Patients with a single illness who take many drugs have an increased risk of being admitted to hospital, but for patients with multiple conditions, taking many medicines is now associated with a near-normal risk of admission. This is the key finding of work published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. Doctors call the situation where people take many drugs 'polypharmacy', a state of affairs that is becoming increasingly common in part because we have more elderly people and also a rising number of people are being diagnosed with multiple health conditions.
Culture
Women giving birth in California can face a huge cost difference in their hospital bills, according to a new UC San Francisco study.
The study found that California women giving birth were charged from $3,296 to $37,227 for an uncomplicated vaginal delivery, depending on which hospital they visited. For a C-section, women were billed between $8,312 and nearly $71,000. Few of the women in the study had serious health issues and most were discharged within six days of admission.
UK rates of gout have soared since the late1990s, with one in every 40 people now affected by the condition - the highest in Europe - but treatment remains as poor now as it was then, reveals research published online in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
But there is wide variation in both the prevalence (existing cases) and incidence (new cases) of gout across the UK, with the highest numbers of cases in Wales and the North East of England, the data show.
Bar tenders in clubs and pubs are routinely flouting UK legislation intended to prevent further sales of alcohol to those who are already drunk, reveals a study of purchase patterns in one UK city, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Preventing sales of alcohol to those who are already very drunk would ease the strain on public services and protect long term health, and should be a public health priority, say the authors.
TORONTO, Jan. 15, 2014 – Torontonians living in neighbourhoods that aren't conducive to walking have a 33 per cent greater risk of developing diabetes or being obese, according to new research.
The design of Toronto's neighbourhoods such as Bridle Path-Sunnybrook-York Mills, Edenbridge- Humber Valley, and Morningside encourage dependency on cars and discourage walking – risk factors that can lead to obesity and diabetes.
Once Salmonella bacteria get into a food processing facility and have an opportunity to form a biofilm on surfaces, it is likely to be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to kill it, according to research published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
Researchers from National University of Ireland, Galway conducted a study in which they attempted to kill Salmonella biofilms on a variety of hard surfaces, using three types of disinfectant.
(Boston) – Boston Medical Center (BMC) successfully reduced audible alarms as a way to combat alarm fatigue and improve patient safety. The hospital, one of two in the country that spearheaded this issue, implemented a novel cost-effective approach during a six-week pilot program that resulted in a drastic drop in audible alarms. The successful approach has since been expanded to all BMC inpatient medical surgical units and is being touted as a model for other hospitals working to combat alarm fatigue.
Poorer Americans: depleted food budgets can mean higher risk of hypoglycemia.
For generations, economists have noted that low-income households spend much of their earnings as soon as their paychecks arrive. Since a large proportion of Americans are paid at the beginning of the month, many low-income households exhaust food budgets by month's end.
For several years, many have been quick to attribute rising fast-food consumption as the major factor causing rapid increases in childhood obesity. Now researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill report that fast-food consumption is simply a byproduct of a much bigger problem: poor all-day-long dietary habits that originate in children's homes.
After three years struggling to recover from the Great Recession, the global chemistry industry may finally look forward to a rosier year ahead, says the cover story of Chemical & Engineering News, which details what to watch for in 2014 across different sectors and geographic regions.
DARIEN, IL – A new study suggests that patients with spinal cord injuries could benefit from careful assessment for sleep apnea.
DETROIT — Researchers at Wayne State University have discovered a potential way to improve the lipid profiles in patients undergoing hemodialysis that may prevent cardiovascular disease common in these patients. Patients undergoing hemodialysis for kidney failure are at a greater risk for atherosclerosis, a common disease in which plaque builds up inside the arteries. Atherosclerosis can lead to serious problems including heart attack, stroke or even death.
A new study finds that female-to-male (FTM) transgender patients had over 10 times higher odds of having an inadequate Papanicolaou (Pap) test compared to female patients. The findings¹, by Fenway Health's Jennifer Potter, MD, and colleagues at Fenway, Harvard Medical School and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, appear in the Journal of General Internal Medicine², published by Springer.
TORONTO, Jan. 15, 2014—Government policies that allow both parents to take time off after a child is born provide positive benefits for the physical and mental health of women, according to a literature review that looked at the influence of public policies on women's overall health.
The findings were published today in the journal Epidemiologic Reviews.
The world's zoos work hard and spend enormous resources on the conservation of endangered species, but the resources are not always optimally spent. One big problem is international legislation and the need of more zoos to work in regional or global networks. Zoo resources can be spent much more effectively, say scientists from University of Southern Denmark after analyzing animal collections across the world's zoos.