Abortion pill a big hit in Britain
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Records in Britain show that as many as 10,000 women had an abortion at home last year, using abortion drugs.
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) says that of the 32,000 terminations it provided in the first nine weeks of pregnancy, almost one-third were “medical” and involved the abortion pill.
As far as the BPAS is concerned this represents some measure of success in terms of sexual health.
Flu vaccine safe in healthy infants
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The trivalent influenza vaccine can be safely given to healthy children 6 to 24 months of age, doctors report in the journal Pediatrics.
“We see no indications of serious side effects from the influenza vaccine in young children, and we would urge parents to have their young children vaccinated against influenza,” Dr. Michael J. Goodman from HealthPartners Research Foundation, Minneapolis, Minnesota told Reuters Health.
“The whole reason this vaccine is now being recommended for infants and young children is that they can get quite sick with influenza,” Goodman explained. “Over the past few years, several studies have shown that the rate of hospitalization related to influenza for young children is similar to that for people over age 65.”
Mom’s high BP tied to greater preterm survival
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Pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH) is associated with lower infant mortality in preterm infants, Canadian researchers have observed.
Study investigator Dr. Shi Wu Wen told Reuters Health that PIH might serve some adaptive role for the fetus in the face of trouble.
However, “it’s important to stress that the findings should not be viewed as an encouragement not to treat PIH.” The risks of such a course outweigh any potential benefits, Wen, from the University of Ottawa, said.
New vaccine reduces the risk of shingles
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A new vaccine which reduces the risk of shingles (herpes zoster) for use in people 60 years of age and older has won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The vaccine, Zostavax, is designed to treat shingles which is caused by the reactivation of the virus that causes chickenpox and is a painful disease characterized by a blistering rash.
The varicella-zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox, the varicella-zoster virus lies dormant following an attack of chickenpox, in certain nerve tissue and as people age, the virus sometimes reappears in the form of shingles.
Cognitive behavioral therapy effective in treating irritable bowel syndrome
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According to the latest research behavioral therapy was more effective in treating the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) than being on a waiting list for treatment.
It seems that all it took for more than a 70 percent improvement rate to be seen was four sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy.
For the research Dr. Jeffrey M. Lackner, of the State University of New York at Buffalo, and colleagues randomly assigned 59 patients with irritable bowel syndrome to one of three treatments; patients in one group received 10 sessions of standard cognitive behavioral therapy, while another received 4 sessions of minimal contact cognitive therapy but with minimal contact, and a self-help workbook to take home.
Rise in Turkish girls’ suicides worries activists
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Bahar Sogut was 14 when she shot herself in the head with her father’s gun. Her mother and grandmother, who live in a small mud-built house in a village outside Batman in Turkey’s poor southeast, said it was her fate.
“She died with Allah’s (God’s) bidding,” her mother, Nefise Sogut, told Reuters. Fate was the only explanation either gave for what happened.
Bahar Sogut was one of 14 people—10 of them women and girls aged under 23—who have killed themselves this year in Batman, a city of 250,000 people, activists say. Another was aged 12 and threw herself off a building opposite her school.
Rising suicides among women in the mainly Kurdish southeast has prompted the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Yakin Erturk, to visit the region, where rights activists say families are forcing young women into suicide because the government has clamped down on so-called “honour killings”.
Daily drink can bring health benefits - for men
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Moderate drinking reduces the risk of heart disease but the beneficial effects of alcohol seem to work differently in men and women, Danish researchers said on Friday.
They found that for men drinking daily seems to have the biggest positive effect on health while in women the amount of alcohol consumed may have more of an impact.
“The risk of heart disease was lowest among men who drank every day,” said Janne Tolstrup of the National Institute for Public Health in Copenhagen.
Sleeping pill rouses people in a permanent vegetative state
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South African researchers have found that a drug commonly used as a sleeping pill can temporarily revive people in a permanent vegetative state to the point where they can have conversations.
The drug Zolpidem which is commonly used to treat insomnia has this effect within 20 minutes but wears off after four hours and the patients return to their permanent vegetative state.
The drug was used with three patients all men around 30 who had suffered brain damage in car accidents.
