About 3.4 percent of patients treated in rural trauma centers appear to be recidivists, meaning that they have visited the facility more than once for separate injuries, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Substance abuse appears to be the common feature among urban and rural recurrent trauma patients.
Individuals who received instruction on skin self-examination with their partners may be more likely to engage in this cancer prevention behavior, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
A review of published data on use of human growth hormone by healthy elderly people found that the synthetic hormone was associated with small changes in body composition but not in body weight or other clinically important outcomes. Further, people who took GH had increased rates of unhealthy side effects such as soft tissue swelling, joint pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and, in men, abnormal breast development and were also somewhat more likely to develop diabetes.
Being a member of a large family may not be best for your health. A new study found that family size greatly influenced the development of stomach cancer linked to the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, and younger siblings from large families appeared to be especially vulnerable to the most common type of stomach cancer.
Benzodiazepine use was not shown to be associated with hip fractures after all, according to a new study from the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention (of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care). Previous epidemiological studies suggesting an association have been used to support legislation and policy decisions that limit access to these drugs among the elderly. These policies may need to be reexamined based on these new findings, which are being published in the Jan. 16 Annals of Internal Medicine.
A new study conducted by Renaud Becquet and colleagues in Abidjan, C?te d’Ivoire, and reported in PLoS Medicine shows that if HIV-positive mothers are well supported, either of the two feeding options currently recommended (formula-only feed, or short-term breastfeeding) are likely to be equivalent in terms of the baby’s chances for survival and health.
A new study has found a drop in the number of patients undergoing the most commonly used stroke prevention surgery, carotid endarterectomy, for inappropriate reasons. Researchers are crediting the drop to highly publicized randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that clarified the appropriate use of the surgery. The researchers’ findings are published in the January 16, 2007, issue of Neurology?, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
In a large, randomized, placebo-controlled study of 22,071 healthy male physicians, taking a low-dose of aspirin every other day lowered the risk of receiving an initial asthma diagnosis by 22 percent.
University of Minnesota stem cell researchers, together with collaborators at Stanford University, have successfully used adult stem cells to replace the immune system and bone marrow of mice, offering the promise of new therapies for people in the future.
For patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), combining a long-acting bronchodilator with an inhaled corticosteroid reduced the number of exacerbations by 35 percent.