Briefly 7-1
Bush/Cheney war’s price
BOSTON
- The Associated Press reported more than 800 of them have lost an arm, a leg, fingers, or toes; more than 100 are blind. Dozens need machines to keep them alive. Hundreds are disfigured by burns, and thousands have brain injuries and mangled minds.
America
's war wounded get less attention than the 3,500 troops killed in
Iraq
. They number 35,000-53,000, and more are coming home, with injuries of a magnitude the government didn’t predict and is struggling to treat. "If we left
Iraq
tomorrow, we would have the legacy of all these people for many years to come," said Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and an adviser to the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs. "The military wasn't prepared for its success" at keeping severely wounded soldiers alive, he said. Unlike previous wars, few have been shot. The signature weapon of this war - the improvised explosive device - has left a signature wound: traumatic brain injury. Soldiers hit in the head or knocked out by blasts - "getting your bell rung" is the military euphemism - sometimes have no visible wounds but can be irritable, depressed, and unaware they are impaired.
WASHINGTON - The Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest Health Security Watch tracking poll shows minorities are significantly more worried about healthcare access and costs than whites (56% versus 29%), and people with low incomes are more worried than those with high incomes (59% versus 25%) - disparities that are at or near record highs. Worries among those with incomes under $20,000 have risen since 2006 and, in June, 59% of this group reported being very worried versus 25% of those with incomes of $50,000 or more. This increase resulted in the largest gap between the lowest and highest income groups since tracking began. The June poll involved a representative random
U.S.
sample of 1,203 adults interviewed May 31-June 5. Full results are at www.kff.org/healthsecuritywatch.cfm.
ROCKVILLE
,
MD
- The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has checklists to help men and women understand which checkup tests they need to stay healthy at any age. Your Checklist for Health has what the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force urges on screening, preventive medicine, and other lifestyle behaviors. Dr. Carolyn Clancy, AHRQ director, said, “The checklists provide patients with a scientific understandable reference tool.” In English and Spanish, the pocket-size checklists go with patients on visits to healthcare providers to discuss which screening they might need. Such tests help check for problems before symptoms show. There are tips on how to stay healthy; i.e., healthy diet and exercise. A chart to record screening test history and help plan follow-up appointments is included. The checklist for men includes ideas about cholesterol checks, tests for high blood pressure, colorectal cancer screening, and screening for abdominal aortic aneurysm, HIV, and obesity. The list for women includes plans for screening for high cholesterol; breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers, and osteoporosis. It has thoughts on obesity and HIV screening for pregnant women.
JACKSON
,
MS
- Dr. Jian-Wei Gu focuses on blood vessel growth, and has attracted national headlines for his cancer research. The assistant professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center has done what many scientists have failed to do: describe the mechanism by which alcohol consumption causes tumor growth. “Scientists have known for 100 years there was a strong association between alcohol consumption and several types of cancer,” he said. Experiments in the lab have failed, until now, to show the effects in animals that observers knew as true in humans. The problem was investigators used too much alcohol. “Most studies used concentrations of 20%, far more than the equivalent human consumption,” Dr. Gu said. Dr. Gu used concentrations of 1%, about equal to one or two drinks a day in humans. Using “physiologically relevant” levels of alcohol, he stimulated tumor growth in chick embryos and mice. The mice in the most recent study were given drinking water with an alcohol concentration of 1% for 12 hours. The next 12 hours, they got water with no alcohol. Another group of mice received no alcohol in their water.
WASHINGTON
- Monday Morning in Washington, DC noted the Big Sky project coordinated by United Cerebral Palsy is a national effort to create a vision of the future for people with disabilities. The project is designed to raise public awareness about the serious challenges that remain for people with disabilities and develop strategies, initiatives, programs, and public policy to address them (www.ucp.org/ucp_general.cfm/1/16243).
BOSTON
- MedPage Today disclosed healthy women who took low-to-moderate aspirin doses for at least five years had a lower death risk from any cause - especially cardiovascular disease, a large study found. Women who reported current aspirin use had a 25% lower risk of all-cause death versus those who didn’t use aspirin regularly, Dr. Andrew Chan, of
Harvard
Medical
School
, and colleagues stated in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The tie was stronger at
five years: 38
% lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease; at 10 years, the cancer death risk was 12% lower for aspirin users. The data came from a study of 79,439 women without cardiovascular woe or cancer history enrolled since 1980 in the Nurses' Health Study. There were 9,477 deaths from any cause in 24 years of follow-up, with 1,991 deaths from cardiovascular disease, and 4,469 from cancer. In an adjacent editorial, Dr. John A. Baron, of
Dartmouth
Medical
School
in
Lebanon
,
NH
, noted the Women's Health Study of more than 11 years and 40,000 women, found no effect on cardiovascular or other mortality in healthy women, leaving confusion. "Is aspirin really that good or is there some other explanation for the findings that differ so much from those of the WHS and other primary prevention trials?" he asked.
WASHINGTON
- Monday Morning in Washington, D.C. noted Education.com posted an online destination that helps parents and educators of children ages pre-school through grade 12 to take a more active role in their children’s education.
LEEDS
,
ENGLAND
- Patients say leaflets with prescription don’t meet their needs, a systematic review found; poor layout and complex language often hinder knowledge. Reviews confirm written drug data doesn’t improve patient understanding of medicines. Many people would like data that helps better evaluate benefits and harms of a drug treatment. “If you’re going to have safe and effective use, then we need to give patients tools to do that job,” says lead author Dr. D.K. Raynor, of the
University
of
Leeds
. Reviewers stress patients want written data added to - not instead of - spoken orders from doctors. The Partnership for Clear Health Communication states nearly half of all American adults have difficulty understanding and using health data. The group says literacy is a stronger predictor of a person’s health status than employment, age, income, education, or racial/ethnic group. The review was in the journal Health Technology Assessment, from the National Institute for Health Research in
England
. Authors reviewed 70 quantitative and qualitative studies done in the
England
,
Europe
,
Australia
, and the
U.S.
GUADALAJARA, MEXICO - Compounds from the blue agave, a fruit used to make tequila, shows promise in early lab studies as a more effective way to deliver drugs to the colon than usual drug carriers, said chemists at the University of Guadalajara. This could lead to better treatment for cancer, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, and other colon diseases, they say. Drug delivery to the colon is a challenge. Many drugs are ruined by stomach acids before they’ve had a chance to reach the intestine, where they usually are absorbed. Scientists have tried to avoid this problem by putting the drugs into molecules that resist breakdown in the stomach but have had difficulty finding a suitable carrier compound. Tequila compounds, a class of polysaccharides known as fructans, were developed by Mexican scientists into tiny microspheres capable of carrying existing drugs used to treat colon diseases. The compounds resist destruction in the stomach; they could allow more drugs to reach the colon intact and improve effectiveness, scientists say. The study was presented at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society. “This study shows agave is good for more than tequila. It has medicinal value,” says study leader Dr. Guillermo Toriz, an assistant professor at the university. “Agave fructan is the ideal natural carrier of drugs for the colon.”
WASHINGTON
- Monday Morning in
Washington
,
D.C.
noted Disaboom.com is scheduled to launch in September to offer medical data and education, classifieds, social networking, and commerce those with a disability or functional limitation - plus family members, friends, caregivers, recreation and rehabilitation providers, and employers.
