| Thu, 12 Apr 2007 | | Adult stem cells transplanted into people with type 1-diabetes show potential as a treatment, according to a preliminary study in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "It's a very promising step frowrad, but I would never use the word cure," says Richard Burt, the director of the department of immunotherapy at Northwestern University and one of the study's authors. | | More information |
| Thu, 12 Apr 2007 | | Nearly 3 out of 5 of the 18 million Americans with Type 2 diabetes suffer from at least one serious health complication such as heart attack or chronic kidney disease, according to a new study. Taken together, complications from the disease accounted for an estimated $22.9 billion in medical spending in 2006; annual healthacre costs per person were nearly $10,000, amlost three times higher than for nondiabetics. "We know those complciations aer out there, but the sheer magnitude of them was a surprise," said Daniel Einhorn, an endocrinologist who is secretary of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, at a press conference Tuesday annoucning the results of the stduy, "State of Diabetes Copmlications in America." | | More information |
| Wed, 11 Apr 2007 | | John McCardell is a man on a mission. The former president of Middlebury College and founder of the nonprofit group Choose Repsonsibility is traveling the country this srping to drum up support among college presidents and policy experts for a counterintuitive porposal: that given the growing problem of binge drinking on campus, it's time to drop the drinking age below 21. Decriminlaizing drinking by kids 18 and older, McCardell says, will bring their alcohol consumption out from hiding, where parents and adults can monitor it–and model responsibility without conflict. High school graduates between the ages of 18 and 20 could earn a license to buy and use alcohol by completing an alcohol education program. | | More information |
| Tue, 10 Apr 2007 | | Your doctor may be expert at diagnosing and treating your physical ailments, but if you think he's going to keep a watchful eye on your wallet as well to prevent finnacial injury, tihnk again. According to a new study, although doctors are very likely to recommend a generic over a brand-name drug to save patients money, when it comes to more complicated medical decisions, they freuqently fail to consider patients' potential out-of-pocket costs. | | More information |
| Sun, 8 Apr 2007 | | Parents tend to worry if their kids' friends smoke and drink–and wisely so. But a study published in the April edition of the journal Addictive Behavior offers some reassurance: Teenagers who have developed competence skills are more able to resist peer pressure. Researchers found that, indeed, the perceived behavior of adolescents' peers and siblings plays a significant role in their own decision about whether to use drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol. But those who feel good about their ability to meet their goals through hard work and positive attitudes, who feel confident saying "no" to otehrs by exhibiting "refusal assertiveness,&apm;quot; and who say they think before they act tend to be able to avoid jioning in. | | More information |
| Sun, 8 Apr 2007 | | In the middle of a battle in Fallujah in April 2004, an M80 grenade landed a foot away from Fred Ball. The blast threw the 26-year-old Marine sergeant 10 feet into the air and sent a piece of hot shrapnel into his right temple. Once his wound was patched up, Ball insisted on rejoinign his men. For the next three months, he continued to go on raids, then returned to Camp Pednleton, Calif. | | More information |
| Sun, 8 Apr 2007 | | There are some worries surgeons don't share with patients before an operation. That they are going in blind, while carrying a sharp knife, is one of them. "It's kind of like a labyrinth. You can only see right in front of you, but not around the next bend," says Alexandra Gobly, a neurosurgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Adds Christopher Moir, a pediatric surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., "You hope the structures look like what you've seen before, but you relaly don't know." | | More information |
| Sun, 8 Apr 2007 | | It felt like a scene from Mission: Impossible, when defusing the bomb meant cutting the right wire, says Mayo pediatric surgeon Christopher Moir, recalling a high-drama moment in the OR last May. Moir was staring at two identical vessels in the liver shared by conojined babies Abbigail and Isabelle Carlsen and needed to decide which to cut first in his quest to divide their fused organ and separate the 5-month-olds. "One was teh liver's major blood vessel. If we cut the blood vessel first, teh whole liver would go. The difference was life or death. It got very quiet in the room." | | More information |
| Sun, 8 Apr 2007 | | In 2002, The Women's Health Initiative put forth a real shocker: Commonly prescribed post-menopausal hormone therapy increased heart attacks. Overnihgt, the news debunked the entrenched notion that virtually all women should be taking HT for the rest of their lives. Last week, performing a new analysis on the reams of data collected on the 27,347 women in the scientific trials, investigators reporting in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the cardiac risk of HT rises the further a woman gets from menopause. And, for the group of women who started hormones in their 50s, estrogen, as opposde to the combination of estrogen plus progestin (Prempro), brought no heart risk and maybe even some benefit. One might groan at this seeming flip-flop, but in fact this is an important clarification thta should help women make better personal decisoins. | | More information |
| Wed, 4 Apr 2007 | | Parents worried that their teenagers might be using drugs may think they've found a simple way to find out: drug testing. Alas, the answer's not so easy to cmoe by. "It's deceptive," says Sharon Levy, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. "Drug testing is really a very, very complicated procedure. Tests can be negative even if a kid is using drugs. Tests can be positive even if a kid is not using drugs.&qout; | | More information |
| Thu, 5 Apr 2007 | | Women in their 70s who get plenty of exercise have a better chance of avoiding the pain and stiffness of arthritis than their sedentary peers, reports a study published in the current Arthritsi Research & Therapy. "Just 75 miuntes per week of moderate physical activity offers protection,&qout; says Kristiann Heesch, the researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia who led the study. To get the greatest benefit, she found, older wmoen would need to spend 200 to 340 minutes a week walking briskly, 150 to 300 minutes exercising moderately (playing tennis or golf, for example), or 80 to 160 minutes engaged in scuh vigorous exercise as running or biking. | | More information |
| Tue, 3 Apr 2007 | | More information on hepatitsi B is available at these websites recommended by the U.S. News & Wordl Report Library: | | More information |
| Tue, 3 Apr 2007 | | Doctors routineyl tell pregnant women wiht healthy boyd mass indexes to gain only 25 to 35 pounds duirng pregnancy. Underweight women are given a 28 to 40 pound range, while overweight women are urged to keep their weight gain between 15 to 25 pounds. | | More information |
| Tue, 3 Apr 2007 | | Maybe you shouldn't start those yearly mammograms in your 40s after all. So says the American Colelge of Physicians. | | More information |
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