Wednesday 3 December 2014

Harm To Consumers From Changes In The Flexibility Of The Expenditure Account

Harm To Consumers From Changes In The Flexibility Of The Expenditure Account.
It's the occasion of year for vacation parties, gift shopping and open-minded enrollment, when many employees have to make decisions about their employer-sponsored health-care plans. Last year's identification health care reform legislation means changes are in store for 2011. One of the most significant: starting Jan 1, 2011, you'll no longer be able to avenge oneself for for most over-the-counter medications using a willowy spending account (FSA). That means if you're used to paying for your allergy or heartburn medication using pre-tax dollars, you're out of fluke unless your doctor writes you a prescription.

The exception is insulin, which you can still return for using an FSA even without a prescription. Flexible spending accounts, which are offered by some employers, enable employees to set aside green each month to pay for out-of-pocket medical costs such as co-pays and deductibles using pre-tax dollars. "This is basically reverting back to the direction FSAs were used a few years ago," said Paul Fronstin, a older research associate at the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, DC "It wasn't that fancy ago that you couldn't use FSAs for over-the-counter medicine".

Popular uses for FSAs embody eyeglasses, dental and orthodontic work, as well as co-pays for prescription drugs, doctor visits and other procedures, explained Richard Jensen, conduct research scientist in the department of health method at George Washington University in Washington, DC Over-the-counter drugs became FSA "qualified medical expenses" in 2003, according to the Internal Revenue Service. The respect an FSA works is an staff member decides before Jan 1, 2011 (usually during the company's open enrollment period) how much funds to contribute in the year ahead. The employer deducts equal installments from each paycheck throughout the year, although the amount amount must be available at all times during the year.

Typically, FSAs operate under the "use it or lose it" rule. You have to allot all of the money placed in an FSA by the end of the calendar year or the money is forfeited, Jensen explained. Since loosely speaking, the cost of over-the-counter medications pales in balance to the cost of co-pays and deductibles, the 2011 change shouldn't be too onerous for consumers, Jensen said.

Wednesday 19 November 2014

How Useful Is Switching To Daylight Saving Time

How Useful Is Switching To Daylight Saving Time.
Not turning the clocks back an hour in the yield would sell a simple way to improve people's vigorousness and well-being, according to an English expert. Keeping the time the same would increase the number of "accessible" daylight hours during the capture and winter and encourage more outdoor physical activity, according to Mayer Hillman, a senior c swain emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute in London. He estimated that eliminating the time metamorphose would provide "about 300 additional hours of daylight for adults each year and 200 more for children".

Previous experiment with has shown that people feel happier, more energetic and have lower rates of illness in the longer and brighter days of summer, while people's moods look after to decline during the shorter, duller days of winter, Hillman explained in his report, published online Oct 29, 2010 in BMJ. This bid "is an effective, reasonable and remarkably easily managed way of achieving a better alignment of our waking hours with the at one's disposal daylight during the year," he pointed out in a news release from the journal's publisher.

Another expert, Dr Robert E Graham, an internist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said that he utterly agrees with Hillman's conclusions. "Lessons literate by the crack of research on the benefits of vitamin D add to the argument for 'not putting the clocks back.' Basic biochemistry has proved to us that sunlight helps your body transfigure a form of cholesterol that is present in your integument into vitamin D Additionally, several epidemiological studies have documented the seasonality of depression and other mood disorders," Graham stated.

Monday 17 November 2014

Ecstasy In The Service Of Medicine

Ecstasy In The Service Of Medicine.
The recreational knock out known as excitement may have a medicinal role to play in helping people who have trouble connecting to others socially, uncharted research suggests. In a study involving a small group of nutritious people, investigators found that the drug - also known as MDMA - prompted heightened feelings of friendliness, playfulness and love, and induced a lowering of the security that might have therapeutic uses for improving collective interactions. Yet the closeness it sparks might not be result in deep and lasting connections.

The findings "suggest that MDMA enhances sociability, but does not inexorably increase empathy," noted study author Gillinder Bedi, an helpmeet professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University and a research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City. The study, funded by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse and conducted at the Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory at the University of Chicago, was published in the Dec 15 2010 edition of Biological Psychiatry.

In July, another mug up reported that MDMA might be fruitful in treating post-traumatic distress disorder (PTSD), based on the drug's seeming boosting of the ability to cope with grief by helping to control fears without numbing the crowd emotionally. MDMA is part of a family of so-called "club drugs," which are popular with some teens and puerile at all night dances or "raves".

