,” said Michael Marmot, who led the study from the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research.
Another bird flu patient dies in Vietnam
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A 32-year-old Vietnamese man infected with H5N1 bird flu has died in a hospital in the capital, a state-run newspaper reported on Friday.
The man contracted the virus in Ninh Binh province, some 90 km (60 miles) south of Hanoi, after eating ill poultry, the newspaper People’s Army said. He came down with a fever on Feb 11 and died on Feb 25, it said.
Company-listed size for kid’s shoes seldom correct
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When it comes to children’s shoes, the size listed by the manufacturer is rarely the true size, new research indicates. In nearly all cases, the manufacturers overstate the size, according to findings presented this week at the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) annual meeting in Las Vegas.
“The most striking finding of our study was that the majority of outdoor shoes and slippers of children were too small,” study chief Dr. Norman Espinosa, from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, told Reuters Health. “Interestingly, the shoe sizes given by the manufacturers almost never matched with the true sizes measured by us.”
Children wearing shoes that are too small may be at risk for developing foot deformities, the researchers warn.
Best Treatments for Post-Burn Itching
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Jim Mashburn felt his legs cook.
Mr. Mashburn, a worker at a paper-recycling plant, fell through a loose grate and into a sump pit in September 2008 as he was preparing to inspect a steam valve. Super hot condensate, at a temperature of at least 140 degrees Fahrenheit, enveloped his legs instantly, searing skin up to his thighs.
A co-worker was able to pull Mr. Mashburn out of the pit within 30 seconds, sparing him a worse fate, but he was left with first-, second- and third-degree burns on both legs.
“Once I got out and pulled my pants and my boots off, I remember just watching the skin peel away like you were taking a ladies stocking off. That’s how fast the skin went away,” he recalled.
Bringing Hope and Surgical Cures to the World’s Children
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The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) presented the 2009 Humanitarian Award to David P. Roye, Jr., MD, on February 26th at its 2009 Annual Meeting. This award honors Fellows of the Academy who have distinguished themselves by providing outstanding musculoskeletal care, both in the United States and abroad. In addition, this award recognizes those orthopaedic surgeons who help to improve the human condition by alleviating suffering and supporting and contributing to the basic human dignity of those in need. “I am truly humbled to receive this honor,” said Dr. Roye. “I consider myself fortunate to be able to provide orthopaedic care to children who have no other resources.”
Dr. Roye is currently chief of the pediatric orthopaedic service and the St. Giles Professor of Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgery at the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian, Columbia University Medical Center. He has been a member of the faculty at Columbia since completing his fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. Dr. Roye continues to commit himself to caring for underserved children with orthopaedic conditions, as well as teaching other orthopaedic surgeons, and conducting research on musculoskeletal problems in children.
Dr. Roye became an integral member of the Children of China Pediatrics Foundation (CCPF), in 1999, providing orthopaedic surgical services to special needs Chinese orphans. He became the foundation’s executive medical director in 2002.
Healthy Food Availability Could Depend on Where You Live—So Does the Quality of Your Diet
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The availability of healthy food choices and your quality of diet is associated with where you live, according to two studies conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Researchers examined healthy food availability and diet quality among Baltimore City and Baltimore County, Md., residents and found that availability of healthy foods was associated with quality of diet and 46 percent of lower-income neighborhoods had a low availability of healthy foods. The results are published in the March 2009 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the December 2008 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“Place of residence plays a larger role in dietary health than previously estimated,” said Manuel Franco, MD, PhD, lead author of the studies and an associate with the Bloomberg School’s Department of Epidemiology. “Our findings show that participants who live in neighborhoods with low healthy food availability are at an increased risk of consuming a lower quality diet. We also found that 24 percent of the black participants lived in neighborhoods with a low availability of healthy food compared with 5 percent of white participants.”
Researchers conducted a cross-sectional study to examine the association between the availability of healthy foods and diet quality among 759 participants of a population-based cardiovascular cohort study, the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA).
Big-Hearted Fish Reveals Genetic Underpinnings of Enigmatic Cardiovascular Condition
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Big-Hearted Fish Reveals Genetic Underpinnings of Enigmatic Cardiovascular Condition, According to Penn Study
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have unlocked the mystery of a puzzling human disease and gained insight into cardiovascular development, all thanks to a big-hearted fish.
Mark Kahn, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, graduate student Benjamin Kleaveland, and colleagues report in the February issue of Nature Medicine that a human vascular condition called Cerebral Cavernous Malformation (CCM) is caused by leaky junctions between cells in the lining of blood vessels. By combining studies with zebrafish and mice, the researchers found that the aberrant junctions are the result of mutated or missing proteins in a novel biochemical process, the so-called Heart-of-glass (HEG)-CCM pathway.
The HEG-CCM pathway “is essential to regulate endothelial cell-cell interaction, both during the time that vertebrates make the cardiovascular system and later in life,” says Kahn. “Its loss later in life confers this previously unexplained disease, cerebral cavernous malformation.”
Transcendental Meditation buffers students against college stress: Study
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Transcendental Meditation may be an effective non-medicinal tool for students to buffer themselves against the intense stresses of college life, according to a new study to be published in the February 24 issue of the peer-reviewed International Journal of Psychophysiology.
“Effects of Transcendental Meditation practice on brain functioning and stress reactivity in college students” is the first random assignment study of the effects of meditation practice on brain and physiological functioning in college students.
The study was a collaboration between the American University Department of Psychology in Washington, D.C., and the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa.
Obese young men likely to die prematurely: study
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People who were obese at the age of 18 are twice as likely to die prematurely compared with those who were normal-weight teenagers, Swedish researchers said on Wednesday.
They also found that men who had been overweight at 18 were one third more likely to die prematurely compared to their normal-weight peers.
The study of 45,920 men over an average 38 years underlines the dangers of being overweight and the need to tackle a growing obesity epidemic.
Americans welcome healthcare reform, but skeptical
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Americans greeted President Barack Obama’s pledge to reform healthcare with enthusiasm tinged by skepticism Wednesday, saying changes in the country’s expensive and often inaccessible health system are overdue—but hard to achieve.
“I’m sick and tired of hearing about it with what seems to be little if any reform,” said Steve Kissing, a 45-year-old advertising professional, as he read the morning newspaper at a Cincinnati coffee shop. “I just hope he can muster the support to make some progress.”
In towns and cities across the country, ordinary Americans said they were desperate for some kind of change in the U.S. healthcare system, under which 46 million people have no insurance coverage to pay for medical costs.
China illegal additives still blight food: official
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Chinese dairy products, flour, meat and other foods remain dangerously tainted with illegal additives despite a crackdown, the country’s health ministry said Tuesday.
Vice Minister of Health, Chen Xiaohong, told a video conference for officials some food and liquor makers continued to use banned additives, and high-tech lawbreakers were “challenging the oversight and administration capacities of law enforcement agencies,” the Xinhua news agency reported.
“Some food businesses still lack a grasp of the harmfulness and severity of illegal additives,” Chen said. “Their commitment to correcting this is not high.”
