Health News

Why Symptoms In Patients With Mild Asthma Are Triggered By Hot, Humid Air

Date: Jun-08-2012
May is asthma awareness month, and with summer right around the corner, a study shows that doctors may be closer to understanding why patients with mild asthma have such difficulty breathing during hot, humid weather. The study, appearing in the June print issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, found that patients who inhaled an asthma drug before breathing in hot, humid air were able to prevent airway constriction that volunteers without asthma did not experience in the same environment...

Development In Early Years May Be Delayed By Stress

Date: Jun-08-2012
Stress may affect brain development in children - altering growth of a specific piece of the brain and abilities associated with it - according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "There has been a lot of work in animals linking both acute and chronic stress to changes in a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in complex cognitive abilities like holding on to important information for quick recall and use," says Jamie Hanson, a UW-Madison psychology graduate student...

Clinical Care Of Blood Pressure: Standard Measures Misleading

Date: Jun-08-2012
Standard performance measures used by health care systems and insurance companies to assess how well physicians are controlling their patients' blood pressure tell an incomplete and potentially misleading story, according to a study by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The study authors tested a more nuanced experimental measure, designed to better reflect the clinical judgments doctors make in caring for patients, against criteria commonly used in standard performance measures...

Patients 13 To 24 Given Opioids For Pain More Than Twice As Likely To Become Addicted If They Have Mental Health Disorder

Date: Jun-08-2012
Long-term use and abuse of opioid painkillers, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, has markedly increased in the United States in the last two decades. Of note, prescription opioids constitute 86.9 percent of prescription drug misuse among high school students. And last week in a two-day U.S. Food and Drug Administration public meeting, officials questioned the use of long-term opioids for chronic pain due to a lack of evidence for the effectiveness and concerns about the potential risk for addiction...

The Level Of Alcohol Consumption That Is 'Optimal' For Health

Date: Jun-08-2012
Scientists from Australia and Oxford University have carried out a complex analysis in an attempt to determine the "optimal" level of alcohol consumption that is associated with the lowest rates of chronic disease in the UK. They conclude that the intake of about one-half of a typical drink per day would result in the healthiest outcomes, and the authors conclude that the recommended alcohol intake for the UK should be reduced from the current advised level of drinking. There were a number of concerns by Forum members about the paper...

Non-Invasive Genetic Screen During Pregnancy Deciphers Baby's Genome

Date: Jun-08-2012
Scientists have successfully sequenced the genome of a baby in the womb without tapping its protective fluid sac. This non-invasive approach to obtaining the fetal genome is reported in Science Translational Medicine, a journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Maternal blood sampled at about 18 weeks into the pregnancy and a paternal saliva specimen contained enough information for the scientists to map the fetus' DNA. This method was later repeated for another expectant couple closer to the start of their pregnancy...

Better Screening For Health Problems Recommended For Female College Athletes

Date: Jun-08-2012
Female athletes, particularly those involved in high level college sports at the NCAA Division I level, are particularly prone to a trio of medical issues called the "female athlete triad." A new study conducted by sports medicine researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin found there are some possible shortfalls in the methods used to screen these athletes for the triad, and that could put athletes at risk for lifelong health problems. The findings are published in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, published online. Anne Z. Hoch, D.O...

Teasing And Bullying Unacceptable Behaviour Program

Date: Jun-08-2012
An educational program designed to rid schools of bullying behaviour directed at students who stutter is proving effective at changing attitudes in the classroom, according to research from the University of Alberta. The Teasing and Bullying Unacceptable Behaviour (TAB) program is taught provincewide to students in grades 3 to 6 to reduce teasing and bullying directed at children with differences - particularly children who stutter...

Alcohol Abuse Associated With Sexual Orientation Fluctuation

Date: Jun-08-2012
Many young adults explore and define their sexual identity in college, but that process can be stressful and lead to risky behaviors. In a new study, students whose sexual self-definition didn't fall into exclusively heterosexual or homosexual categories tended to misuse alcohol more frequently than people who had a firmly defined sexual orientation for a particular gender, according to University of Missouri researchers. These findings could be used to improve support programs for sexual minorities...

Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients Benefit From Personalizing Biologic Treatment And It Is Also Cost-Effective

Date: Jun-08-2012
Data presented at EULAR 2012, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, demonstrates that tailoring biologic treatment to individual patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can reduce total costs by €2,595,557 per 272 patients over 3 years (95 percentile range -€2,983,760 to -€2,211,755), whilst increasing effectiveness by an average of 3.67 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs)*. Cost savings were mostly on drug costs...