These drugs, which are often used in combination with alcohol, have potentially life-threatening effects, according to the US National Institute on Drug Abuse. The newest muse about explored the paraphernalia of MDMA on 21 healthy volunteers, nine women and 12 men ancient 18 to 38. All said they had taken MDMA for recreational purposes at least twice in their lives.

They were randomly assigned to take i a accommodate either a low or moderate dose of MDMA, methamphetamine or a sugar pellet during four sessions in about a three-week period. Each session lasted at least 4,5 hours, or until all junk of the drug had worn off. During that time, participants stayed in a laboratory testing room, and popular interaction was limited to contact with a research assistant who helped direct cognitive exams.

Friday 14 November 2014

Breakfast Cereals For Children Are A Lot Of Sugar

Breakfast Cereals For Children Are A Lot Of Sugar.
Getting kids to delightedly take nutritious, low-sugar breakfast cereals may be child's play, researchers report. A restored study finds that children will gladly chow down on low-sugar cereals if they're given a choice of choices at breakfast, and many compensate for any missing sweetness by opting for fruit instead. The 5-to-12-year-olds in the reading still ate about the same amount of calories regardless of whether they were allowed to settle upon from cereals high in sugar or a low-sugar selection.

However, the kids weren't inherently opposed to healthier cereals, the researchers found. "Don't be appalled that your child is going to refuse to eat breakfast. The kids will put it," said study co-author Marlene B Schwartz, surrogate director of Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

Nutritionists have prolonged frowned on sugary breakfast cereals that are heavily marketed by cereal makers and gobbled up by kids. In 2008, Consumer Reports analyzed cereals marketed to kids and found that each serving of 11 primary brands had about as much sugar as a glazed donut. The journal also reported that two cereals were more than half sugar by impact and nine others were at least 40 percent sugar.

This week, aliment giant General Mills announced that it is reducing the sugar levels in its cereals geared toward children, although they'll still have much more sugar than many mature cereals. In the meantime, many parents believe that if cereals aren't insidious with sweetness, kids won't eat them.

But is that true? In the untrodden study, researchers offered different breakfast cereal choices to 91 urban children who took put in a summer day camp program in New England. Most were from minorities families and about 60 percent were Spanish-speaking.

Thursday 13 November 2014

Healing Diabetes In Animals, We Help Heal People

Healing Diabetes In Animals, We Help Heal People.
Daniela Trnka had been living with quintessence 1 diabetes for almost 20 years when she noticed telltale signs of the c murrain in her Siberian Husky, Cooper. He was thirsty, urinating often and at times, lethargic. So she took out her blood sugar examine kit, opened a recent lancet and took a ditch of his blood. Cooper's blood glucose levels were too high. A veterinarian confirmed it: Cooper had diabetes.

Now, the two are coping with the persuade together. Trnka monitors Cooper's blood sugar levels and gives him insulin injections. Caring for her pet, Trnka says, has helped her remittance better concentration to her own health. "Every time I think to check his sugar, I'm checking mine," Trnka said. "I muse I'm more on top of managing my diabetes since I started taking feel interest of him".

Trnka recently participated in a new Canadian study focused on pets with diabetes, which found that caring for a gruesome pet may improve the pet owner's health as well. Lead investigation author Melanie Rock, an investigator at the Population Health Intervention Research Center, and a fellow-worker interviewed 16 pet owners as well as veterinarians, a mental health counselor and a formal apothecary about what it takes to take care of dogs and cats with the disease. About 1 in 500 dogs and 1 in 250 cats in developed nations are treated for diabetes, according to CV dirt in the study in the May 17 issue of Anthrozoos.

Some participants said they had learned so much about the condition they felt better equipped to embezzle care of a person with diabetes should they need to. Others, like Trnka, became more tireless about exercising daily for their pets' sake. "On a cold, windy day, my dog gets me pretence in the fresh air because I know the exercise is good for him. And that's fair for me too," she told the researchers.

So "What we observed was that people take the attention of their pet very seriously, and in doing so, they blur the lines between their own health and their pets' health," said Rock. "Being honest for a dog may get people up and out of the house on a rainy day". In addition, many indulged owners get a crash course in diabetes, a disease linked to obesity, heart disease, kidney problems and a assembly of other ills.

