Health articles

November 10, 2010, 7:43 AM CT

Conflicting views about spending on public health system

A comprehensive review of national opinion polls shows that Americans have conflicting views about the nation's public health system and are divided along partisan lines in their support of additional spending on public health programs. A majority supports increased spending on public health in general and sees public health interventions as saving money in the long term. At the same time, however, a number of do not favor increased spending on many areas that public health officials deem important and do not see their state health department as doing a good job preventing chronic illnesses.

The analysis, by Robert J. Blendon, Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health, and three co-authors, appears in the recent issue of Health Affairs The article, which draws on results from 12 national opinion polls, provides an in-depth examination of Americans' views about the nation's public health system.

Link to article: http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/29/11/2033.

"In order to sustain public support for increased spending, it will be critically important to give specific examples of cost savings from public health programs and to highlight how specific public health programs have reduced mortality from major chronic diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, and HIV/AIDS," said Blendon......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

May 6, 2010, 6:49 AM CT

Friendship and confiding in spouse eases stress

A newly released study suggests that it may not help older men and women with sexual problems to talk to a doctor, but men who talk to their partner report greater happiness and those who talked with friends felt less depressed.

The research, to be reported in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, shows that the way men and women deal with sexual health and stress in their later years varies greatly and that there is not one solution that can help ease unhappiness caused by sexual problems.

The research was conducted by Ryo Hirayama, a Ph.D. student in Oregon State University's Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, and professor Alexis Walker, who is the Jo Anne L. Petersen Chair in Gerontology and Family Studies at OSU. The study was conducted with data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project.

The Oregon State scientists looked at 861 people ages 57 to 85 who were married or had an intimate partner, and who reported having at least one sexual problem. The sexual problems reported by elderly adults included lack of interest in sex, inability to climax, physical pain during sex, maintaining an erection, or lubrication issues. Respondents were asked to indicate on a scale from 1 to 3 how bothered they were by each problem they listed. They also were asked about their well-being, which the scientists measured by using typical scales for happiness and for depressive symptoms......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 04:57:33 GMT

How Other People's Unspoken Expectations Control Us

We quickly sense how others view us and play up to these expectations. A good exercise for learning about yourself is to think about how other people might view you in different ways. Consider how your family, your work colleagues or your partner think of you.

Now here"s an interesting question: to what extent do you play up to these expectations about how they view you?

This idea that other people"s expectations about us directly affect how we behave was examined in a classic social psychology study carried out by Dr Mark Snyder from the University of Minnesota and colleagues (Snyder et al., 1977). They had a hunch that people automatically sense how others view them and immediately start exhibiting the expected behaviours.

Feeling the attraction To test this in the context of interpersonal attraction they had male students hold conversations with female students they"d just met through microphones and headsets. One of the quickest ways that people who"ve just met stereotype each other is by appearance. People automatically assume others who are more attractive are also more sociable, humorous, intelligent and so on.

So to manipulate this, just before the conversation, along with biographical information about the person they were going to meet, the men were given a photograph. Half were shown a photograph of a woman who had been rated for attractiveness as an 8 out of 10 and half were given a photo of a woman rated as a 2 out of 10.

Then the men talked to the women but without seeing them so they didn"t know they weren"t actually talking to the woman in the picture. Half expected to be talking to the attractive woman, half to the unattractive woman. The question is, would the women pick up on this fact and unconsciously fit into the stereotype they had been randomly assigned. By doing it this way the experimenters could rule out the influence of individual personalities and focus on the effect of expectations.

When independent observers listened to the tapes of the conversation they found that when women were talking to men who thought they were very attractive, the women exhibited more of the behaviours stereotypically associated with attractive people: they talked more animatedly and seemed to be enjoying the chat more. What was happening was that the women conformed to the stereotype the men projected on them. So people really do sense how they are viewed by others and change their behaviour to match this expectation.

Now this experiment just happened to be carried out by manipulating the stereotype of attractiveness but the same rule applies to many different areas of life. Think of any of the standard stereotypes about class, race and nationality. Each of these create expectations in other people"s minds, expectations that are difficult for us to avoid playing up to.

