Relationships hold key to spiritual care
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Relationships hold the key to giving terminally ill patients the spiritual care they need. However, researchers have pinpointed a mismatch between patients’ expectations and understanding when it comes to spirituality, and what medical and family caregivers offer. New recommendations to improve this situation appear today, in the journal Palliative Medicine, published by SAGE.
The terms ‘spirituality’ and ‘spiritual care’ are becoming buzzwords in palliative care. But although most terminally ill patients rate care for their spiritual needs as very important, the professionals caring for them often have trouble defining what that means.
Using the definition of spirituality ‘a personal search for meaning and purpose in life, which may or may not be related to religion,’ Cardiff University’s Adrian Edwards together with Hong Kong based researchers Naomi Pang, Vicky Shiu and Cecelia Chan scoured the palliative care literature to create a systematic meta-study of spirituality. They incorporated qualitative data from 19 studies on 178 patients and 116 healthcare providers in their analysis.
Colorado man delivers pizza and saves a life
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A laid off paramedic who turned to delivering pizzas to make ends meet is credited with saving the life of a man who went into cardiac arrest just as a pizza was delivered to his door.
Christopher Wuebben, 22, was delivering a pizza late last week to the suburban Denver home of George Linn, when he heard the man’s wife screaming for help, according to Wuebben’s boss, John Keiley.
“Chris told the woman that he was trained in CPR and knew what to do,” Keiley, owner of Johnny’s New York Pizza, said on Tuesday. “He got him on the floor and brought him back to life before the fire department showed up.”
Benefit confirmed in “bubble boy” treatment
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A 10-year study of nine boys born without the ability to ward off germs has found that gene therapy is an effective long-term treatment, but it carries a price: four of them developed leukemia.
The technique is designed to help boys with X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency disease, or SCID, a rare mutation that prevents the body from making mature T cells or natural killer cells, which are vital tools for fighting infections.
Without a bone marrow transplant, which works best with a matching donor, such “bubble babies” have to live in germ-free environments and usually die within a year. Doctors hope gene therapy will work when no donor is available.
Students design early labor detector to prevent premature births
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The birth of a baby is usually a joyous event, but when a child is born too early, worrisome complications can occur, including serious health problems for the baby and steep medical bills for the family. To address this, Johns Hopkins graduate students and their faculty adviser have invented a new system to pick up very early signs that a woman is going into labor too soon.
The normal length of a pregnancy is 40 weeks, while babies born before 37 weeks gestation are considered to be preterm. By detecting preterm contractions with greater accuracy and sensitivity than existing tools, the new system could allow doctors to take steps at an earlier stage to prevent premature births, its inventors say.
The health concerns and costs associated with premature births have received increasing attention in recent years, due in part to a rise in the number of multiple births, to the use of fertility treatments, which can cause multiple births, and to an increase in women who are having babies later in life. These trends are all associated with a higher risk of preterm labor.
Exciting new avenues of research and policy drive expansion of HIV treatment access, use of antiretrovirals to prevent infections and pursuit of a cure
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The unwillingness of the global AIDS community to accept the status quo is fuelling a new era of scientific innovation to drive novel ways of treating and preventing HIV, organizers of the XVIII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010) taking place in Vienna, Austria said today. And, with millions of lives dependent on expanding access to antiretroviral treatment to all those clinically in need, researchers and clinicians are partnering in new ways to find the most effective and efficient methods to deliver treatment and strengthen health systems. A new Medicines Patent Pool described in today’s plenary session also offers the possibility of broader access to more effective and less toxic regimens.
“The inspiring element of the conference so far has been the marriage of cutting edge science and innovative policy and programming,” said Dr. Brigitte Schmied, AIDS 2010 Local Co-Chair and President of the Austrian AIDS Society. “We need that same energy and creativity to break through the HIV-related stigma and discrimination that prevents too many from benefitting from the knowledge we already have about how to save lives.”
Growing evidence of the power of antiretroviral drugs to prevent new infections offers the possibility of a major step toward universal access to HIV prevention while increasing access to lifesaving care. The use of treatment science to develop new prevention modalities, such as the antiretroviral-based vaginal microbicide used in the CAPRISA trial, whose results were released this week, is a further example of the drive to provide a variety of effective new prevention options.
Human rights protections essential in drive for universal access
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The call for human rights as a fundamental component of efforts to prevent new infections and provide treatment for people living with HIV pervaded the XVIII International AIDS Conference today as delegates and local residents prepared for the HIV and Human Rights March through the streets of Vienna this evening. Conference participants are giving voice to the conference theme of Rights Here, Right Now through a number of plenary presentations, sessions, and Global Village and Youth Programme activities.
The examination of the rights of women in the context of HIV took on a powerful new dimension with the release Monday evening of the CAPRISA 004 microbicide trial results. The study provides the first data demonstrating the effectiveness of an antiretroviral-based vaginal microbicide in reducing a woman’s risk of sexually transmitted infection with HIV and genital herpes. The trial tested the safety and effectiveness of a 1% tenofovir gel among nearly 900 women at two sites in South Africa. As today’s plenary speaker Everjoice Win noted, women have a greater likelihood of being on the receiving end of violent or coercive sexual intercourse and these results are a significant step toward a tool that puts the power of HIV prevention in women’s hands. The CAPRISA trial results will be presented at 13:00 in Session Room 7.