Tuesday 11 November 2014

Medical Errors Are A Huge Public Health Problem

Medical Errors Are A Huge Public Health Problem.
Hospital care-related problems furnish to the deaths of about 15000 Medicare patients each month, according to a renewed federal regulation study. One in seven patients suffers harm from hospital care, including infections, bed sores and unconscionable bleeding from blood-thinning drugs, said researchers who analyzed material on 780 Medicare patients discharged from hospitals in October 2008, USA Today reported. That shop out to about 134000 of the estimated one million Medicare patients discharged that month, said the Office of Inspector General, Department of Health and Human Services.

Temporary abuse occurred in another one in seven patients whose care-related problems were detected in measure and corrected. "Reducing the incidence of adverse events in hospitals is a important component of efforts to improve patient safety and quality care," the inspector popular wrote.

Thursday 30 October 2014

New Promise Against Certain Types Of Lung Cancer

New Promise Against Certain Types Of Lung Cancer.
An tentative cancer deaden is proving effective in treating the lung cancers of some patients whose tumors lead a certain genetic mutation, new studies show. Because the mutation can be confer in other forms of cancer - including a rare form of sarcoma (cancer of the soft tissue), youth neuroblastoma (brain tumor), as well as some lymphomas, breast and colon cancers - researchers put they are hopeful the drug, crizotinib, will prove effective in treating those cancers as well. In one study, researchers identified 82 patients from amidst 1500 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, the most bourgeois type of lung malignancy, whose tumors had a mutation in the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene.

Crizotinib targets the ALK "driver kinase," or protein, blocking its vigour and preventing the tumor from growing, explained investigate co-author Dr Geoffrey Shapiro, director of the Early Drug Development Center and associated professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston. "The cancer chamber is actually addicted to the activity of the protein for its spread and survival," Shapiro said. "It's totally dependent on it. The position is that blocking that protein can kill the cancer cell".

In 46 patients taking crizotinib, the tumor shrunk by more than 30 percent during an undistinguished of six months of taking the drug. In 27 patients, crizotinib halted extension of the tumor, while in one patient the tumor disappeared.

The drug also had few side effects, Shapiro said. The most prosaic was mild gastrointestinal symptoms. "These are very positive results in lung cancer patients who had received other treatments that didn't calling or worked only briefly," Shapiro said. "The bottom underline is that there was a 72 percent chance the tumor would shrink or remain stable for at least six months".

The reading is published in the Oct 28, 2010 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. In new years, researchers have started to think of lung cancer less as a singular disease and more as a group of diseases that rely on specific genetic mutations called "driver kinases," or proteins that okay the tumor cells to proliferate.

That has led some researchers to focus on developing drugs that butt those specific abnormalities. "Being able to inhibit those kinases and disrupt their signaling is evolving into a very thriving approach," Shapiro said.

Tuesday 21 October 2014

Uncontrolled Intake Of Vitamin E Is An Increased Risk Of Hemorrhagic Stroke

Uncontrolled Intake Of Vitamin E Is An Increased Risk Of Hemorrhagic Stroke.
People who gobble up vitamin E supplements may be putting themselves at a disparage increased peril for a hemorrhagic stroke, researchers report. Some studies have suggested that taking vitamin E can safeguard against heart disease, while others have found that, in high doses, it might increase the chance of death. In the United States, an estimated 13 percent of the population takes vitamin E supplements, the researchers said.

And "Vitamin E supplementation is not as sheltered as we may like to believe," said result in researcher Dr Markus Schurks, who's with the division of preventive panacea at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "Specifically, it appears to carry an increased risk for hemorrhagic stroke. While the imperil is low translating into one additional hemorrhage per 1250 persons taking vitamin E, widespread and unchecked use of vitamin E should be cautioned against," he added.

The announce is published in the Nov 5, 2010 online edition of the BMJ. For the study, Schurks and his colleagues did a meta-analysis, which is a criticize of published studies, that looked at vitamin E and the risk for stroke. There are basically two types of stroke: one where blood abundance to the brain is blocked, called an ischemic stroke, and one where vessels splitting and bleed into the brain, called a hemorrhagic stroke. Of the two, hemorrhagic strokes are more rare, but more serious, the researchers noted.

The investigate team looked at nine trials that included 118756 patients. Although none of the trials found an overall danger for stroke associated with vitamin E, there was a idiosyncrasy in the risk of the type of stroke.

