Culture | Page 1704 | Science Codex

New diabetes screening recommendation misses more than half of high-risk patients

CHICAGO --- The latest government guidelines doctors follow to determine if patients should be screened for diabetes missed 55 percent of high-risk individuals with prediabetes or diabetes, a new Northwestern Medicine study found.

The 2015 screening guidelines from the United States Preventive Service Task Force (USPSTF) recommend patients be screened for diabetes if they are between 40 and 70 years old and are overweight or obese. But the study found many patients outside those age and weight ranges develop diabetes, especially racial and ethnic minorities.

Interventions do not improve viral suppression among hospitalized patients with HIV infection

In a study appearing in the July 12 issue of JAMA, an HIV/AIDS theme issue, Lisa R. Metsch, Ph.D., of Columbia University, New York, and colleagues assessed the effect of structured patient navigation (care coordination with case management) interventions with or without financial incentives to improve HIV-l viral suppression rates among hospitalized patients with elevated HIV-1 viral loads and substance use.

Patients given financial incentives does not improve outcomes for HIV+ substance users

Interventions to improve the health of HIV-positive people with substance use disorders did no better than usual treatment, according to a study published on July 12th in an HIV/AIDS themed issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study showed no statistical differences among trial arms in rates of HIV viral suppression versus non-suppression or death.

Patients at accredited bariatric surgical centers have fewer postoperative complications

CHICAGO (July 12, 2016): Patients who have weight-loss operations at nonaccredited bariatric surgical facilities in the United States are up to 1.4 times likelier to experience serious complications and more than twice as likely to die after the operation compared with patients who undergo these procedures at accredited bariatric surgical centers, researchers conclude.

For HIV with substance use, patient navigation, incentives not enough to improve outcomes

A new study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health found that among hospitalized patients with HIV infection and substance use, patient navigation (care coordination with case management) and the use of financial incentives did not have a beneficial effect on suppressing HIV after 12 months, compared to treatment as usual.

The research will be published in the July 12 issue of JAMA, and was conducted by a research team from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Emory University and the University of Miami.

US pediatric hospitals vary greatly in costs, practices for children with asthma

Children's hospitals vary greatly in managing inpatients with asthma, according to researchers who analyzed hospital records in a large national database. Even when patients were grouped by characteristics such as age or severity of illness, hospitals differed significantly in inpatient costs, length of stay, and time spent in the intensive care unit (ICU).

New eye test could detect glaucoma years earlier

UNSW Australia scientists have developed a testing protocol that identifies the blinding eye disease glaucoma four years earlier than current techniques.

The patented method involves patients looking at small dots of light of specially chosen size and light intensity. An inability to see them indicates blind spots in the eye and early loss of peripheral vision.

A study assessing 13 patients using this improved technique for visual field testing has been recently published in the journal Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics.

Suicide rate is 22 percent higher among people with epilepsy than the general population

Oxford, July 12, 2016 - The suicide rate among people with epilepsy is 22 percent higher than the general population, according to a new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published in Epilepsy & Behavior.

Help at hand for people watching their weight

Researchers from the University of Sydney's Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise & Eating Disorders have developed a portable and easy-to-use method to help people estimate portion size using only their hands.

Small rise in booze duty could cut violence-related emergency visits by 6,000 a year

A small rise of 1% in alcohol prices could significantly reduce violence-related injuries in England and Wales, consequently reducing their burden on hard-pressed emergency departments, concludes a study by Cardiff University.

Published in the journal Injury Prevention, the study finds that violence-related emergency department (ED) attendance is greater when alcohol prices are lower and estimates that over 6,000 fewer violence-related ED attendances per year would result from a 1% rise above inflation on alcohol sold through drinking establishments and shops.

Homo erectus walked as we do

Fossil bones and stone tools can tell us a lot about human evolution, but certain dynamic behaviours of our fossil ancestors - things like how they moved and how individuals interacted with one another - are incredibly difficult to deduce from these traditional forms of paleoanthropological data.

Workplace climate, not women's 'nature,' responsible for gender-based job stress

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Social scientists have long known that women working in numerically male-dominated occupations like physics and firefighting report experiencing workplace stress, but men who work in numerically female-dominated occupations like nursing and child care do not.

But why? Is it something about women or something about the workplace? A study by an Indiana University sociologist suggests it's the latter.

Education's 'power' to prevent type 2 diabetes

People at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes can reduce their chances of getting the condition by more than 80 per cent by fully completing a new education programme, an NIHR-supported study has found.

The new group education programme called Let's Prevent Diabetes, developed by the Leicester Diabetes Centre, could lead to "large reductions in cases of Type 2 diabetes" to ease pressure on the NHS amid soaring numbers of the condition.

Palliative care offers no additional benefit to caretakers of chronically critically ill

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Shannon Carson, MD, professor of medicine and division chief of Pulmonary Diseases and Critical Care Medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, along with co-principal investigator Judith Nelson, MD, JD, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Christopher Cox, MD, of Duke University, led a four-year, first-of-its kind clinical study on the effects of palliative care for medical decision-makers.

First-of-its-kind survey debunks notion of monolithic youth vote

Issues surrounding race and ethnicity are driving factors in the voting calculus of many young people of color and a majority of all young people believe the U.S. is a long way from achieving racial equality, according to a first-of-its-kind GenForward survey from the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.