Pioneering the Three-Year Osteopathic Family Physician Degree
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The Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM) is taking a lead position in the future of medical education by introducing a new program to attract more physicians to family practice. LECOM is continuing its mission to help grow the osteopathic medical profession by starting a Primary Care Scholars Pathway (PCSP) that will reduce the time it takes to become a family physician.
The LECOM PCSP has received approval from the American Osteopathic Association Committee on Osteopathic College Accreditation and backing of the American College of Osteopathic Family Practice. The PCSP will condense four years of medical education into three years in order to graduate more family doctors sooner and to save these students one year of expenses that adds to the mounting debt held by medical college graduates.
The AOA COCA approved the substantive change requested by LECOM to initiate the Primary Care Scholars Pathway in the 2007-2008 academic year. The program will begin with six students in the first year, eight in 2008-2009, 10 in 2010-2011, and 12 students in 2011-2012. The new program will not affect the approved class size, which the AOA has set at 250 students in 2007.
Poverty fuels HIV among black heterosexuals
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Poverty is a key reason why African-American heterosexuals have a far higher rate of infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, than other racial groups, a new study suggests.
Between 1999 and 2002, three-quarters of heterosexually transmitted HIV cases in 29 U.S. states were diagnosed among African Americans. But the reasons for the racial disparity have been “elusive,” according to the authors of the new study, led by Dr. Adaora A. Adimora of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
For their study, published in the Journal of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndromes, the researchers interviewed 206 black HIV-positive men and women living in North Carolina, as well as 226 HIV-negative adults.
Thyroid cancer raises risk of second cancer
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After surviving cancer of the thyroid, the risk of a second different cancer is elevated by about 30 percent, according to results of a new study. Conversely, many cancers are associated with increased risk of subsequent thyroid cancer.
Dr. Mark W. J. Strachan, from Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, UK, and colleagues note that the increased rate and improved prognosis of thyroid cancer, as well as its greater occurrence in children, suggests that other cancers are increasingly likely.
To test this theory, they combined data from 13 population-based cancer registries that have been in operation for at least 25 years in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Singapore. Their findings appear in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Global health gains offset by AIDS, malaria
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Although child mortality has dropped in many regions of the world over the past decade, these gains were offset by increasing number of deaths due to HIV/AIDS and malaria, as well as setbacks in adult mortality in countries of the former Soviet Union, according to results of the 2001 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study.
Dr. Alan D. Lopez, from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and his associates analyzed mortality, incidence, and prevalence for 136 diseases and injuries in seven geographical areas. Their findings appear in the The Lancet this week.
Roughly 56 million people died in 2001. Ischemic heart disease—the type that involves restricted blood flow to the heart—and stroke were the leading causes in all regions, accounting for more than one fifth of all deaths worldwide.
Sedentary arthritis patients risk disability
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Few women with arthritis of the hip may be getting the exercise they need to prevent disability, researchers from Japan report.
Moderate-intensity activity can help ease pain, boost function and stave off disability in people with osteoarthritis, Dr. Soichiro Hirata and colleagues from the Kobe University School of Medicine write. However, a few studies have suggested physical inactivity is common among osteoarthritis sufferers, and may be linked to worse pain, poor health and psychosocial problems.
“Identifying inactive patients is important because they are at risk for disability and are expected to benefit most from increasing their physical activity,” Hirata and his team point out.
Higher-dose statin may benefit some diabetics
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Treating diabetics who have signs of heart disease with a high dose of the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor (80 mg daily), rather than the normal dose of 10 mg daily, can lower the rate of major cardiovascular events by 25 percent, according to a new report.
In the main analysis of data from the study, increasing the dose of Lipitor (also called atorvastatin) was shown to provide significant clinical benefits for patients with heart disease.
In a subanalysis, Dr. James Shepherd of the University of Glasgow and colleagues set out to determin if this benefit applied to patients with heart disease and diabetes as well.
Program ups calcium intake in kids with arthritis
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A behavioral intervention can increase dietary calcium levels and subsequent bone mineral content in children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, according to a report in The Journal of Pediatrics.
Children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis may have greater dietary calcium requirements than other children, the authors explain, but rates of long-term compliance with calcium supplement regimens are poor.
Dr. Lori J. Stark from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio and colleagues investigated the impact of a behavioral intervention in 49 children, between 4 and 10 years old, with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and their parents on the maintenance of calcium intake and on bone mass 6 and 12 months after the intervention.