Saturday 18 October 2014

Infection Of The Heart Valve Can Cause Death.
Life-threatening infections of the insensitivity valve are twice as tired in the United States as previously thought and have increased steadily in the concluding 15 years, according to researchers. The new study also found that many cases of these infections - called endocarditis - are acquired in well-being care facilities and may be preventable. Without antibiotic treatment, these infections are fatal. Even with the best treatment, one in five patients with a nature valve infection suffers a focus attack or stroke and one in seven dies, according to study lead father Dr David Bor, chief of medicine and of infectious diseases at Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts and an mate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

He and a colleague analyzed popular data and recorded 39000 hospitalizations for heart valve infections in 2009. Cases have increased 2,4 percent a year since 1998, they found. The findings were published online March 20 in the chronicle PLoS One. Endocarditis is considered comparatively uncommon, study co-author Dr John Brusch said in a Cambridge Health Alliance item release.

Saturday 23 August 2014

New Researches In Treatment Of Rheumatoid Arthritis

New Researches In Treatment Of Rheumatoid Arthritis.
About half of rheumatoid arthritis patients stopped taking their medications within two years after they started them, a unusual swotting finds June 2013. Rheumatoid arthritis affects about one in 100 individuals worldwide and can cause step by step joint destruction, deformity, pain and stiffness. The disease can reduce true function, quality of life and life expectancy. The main reason about one-third of patients discontinued their medications was because the drugs frenzied their effectiveness, the study authors found. Other reasons included aegis concerns (20 percent), doctor preference (nearly 28 percent), forbearing preference (about 18 percent) and access to treatment (9 percent), according to the retreat results, which were presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR), in Madrid, Spain.

Rheumatoid arthritis "is a advancing disease, which, if left untreated, can significantly and everlastingly reduce joint function, patient mobility and quality of life," study lead prime mover Dr Vibeke Strand, a clinical professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, said in an EULAR low-down release. "Studies have shown that patients sustain maximum benefit from rheumatoid arthritis therapy in the first two years - yet our data highlight significant discontinuation rates during this age period," Strand said.

Monday 11 August 2014

Vaccination Protects Against Influenza.
US strength officials would like every American age-old 6 months and older to get a flu vaccine, and on Thursday they produced statistics they meditate should convince everyone to get vaccinated. "In the 2012-2013 flu season, vaccinations prevented at least 6,6 million cases of flu-associated illness. They also prevented some 3,2 million family from whereas their doctor and 79000 hospitalizations," Dr Tom Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a high noon press briefing. The benefits of vaccination seen in 2012-2013 were greater than the CDC had seen before and were attributable to the dangerousness of the season, he noted.

So "Last year was a rather severe season," Frieden said. "Even with those hospitalizations prevented, there were still about 381000 flu-associated hospitalizations. This is higher than we have seen during many flu seasons". During the after flu season, there were some 31,8 million influenza-associated illnesses and 14,4 million doctors visits for flu, according a CDC statement in the Dec 13, 2013 emanate of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Frieden said the best temperament to be protected from the flu is to be vaccinated.

Yet only 40 percent of Americans aged 6 months and older had been vaccinated by beforehand November, he said. Flu across the country is picking up and even greater motion is predicted in the coming weeks. Increased incidence has been seen in the Southeast and in some states beyond that area. "We be informed that it will increase in the coming weeks and months, but we cannot predict where and when and how severe this year's flu season will be.

Tuesday 5 August 2014

New Drug To Treat Cystic Fibrosis

New Drug To Treat Cystic Fibrosis.
A unfledged treat focused on the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis is showing promise in Phase II clinical trials, reborn research shows. If eventually approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, the remedy known as VX-770 would mark the first treatment that gets at what goes wrong in the lungs of settle with cystic fibrosis, rather than just the symptoms. Only 4 to 5 percent of cystic fibrosis patients have the separate genetic variant that the drug is being studied to treat, according to the study.

But Robert Beall, president and CEO of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, said VX-770 is only the firstly in a new class of drugs, some of which are already in the pipeline, that may post in a similar way in people with other cystic fibrosis-linked gene variants. "There has never been such a wisdom of hope and optimism in the cystic fibrosis community," Beall said. "This is the oldest time there's been a treatment for the basic defect in cystic fibrosis. If we can treat it early, perhaps we won't have all the infections that destroy the lungs and eventually takes people's lives away".

The deliberate over appears in the Nov 18, 2010 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Cystic fibrosis is a progressive, inherited infection affecting about 30000 US children and adults. It is caused by a irregularity in the CF gene, which produces the CFTR (cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator) protein, which is prominent in the transport of salt and fluids in the cells of the lungs and digestive tract.

In thriving cells, when chloride moves out of cells, water follows, keeping the mucus around the apartment hydrated. However, in people with the faulty CFTR protein, the chloride channels don't effort properly. Chloride and water in the cells of the lungs stay trapped inside the cell, causing the mucus to become thick, delicate and dehydrated.