Changing others" behaviour Understanding that other people"s expectations about us directly and immediately affect our behaviour is a vital component in understanding how we can come to be quite different people across various social situations.

I leave you with one final thought: in the real world two people are influencing each other continuously, trying to live up (or down) to each other"s expectations. Of course we only have direct control over our own expectations of others, so one implication of this study is that by changing our expectations of others we can actually change their behaviour for worse or, should we choose, for the better.

The effect may be subtle, but it"s a powerful realisation that other people"s behaviour is partly derived from how we view them, just as our behaviour is partly derived from how others view us. Posted by: Jerry      Read more     Source

April 24, 2009, 5:01 AM CT

Cattle genome sequencing milestone promises health benefits

The landmark sequencing of the domestic cattle genome, reported today in the journal Science, could lead to important new findings about health and nutrition, a participating Michigan State University researcher said.

Theresa Casey, a research assistant professor in the Department of Animal Science, joined 300 colleagues around the world in a six-year project to complete, annotate and analyze the bovine genome sequence.

The species Bos taurus includes 22,000 genes, 80 percent of which are shared with humans. Humans, scientists conclude, are closer to the bovine sequence than to those of mice or rats, which are far more usually used as research subjects.

That realization could open new vistas for human health research.

The new data are particularly important given the economic and nutritional importance of cattle to humans, said Casey, whose specialty is study of lactation and mammary gland biology. Focusing on genes that regulate milk synthesis in the cow, she also co-authored a companion report appearing in the journal Genome Biology discussing how the bovine lactation genome sheds light on the evolution of mammalian milk.

"We think that milk evolved primarily as an immune function," she said, due in part to cow milk's anti-microbial properties......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

April 24, 2009, 4:59 AM CT

New mediator of smoking recruits

Freiburg, Gera number of Current research suggests that smoking increases the production of osteopontin in the lungs, which contributes to the development of smoking-related lung disease. The related report by Prasse et al, "Essential role of osteopontin in smoking-related interstitial lung diseases," appears in the May 2009 issue of The American Journal of Pathology

Nearly one billion people worldwide smoke tobacco products. Long-term exposure to compounds found in smoke can lead to both cardiovascular and lung disease. Eventhough lung exposure to cigarette smoke leads to immune cell recruitment and tissue fibrosis, how cigarette smoke causes these changes is largely unknown.

To determine if osteopontin, a molecule that attracts immune cells, mediates cell recruitment in smokers, Prasse et al compared osteopontin levels from smokers with different types of lung diseases, healthy smokers, and healthy non-smokers. They found high levels of osteopontin expression in patients with interstitial lung disease, whereas healthy smokers had lower levels, and healthy non-smokers produced no osteopontin. Osteopontin expression could be stimulated directly by nicotine therapy. In addition, expressing osteopontin in rat lung resulted in recruitment of immune cells, resulting in symptoms similar to smoking-related interstitial lung diseases. These results indicate that osteopontin appears to be pathogenic in smoking-initiated lung disease......... Posted by: Jessica      Read more         Source

April 7, 2009, 5:10 AM CT

Altered immune response to smoking

Smoking cigarettes is not only the principle cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but it may change the body's immune responses to bacteria that usually cause exacerbations of the disease, as per new research in a mouse model.

"It is well established that smoking is the main risk factor for COPD. But our research also suggests that cigarette smoke substantially changes the immune response to bacteria, which means that patients with COPD who smoke are weakening their body's ability to deal effectively with bacterial invaders. This may cause even further progression of the disease," said Martin Stmpfli, Ph.D., an associate professor at McMaster University, the principle investigator of the study.

"We wanted to see whether and how cigarette smoke would change the inflammatory response to the bacteria that is the culprit behind a number of COPD exacerbations, nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae or NTHI".