Where the wild veggies are
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Sites of origin and regions of domestication of many of our most important cultivated plants are still unknown. The botanical genus Cucumis, to which both the cucumber (Cucumis sativus) and the honeydew melon (C. melo) belong, was long thought to have originated and diversified in Africa, because many wild species of Cucumis are found there. “A molecular genetic analysis has now shown that the wild populations that gave rise to melons and cucumbers originated in Asia”, says LMU botanist Professor Susanne Renner. “In addition, we have found that 25 related species which have never been formally described are found in Asia, Australia and regions around the Indian Ocean.” Future genetic studies on The family Cucurbitaceae includes crop plants, such cucumbers, melons, loofah, and pumpkins. In terms of its economic importance, the cucumber is among the top ten crop plants cultivated worldwide, and the related honeydew melon is also of considerable agronomic significance.
Asthma and Eczema Sufferers Have a Lower Risk of Developing a Cancer
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Men who had a history of asthma or eczema generally had a lower risk of developing cancer, according to a study carried out by researchers at INRS–Institut Armand-Frappier, the Research Centre of the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, and McGill University. The findings, published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, show that male eczema sufferers had a lower risk of lung cancer while those with a history of asthma had a similar effect in relation to stomach cancer.
“Asthma and eczema are allergies brought about by a hyper-reactive immune system – a state which might have enabled abnormal cells to have been eliminated more efficiently, thereby reducing the risk of cancer,” explained Professor Marie-Claude Rousseau of the INRS–Institut Armand-Frappier, one of the co-authors of the research.
The researchers analyzed information that was collected in a study on exposures in the workplace and the risk of developing cancer, undertaken between August 1979 and March 1986. It involved 3,300 men, between 35 and 70 years of age, who had been diagnosed with cancer in one of Montreal’s 18 hospitals, and a control group of 512 people from the general population who did not have cancer.
AIDS group fears annual HIV costs may hit $35 bln
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The International HIV/AIDS Alliance warned on Saturday that the annual cost of tackling the HIV epidemic could balloon to $35 billion by 2030 if governments fail to invest in efficient, targeted and cost-effective prevention measures.
The Alliance said the AIDS virus, which already infects around 33.4 million people across the world, was a “costly time-bomb” for families, governments and donors.
“For every two people who get treatment, five others get infected. At this rate, spending for HIV will rise from $13 billion now to between $19 and $35 billion in just 20 years time,” Alvaro Bermejo, executive director of the Alliance, said in a statement.
Your doctor’s notes, with the click of a mouse
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After your next appointment, would you want to read everything your doctor wrote about you and your health?
Researchers are betting that you would - or at least that if you tried it, you would like it. They’re testing out a new system that lets patients see the doctor’s notes from their primary care visit via the internet.
“The whole idea here is to improve (and) expand the dialogue between patients and physicians,” Jan Walker, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and one of the study’s lead researchers, told Reuters Health.
Doctors often don’t report impaired colleagues
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One out of three doctors didn’t report colleagues they believed were “impaired or incompetent” to authorities, a survey released today found. Slightly more—36 percent—didn’t completely agree that it was their responsibility to report these colleagues in every case.
The definition of impaired or incompetent can range from doctors with drug addictions to those that aren’t up-to-date on the best way of treating some conditions.
The American Medical Association (AMA) has a policy stating that doctors are ethically bound to report colleagues they believe are unfit to practice.
UK health shake-up puts doctors in charge of funds
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Britain’s new coalition government, seeking to cut a record budget deficit, announced a radical shake-up of its sprawling health service on Monday.
The reorganisation of the world’s largest public healthcare system will see family doctors take charge of the lion’s share of a 110 billion pound ($165 billion) healthcare budget.
Losing out will be thousands of managers in the National Health Service (NHS) whose jobs will be cut to slash bureaucracy and save money.
Dogs may help collar Chagas disease
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Chagas disease, for example, is caused by a parasite that roams with only limited control among the rural poor in Latin America. The main vector for the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi is the triatomine insect, or “kissing bug,” which thrives in the nooks and crannies of mud-brick dwellings. The bug sucks the blood of mammals, helping T. cruzi move between wildlife, cats, dogs and humans.
“Dogs tend to lie on porches or other areas easily accessible to the bugs,” says disease ecologist Uriel Kitron, chair of environmental studies at Emory University. “And when a dog is malnourished and its immune system isn’t great, they are even more at risk.”
Kitron has been researching Chagas disease in remote communities of northern Argentina for the past 10 years. “One of our most significant findings is the importance of dogs in both the spread of the disease, and the potential to help control it,” he says, explaining that dogs can make good sentinels for health officials monitoring T. cruzi transmission.
‘TIMely’ intervention for asthma
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Asthma can be a severely debilitating disease. Its increasing prevalence and the fact that most treatments do not control severe asthma well has stimulated intensive research into genetic susceptibility to asthma in the hope that the information gleaned will lead to new therapeutics. One gene identified as a asthma susceptibility gene is TIM1 and now, a team of researchers, led by Paul Rennert, at Biogen Idec Inc., Cambridge, has generated data in a humanized mouse model of asthma that suggest that targeting TIM-1 protein might have therapeutic benefit in the treatment of patients with asthma. Specifically, the team found that an antibody that bound to a defined region of the TIM-1 protein (a cleft formed within the IgV domain) had therapeutic activity in the humanized mouse model of experimental asthma, ameliorating inflammation and airway hyperresponsiveness.
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TITLE: Antagonism of TIM-1 blocks the development of disease in a humanized mouse model of allergic asthma
Mental health a growing concern after Gulf spill
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Gulf Coast native Kindra Arnesen is so anxious about the effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill she is packing up her family and leaving town.
“Stress? Dude my clothes are falling off me (because of weight loss). The level of stress here is tremendous. My husband has aged 10 years in two months,” Arnesen said on Friday as she loaded possessions into a van outside her trailer home in Venice.
Fears are growing of an increase in stress-related illness and mental health problems from the BP spill. Anecdotal evidence abounds but mental health officials say they lack data about the scale and scope of suffering.