Overtime, the abnormal mucus builds up in the lungs and in the pancreas, which helps to burst down and absorb food, causing both breathing and digestive problems. In the lungs, the collecting of the mucus leaves people prone to serious, hard-to-treat and recurrent infections. Overtime, the repeated infections exterminate the lungs. The average life expectancy for a person with cystic fibrosis is about 37, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Friday 25 July 2014

Autism And Suicide

Autism And Suicide.
Children with autism may have a higher-than-average peril of contemplating or attempting suicide, a recent study suggests. Researchers found that mothers of children with autism were much more likely than other moms to require their child had talked about or attempted suicide: 14 percent did, versus 0,5 percent of mothers whose kids didn't have the disorder. The behavior was more universal in older kids (aged 10 and up) and those whose mothers observation they were depressed, as well as kids whose moms said they were teased. An autism superb not involved in the research, however, said the study had limitations, and that the findings "should be interpreted cautiously".

One percipience is that the information was based on mothers' reports, and that's a limitation in any study, said Cynthia Johnson, big cheese of the Autism Center at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. Johnson also said mothers were asked about suicidal and "self-harming" jibber-jabber or behavior. "A lot of children with autism horse feathers about or engage in self-harming behavior," she said. "That doesn't mean there's a suicidal intent".

Still, Johnson said it makes suspect that children with autism would have a higher-than-normal gamble of suicidal tendencies. It's known that they have increased rates of depression and anxiety symptoms, for example. The broadcasting of suicidal behavior in these kids "is an important one," Johnson said, "and it deserves further study".

Autism spectrum disorders are a association of developmental brain disorders that obstruct a child's ability to communicate and interact socially. They range from severe cases of "classic" autism to the extent mild form called Asperger's syndrome. In the United States, it's been estimated that about one in 88 children has an autism spectrum disorder.

This week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised that rule to as altered consciousness as one in 50 children. The additional findings, reported in the journal Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, are based on surveys of nearly 800 mothers of children with an autism spectrum disorder, 35 whose kids were unhindered of autism but suffered from depression, and nearly 200 whose kids had neither disorder.

The children ranged in seniority from 1 to 16, and the autism spectrum brawl cases ranged in severity. Non-autistic children with depression had the highest place of suicidal talk and behavior, according to mothers - 43 percent said it was a problem at least "sometimes".

Saturday 12 July 2014

Americans Suffer High Blood Pressure

Americans Suffer High Blood Pressure.
High blood constraint is a preventable and treatable peril factor for heart attack and stroke, but about one-quarter of adults don't skilled in they have it, according to a large new study. Among those who do know they have the condition, many are not likely to have it under control, said about researcher Dr Uchechukwu Sampson, a cardiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville. "Despite all the advance we have made in having available treatment options, more than half of the commonality we studied still have uncontrolled high blood pressure.

The study is published in the January issue of the record Circulation: Cardiovascular and Quality Outcomes. One in three US adults has high blood pressure, according to the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Any reading over 140/90 millimeters of mercury is considered cheerful blood pressure. The muse about findings coincided with the Dec 18, 2013 issuing of strange guidelines for blood pressure management by experts from the institute's eighth Joint National Committee.

Among other changes, the imaginative guidelines recommend that fewer rank and file take blood pressure medicine. Older adults, under the new guidelines, wouldn't be treated until their blood bring pressure to bear topped 150/90, instead of 140/90. In Sampson's study, the researchers evaluated how collective high blood pressure was in more than 69000 men and women. Overall, 57 percent self-reported that they had drugged blood pressure.

Thursday 3 July 2014

Scientists Have Discovered A Mutant Gene Causes Cancer Of The Brain

Scientists Have Discovered A Mutant Gene Causes Cancer Of The Brain.
A gene deviation that is proximate in one of every four patients with glioblastoma wit cancer has been identified by researchers. The mutation - a gene deletion known as NFKBIA - contributes to tumor development, promotes stubbornness to treatment and significantly worsens the chances of survival of patients with glioblastoma, the most inferior and deadly type of adult brain cancer, senior initiator Dr Griffith Harsh, a professor of neurosurgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said in a Stanford flash release.

For this study, researchers analyzed several hundred tumor samples sedate from glioblastoma patients and found NFKBIA deletions in 25 percent of the samples. The study, which appears online Dec 22, 2010 in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the at the outset to tie the NFKBIA deletion with glioblastoma.