Their results were reported in the second issue of April of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine

Dr. Stmpfli and his colleagues tested the effects of cigarette smoke exposure on inflammation and immune response in mice that were exposed to cigarette smoke twice daily five days a week for either eight weeks or four days then challenged with an intranasal inoculation of NTHI. The cigarette smoke exposure roughly approximated that of an "average" human smoker (within the limitations of a model with differing metabolic processes.) Control mice were not exposed to cigarette smoke, but were inoculated with NTHI as were the cigarette smoke-exposed mice......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

March 24, 2009, 6:34 AM CT

Genetic machinery for thiostrepton synthesis

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have identified the genetic machinery responsible for synthesizing thiostrepton, a powerful antibiotic produced by certain bacteria. Though effective against the dangerous MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci, thiostrepton currently has only limited applications in humans because it is not water soluble.

Identification of the gene cluster responsible for producing thiostrepton sets the stage for genetic manipulations that could make the drug more useful by improving its water solubility, potentially providing a new tool in the high-stakes battle against bacteria. Beyond the possible medical applications, the research produced a scientific surprise: thiostrepton is derived from a genetically encoded peptide that undergoes no fewer than 19 different modifications, one of the most complex such processes known and a surprising capability for a single-celled bacterium.

"We are interested in making derivatives of this peptide drug that retain their potency and are efficiently processed by biochemical machinery," said Wendy L. Kelly, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Parker Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. "We want to put in substitutions to the genetic machinery that may create a more water soluble analog and could potentially be used for development of a new class of antibacterial agent"......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

December 6, 2008, 3:57 PM CT

Interventions that may alter the course of epilepsy

Early diagnosis and therapy that quickly achieves seizure freedom with nominal side effects is the key goal to epilepsy management. Three studies highlighted at the AES annual meeting address this goal from different vantage points:

• The course to seizure freedom? Identifying factors that may change the landscape of epilepsy therapy to improve patients' quality of life.
• New EEG technology that may facilitate accurate seizure screening by non-specialists in urgent care settings.
• Task force report on disparity in standards for Epilepsy Monitoring Units amidst rise in number of epilepsy therapy centers.

"Each clue we uncover in understanding epilepsy and how to suppress the disruptions it causes for those affected takes us closer to the goal of successfully treating this chronic condition. Data from this year's meeting lead us towards answers about characteristics we can focus on to more effectively diagnose and treat epilepsy," said Dennis D. Spencer, M.D., AES President, Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor and Chair of Neurosurgery, Yale University School of Medicine. "This is particularly critical because we know that an estimated one-third of seizures are not controlled with existing therapies".



Epilepsy Patients Achieving Seizure Freedom More Quickly, As per New Analysis........ Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

December 6, 2008, 3:55 PM CT

First childhood obesity symposium

On Tuesday, November 25, 2008, the Obesity Institute at Children's National Medical Center gathered experts from a number of disciplines to share ideas, failures and successes, and the future promise of prevention and intervention strategies to fight childhood obesity, both in the District of Columbia and nationwide.

Through the Obesity Institute, Children's National seeks to reduce childhood obesity using a multidisciplinary approach that draws upon our experts from throughout Children's National, as well as research, clinical, policy, and advocacy partners region.

"There is no single cause for the increase in childhood obesity, but certainly high fat diets and lack of exercise are contributing factors," said Denice Cora-Bramble, MD, MBA, executive director of the Goldberg Center for Community Pediatric Health at Children's National. "Likewise, there is no single answer to systematically solving the problem. But the upward trend, particularly here in the District, demands that we develop effective interventions faster."

Children's Obesity Institute tackles these issues from all angles. The Institute's multidisciplinary approach allows for a better understanding of the causes and barriers around this disorder, analyzing them from the laboratories that study the genetics to the community interventions impacting family lifestyles. Scientists, pediatricians, psychology experts, psychiatry experts, and a number of others presented their most recent efforts to uncover the underlying risk factors for childhood obesity and the earlier onset of type 2 diabetes......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

November 19, 2008, 8:36 PM CT

Report finds extensive use of illicit alcohol

The consumption of illicit or noncommercial alcohol is widespread in a number of countries worldwide and contributes significantly to the global burden of disease, as per a new report released recently by the International Center for Alcohol Policies (ICAP). The report focuses on the use of noncommercial alcohol, defined as traditional beverages produced for home consumption or limited local trade and counterfeit or unregistered products, in three regions: sub-Saharan Africa, southern Asia, and central and eastern Europe.

