Oslo promises crackdown after cancer cheat scandal
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Norway promised on Monday to speed up a new law that may bring jail terms for medical cheats after a hospital accused one of its cancer researchers of falsifying data published in a leading journal.
“There must be no doubt about the quality of our research,” Health Minister Sylvia Brustad told Norway’s NTB news agency. “So we are speeding up our draft law.”
Mom’s stress impacts her view of child’s behavior
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Mothers with a history of prenatal drug use who are stressed out by parenting are known to view their babies as more reactive, and as having a more difficult temperament. Now, a new study shows that this is as true for stressed-out moms with no history of drug use.
The findings suggest that it is possible to help women cope better with their parenting role by focusing on their individual characteristics, “and not on whether they used drugs before or after pregnancy,” according to study author Dr. Stephen J. Sheinkopf, of Brown Medical School in Rhode Island.
Diabetes gene found in 40% of population
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Researchers in Iceland say they have identified a single genetic change which could predispose close to 40 percent of the population to type-2 diabetes.
The team led by Kari Stefansson of DeCode Genetics, identified the gene in a study of Iceland’s comprehensive genetic records, and found it is carried by 38 percent of the northern European populations studied, and is also common among African-Americans.
Drug Cuts Sleep Apnea in Heart Failure Patients
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Since sleep apnea is associated with heart failure, patients who take a single dose of acetazolamide -a mild diuretic and respiratory stimulant—before going to bed exhibit less sleep apnea, improved blood oxygen levels and fewer daytime symptoms of sleepiness.
The results of the double-blind, placebo-controlled study appear in the second issue for January 2006 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.
Smoking During Pregnancy May Affect Baby’s Fingers and Toes
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There’s one more reason not to smoke during pregnancy. A mother’s cigarette smoking increases the risk that her newborn may have extra, webbed or missing fingers or toes, according to a study in the January issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
Although the overall risk of these abnormalities in fingers and toes is relatively low, just half a pack of cigarettes per day increases the risk to the baby by 29 percent, compared to non-smokers. Because limbs develop very early in pregnancy, the effect may occur even before a woman knows she is pregnant.
How Medicaid Can Help Drive Quality Improvement in Pediatrics
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The nation’s leading children’s healthcare leaders gathered today to begin building a coalition to safeguard Medicaid and improve quality measurement standards. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, along with the National Association of Children’s Hospitals, joined forces to create an alliance advocating for quality improvement measures to not only strengthen Medicaid but also to improve the state of pediatric practice.
“Medicaid has changed dramatically over the past 20 to 30 years,” said Steven M. Altschuler, M.D., president and chief executive officer of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “The fear is that the government will run out of money, that Medicaid will go bankrupt. This is a crisis. Medicaid is a safety net for a large segment of our population – and especially for children. Eighty percent of Medicaid recipients are children – yet children represent only 20 percent of Medicaid utilization. As Medicaid funding is reduced, children bear the brunt of those cuts.
Income may influence antidepressant response
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Pooled data from published studies suggest that adults from low-income neighborhoods are less likely to respond to antidepressant medication and more likely to be suicidal than those living in higher income neighborhoods.
“This is a small, preliminary study, but it does suggest that the social worlds in which people live influence the effectiveness of antidepressant treatments even in the context of clinical trials in which all participants receive the same high quality care,” Dr. Alex Cohen said in an interview with Reuters Health.
Study finds why Jewish mothers are so important
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Four Jewish mothers who lived 1,000 years ago in Europe are the ancestors of 40 percent of all Ashkenazi Jews alive today, an international team of researchers reported on Friday.
The genetic study of DNA paints a vivid picture of human evolution and survival, and correlates with the well-established written and oral histories of Jewish migrations, said Dr. Doron Behar of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, who worked on the study.
Genomic Health says Medicare to cover cancer test
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Genomic Health Inc. said on Friday that Medicare has agreed to cover the company’s test for determining whether a woman with early breast cancer is likely to be helped by chemotherapy, sending the company’s shares up as much as 35 percent.
Genomic rose $2.46, or 25 percent, to $12.41 on Nasdaq at mid-afternoon.
High homocysteine bad for the bones
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Women who have high levels of the amino acid homocysteine in the blood are at increased risk for low bone mineral density (BMD), European investigators report. “Our finding adds to the increasing evidence that homocysteine is important for bone health,” lead author Dr. Clara Gram Gjesdal from the University of Bergen in Norway told Reuters Health.
“Osteoporosis is a major public health problem with increasing consequences as people live longer,” she said. “If the modest associations observed in our study are causal, the public health implications may be significant because high homocysteine levels respond to intake of folate and other B vitamins.”
Britons turn to olive oil as cooking styles change
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Olive oil is becoming ever more popular in British kitchens, with more money spent on it than on all other types of cooking oils for the first time, a survey showed on Friday.
Sales of olive oil have risen by almost 40 percent since 2000 to hit 104 million pounds, according to research by market analyst Mintel.
Federal Standards for Blood Lead May Be Too High
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Federal safety standards for blood lead may be too high to prevent prenatal damage resulting in diminished intelligence later in childhood. According to a study recently accepted for publication in Environmental Health Perspectives, maternal blood lead levels well below the current standard of 10 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dL) during pregnancy had a significant negative impact on children’s intelligence up to age 10. Low-level lead exposure may be more harmful to the developing brain before birth than after birth.
Previous research has firmly established that low-level lead exposure during infancy and toddlerhood negatively affects a child’s intellectual development. There is less known about the effects of prenatal lead exposure on intelligence, and only a few studies have included measures of both prenatal and postnatal lead exposure. The current study is based on tests of mothers’ blood at regular intervals during pregnancy and on tests of their children’s blood for 10 years after birth.
Doctors urge change in child supplement guidelines
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Global guidelines for giving iron and folic acid supplements to young children should be revised because they could be dangerous for some youngsters, doctors said on Friday.
Researchers from the United States and Tanzania called for the rethink after discovering that the supplements can cause severe illness and death if they are given to children in areas with high rates of malaria.
Infants in the ICU too easily misidentified
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The odds are high for misidentification of infants in hospital neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), largely due to similarities in patients’ names and medical record numbers, doctors warn in a report in the journal Pediatrics.
“A recent review by our group demonstrated that medical errors related to patient misidentification accounted for 11 percent of all reported NICU errors,” Dr. James E. Gray told Reuters Health. Similarly, a recent report from England found that 25 percent of serious medication errors in a NICU were caused by patient misidentification, he added.
Dogs may be able to sniff out cancer
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Dogs’ keen sense of smell might help in the early diagnosis of cancer, researchers report in the current issue of Integrative Cancer Therapies. The findings show that trained ordinary household dogs can detect early-stage lung and breast cancers by merely sniffing the breath samples of patients.
“We’ve seen anecdotal evidence before suggesting that dogs can smell the presence of certain types of cancer,” Michael McCulloch, from the Pine Street Foundation in San Anselmo, California, told Reuters Health, “but until now, nobody had conducted a thorough study such as this.” Researchers have observed that cancer cells release molecules different from those of their healthy counterparts, and that might be perceived by smell by the highly sensitive dog’s nose.
