Culture

Too many cooks may spoil a recipe, and too many doctors may give you the flu.

That's the takeaway from a new study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research that found that Californians who jump from provider to provider rather than seeing a regular doctor who coordinates their care may be less likely to get the kind of preventive treatment that protects against the flu and flare ups in their chronic conditions.

Irvine, Calif., May 29, 2013 – Mexican American mothers' formal immigration status influences the educational achievement of their children and even their grandchildren, according to a new study led by a UC Irvine sociologist.

In a large, international, randomized trial, initial radiotherapy was compared to temozolomide chemotherapy. A statistically significant difference between the two treatment strategies was not observed for progression-free survival, although radiotherapy was numerically favored. However, molecular tumor characterization may allow the treatment approach to be personalized and one or the other treatment modality to be selected.

A pioneering imaging technique to track the effects of next-generation nanomedicines on patients has been harnessed by a University of Strathclyde academic.

After analysing football league players over nine seasons, from 2000 to 2009, Spanish researchers have come up with a mathematical method for estimating the goal-scoring performance of each player. According to their ranking, the most able strikers are Messi, Ronaldo Nazário, Makkay, Villa and Etoo.

Interim results of an EORTC intergroup trial have confirmed that adjuvant imatinib impacts short-term freedom from relapse in patients with localized, surgically resected, high/ intermediate-risk GIST. In the high-risk subgroup, a non-statistically significant trend in favor of the adjuvant arm was observed in terms of Imatinib failure-free survival.

Patients undergoing planned surgery appear more likely to die if they have their operation at the end of the week, a study published in the British Medical Journal has found.

Mexican American mothers' formal immigration status affects the educational achievement of their children and even their grandchildren, according to a study written by Penn State and University of California, Irvine, sociologists and released by the US2010 Project at Brown University. Based on a large-scale survey of second-generation Mexican young adults in Los Angeles, the study finds that those whose mothers were authorized immigrants or U.S. citizens averaged more than two years more schooling than those whose mothers entered the country illegally.

Treatments for depression that don't involve antidepressant drugs but rather focus on different forms of talking therapy (referred to as psychotherapeutic interventions) are all beneficial, with no one form of therapy being better than the others, according to a study by international researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine.

These findings are important as they suggest that patients with depression should discuss different forms of non-drug therapy with their doctors and explore which type of psychotherapy best suits them.

Johns Hopkins scientists report that a 10-minute test for "frailty" first designed to predict whether the elderly can withstand surgery and other physical stress could be useful in assessing the increased risk of death and frequent hospitalization among kidney dialysis patients of any age.

WASHINGTON — Disabled Medicare patients under the age of 65 who don't take their prescription medications because of cost concerns are more likely to have at least one emergency department visit during a one-year period. The results of a new study are published online today in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("The Relationship Between Emergency Department Use and Cost-Related Medication Nonadherence Among Medicare Beneficiaries").

Young people are increasingly turning to prescription drugs to get high. Research out of the University of Cincinnati sheds new light on what could increase or lower that risk.

The research by Keith King, a University of Cincinnati professor of health promotion; Rebecca Vidourek, a UC assistant professor of health promotion; and Ashley Merianos, a graduate assistant in health promotion, is published in the current issue of the Journal of Primary Prevention.

PULLMAN, Wash. - It would be nice to think the pundits we see yelling on TV and squawking on Twitter are right all the time. It turns out they're wrong more often than they are right.

Now two Washington State University economics students have demonstrated that it simply doesn't pay as much for a pundit to be accurate as it does to be confident. It's one thing to be a good pundit, but another to be popular.

In a research letter, Harlan M. Krumholz, M.D., S.M., from Yale University School of Medicine and colleagues, "sought to investigate preferences for participation in the decision-making process among individuals hospitalized with an acute myocardial infarction ([AMI] or heart attack)." The researchers combined data from two similar AMI registries (TRIUMPH and PREMIER) which resulted in 6,636 patients in the study sample who were asked about who should make decisions on treatment options.

London, May 27, 2013 - Young people are demanding information and education about their bodies, sex, their sexuality and sexual health, as well as access to services that will support them to stay safe and healthy. Papers published in the latest themed issue of Reproductive Health Matters (RHM) demonstrate that information and services in fact remain unavailable to many young people, and many may grow up without fully understanding things that they are currently experiencing such as menstruation, let alone preparing themselves for future sexual relationships and adulthood.