The report, Noncommercial Alcohol in Three Regions, finds a significant portion of alcohol produced, sold, and consumed around the world is not reflected in official statistics. As per the World Health Organization (WHO), noncommercial drinks account for a significant portion of alcohol consumed in the three regions.

"The extensive use of noncommercial alcohol around the world has detrimental and far-reaching effects on consumers, government and the industry," says Marcus Grant, President of ICAP. "In a number of countries, this largely illicit alcohol has harmful effects on society because of the lack of meaningful controls".

Highlights from the report include:

• In Ukraine, unrecorded or noncommercial alcohol consumption exceeds recorded alcohol consumption (10.5 vs. 6.09 per capita consumption in liters, respectively).........
  
  
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October 29, 2008, 10:20 PM CT

Obesity, other health problems delay MS diagnosis

People with pre-existing medical conditions, such as obesity, and vascular problems such as diabetes, hypertension or high cholesterol, may experience a delay in being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), or experience an increase in severity of the disease at diagnosis, as per a research studyreported in the October 29, 2008, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"Our study suggests that doctors who treat people with chronic diseases should not attribute new neurological symptoms such as numbness and tingling to existing conditions without careful consideration," said study author Ruth Ann Marrie, MD, PhD, of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, and member of the American Academy of Neurology.

For the study, scientists examined the records of 8,983 people who had been diagnosed with MS. Of those, 2,375 were further classified as having mild, moderate or severe disability within two years of diagnosis. This well-characterized group was asked about pre-existing health conditions, their smoking status and weight history.

The study observed that it took one to 10 years longer for people who were obese, smoked, or had physical or mental health conditions to be diagnosed with MS in comparison to people without such conditions. The study also observed that the more medical problems a person with MS had, the more severe the disease had become by the time they were diagnosed......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

October 14, 2008, 8:23 PM CT

Larger labs report kidney function routinely

Labs that conduct the highest number of routine blood tests are more likely than others to report estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), an important measure of kidney function that can identify early kidney disease, as per a survey funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The work is published in the recent issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases

"We are encouraged to find that a number of labs are routinely reporting eGFR, allowing earlier diagnosis and therapy of kidney disease, " said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. "But the survey illustrates the need to continue NIH efforts to promote automatic reporting of eGFR by all labs so that more people can benefit from earlier diagnosis."

The survey observed that more than 86 percent of the highest-volume independent labs (those in the top 5 percent) and more than 55 percent of all labs in the top quarter of high-volume labs report eGFR, in contrast to only 24 percent of low-volume labs (those in the bottom quarter). The survey demonstrates room for improvement in making eGFR readily available to primary care providers who could be treating early chronic kidney disease primarily caused by diabetes and hypertension and possibly reducing their patients' risk for kidney failure, which results in the need for dialysis or a kidney transplant......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

September 24, 2008, 9:30 PM CT

Mapping the neuron-behavior link in Rett Syndrome

A link between certain behaviors and the lack of the protein linked to Rett Syndrome a devastating autism spectrum disorder demonstrates the importance of MeCP2 (the protein) and reveals never-before recognized functions linked to aggression and obesity, said scientists at Baylor College of Medicine in a report in the current issue of the journal Neuron.

"This protein is critical for the proper function of majority of neurons," said Dr. Huda Y. Zoghbi, a BCM professor of pediatrics, neurology, neuroscience, molecular and human genetics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator who is senior author on the paper. Zoghbi and her laboratory discovered the Rett gene.

Rett Syndrome affects between 1 in 10,000 females who express a wide variety of symptoms, most of them neurological.

"Observe a girl with Rett Syndrome and you will see that she has most of the neurological symptoms you are familiar with," Zoghbi said. "There are movement problems, balance problems, tremor, seizures, autism, learning and memory problems, anxiety and even more".

Girls with Rett Syndrome lack MeCP2 (found on the X chromosome) in as a number of as 50 percent of their neurons. The severity and breadth of symptoms they experience depend on the percentage of neurons that lack the protein......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

September 16, 2008, 10:23 PM CT

Looking vs. seeing

The superior colliculus has long been thought of as a rapid orienting center of the brain that allows the eyes and head to turn swiftly either toward or away from the sights and sounds in our environment. Now a team of researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has shown that the superior colliculus does more than send out motor control commands to eye and neck muscles.

Two complementary studies, both led by Richard Krauzlis, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Systems Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute, have revealed that the superior colliculus performs supervisory functions in addition to the motor control it has long been known for. The results are reported in the Aug. 6 and Sept. 17 issues of the Journal of Neuroscience.

"Beyond its classic role in motor control, the primate superior colliculus signals to other brain areas the location of behaviorally relevant visual objects by providing a 'neural pointer' to these objects," says Krauzlis.

The superior colliculus is currently under renewed scrutiny because recent findings have suggested that it does more than help orient the head and eyes toward something seen or heard. Results hinted that the superior colliculus might play a role in analyzing the current environment and deciding whether one specific aspect is worth paying closer attention to than another. Definitive proof, however, has been lacking......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

September 14, 2008, 10:42 PM CT

Extremely exact images from inside the body

It will be the only magnetic resonance tomograph of the modern 7 tesla generation in the world, in which a metrology institute is also involved. Magnetic resonance tomographs, which use a magnetic field of 7 tesla, have not yet been in operation in hospitals and clinics, but have solely served research. For the first time in the world, cardiovascular research carried out on such a device is now also to play an important role. The magnetic resonance tomograph costing approximately seven million Euros and weighing 35 tonnes was delivered to its new location, the Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC) of the Max Delbrück Center (MDC) for Molecular Medicine in Berlin-Buch on 11th September.

In contrast to the 1.5 and 3 tesla devices which have largely been the norm to date, its higher magnetic field will provide sharper images and better insights into the smallest structures of the human body. The aim is to detect the risk or commencement of an illness at a very early stage in heart, brain and cancer research. Above all, heart research by magnetic resonance tomography is viewed as very difficult. As such, a demanding task will be waiting for PTB scientists from January 2009, when the device has been fully installed: as the partner dealing with physics and technical issues in the joint project, they are responsible for making the unique potential of this tomograph useful for applications in clinics. The PTB will, moreover, find the ideal conditions to advance its work on patient safety in high-field tomographs and on the development of new concepts in MRT imaging. The other partners in the project, besides the Max Delbrück Center and the PTB, are Siemens, the constructors of the 7 tesla device, and the Charite hospital. The new ultra-high-field MRT equipment of the ECRC has been completed with a 9.4 tesla small animal MRT of the Bruker company which was supplied three weeks ago......... Posted by: Jessica      Read more         Source

September 14, 2008, 10:04 PM CT

Newly found gene variants account for kidney diseases

For the first time, scientists have identified variations in a single gene that are strongly linked to kidney diseases disproportionately affecting African-Americans. This work was conducted by scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and by NIH-funded researchers at the Johns Hopkins University. The findings are published online today in two papers in Nature Genetics and would be reported in the October print issue.

"These two breakthrough genomic studies on kidney disease illustrate the importance of collaborations between researchers at NIH and NIH-funded researchers at Johns Hopkins," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. "This type of government-academic collaboration moves translational research forward and provides the knowledge base for developing new therapies for these chronic health disorders".

The scientists studied nondiabetic kidney diseases that can lead to chronic kidney disease and, in severe cases, to kidney failure requiring long-term dialysis or a kidney transplant. One of these diseases, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), is a kidney disease that leads to kidney failure in more than half of those with the disease over a period of about 10 years. Chronic kidney disease is caused by a number of different diseases and conditions and affects 26 million Americans. More than 106,000 individuals develop kidney failure and more than 485,000 receive dialysis or transplantation in the United States each year......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source