Culture

The death of a child is a tragic event for a family, bringing with it feelings of numbness, anger, guilt and denial. And, unfortunately, for many families, the loss becomes too much to bear.

A new study co-conducted by a researcher at Rochester Institute of Technology uncovers the strong connection between the death of a child and the mortality of the mother, regardless of cause of death, gender of the child, marital status, family size, income or education level of the mother.

San Diego, CA (October 19, 2012) – Research presented at IDWeek 2012™ concludes that despite advances in electronic medical records, mistakes are still commonly made in the prescription of antiretroviral medications for hospitalized HIV-positive patients. At the same time, a trio of studies suggests however, that electronic records in combination with increased clinical education can help to greatly decrease medical errors.

The latest data showing the amount of time devoted by Ukraine's state and private television channels to political parties has revealed a 2 to 1 disparity in the amount of news coverage.

Statistics released this week by electronic monitors covering the period from September 24th to October 14th revealed that Ukraine's anti-government opposition parties were covered in 264 news stories compared to 124 for the government and enjoyed a total of 5 hours and 38 minutes of air time, while the government parties had just 3 hours and 25 minutes.

Athens, Ga. – A national recession doesn't just affect Americans' wallets. It also impacts their travel to national parks, a new University of Georgia study has found.

In its 150th anniversary yearlong celebration, Bacardi celebrates its tremendous success as the world’s largest privately-held spirits company and the incredible drive and perseverance it took to get there following the illegal confiscation of its assets in Cuba on October 15, 1960 – 52 years ago.

– Our idea was to find a way to adapt these natural processes to nanofabrication. This led us to an incidental finding that a focused ion beam can locally induce bending with nanoscale resolution.

The technology has various applications in the fabrication of nanoscale devices. The structures are surprisingly resilient:¬ the team found them to be quite sturdy and robust under a variety of adverse conditions, such as electrostatic discharge and heating.

In a new perspective piece being published Online First tonight in Annals of Internal Medicine, a physician recalls lessons learned from treating patients affected by the 2002 outbreak of Exophiala (Wangiella) dermatitidis meningitis or arthritis related to contaminated, injectable coticosteroids prepared from a compounding pharmacy. According to the author, the lessons he learned in 2002 are applicable to the current outbreak. He warns that compounding of preservative-free corticosteroids requires meticulous sterility to ensure lack of fungal contamination.

NEW ORLEANS – Few adolescent females undergo pregnancy testing in the hospital emergency department (ED), even when they complain of lower abdominal pain, or before they are exposed to radiation for tests or examinations, according to an abstract presented Friday, Oct. 19, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans.

Claudio Anasetti, M.D., chair of the Department of Blood & Marrow Transplant at Moffitt Cancer Center, and colleagues from 47 research sites in the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network conducted a two-year clinical trial comparing two-year survival probabilities for patients transplanted with peripheral blood stem cells or bone marrow stem cells from unrelated donors. The goal was to determine whether graft source, peripheral blood stem cells or bone marrow, affects outcomes in unrelated donor transplants for patients with leukemia or other hematologic malignancies.

Highlights

  • A drug that activates the liver x receptor blocks expression of an inflammatory molecule involved in diabetic nephropathy, the leading cause of kidney failure.
  • The drug improves kidney health and function in diabetic mice.
  • Such a drug might help protect the health of diabetic patients' kidneys.

About 20%-30% of patients with diabetes develop evidence of diabetic nephropathy.

Highlights

  • Kidney failure patients have less sugar coating along the insides of their blood vessels, and they have high levels of the coating's constituents in the blood, consistent with increased shedding.
  • Damage to this sugar coating may be responsible for kidney failure patients' increased risks of heart problems.

    Heart disease is the number one killer of individuals with kidney disease.

In a new perspective piece being published Online First tonight in Annals of Internal Medicine, a physician recalls lessons learned from treating patients affected by the 2002 outbreak of Exophiala (Wangiella) dermatitidis meningitis or arthritis related to contaminated, injectable coticosteroids prepared from a compounding pharmacy.

A hospital stroke team used auto industry "lean" manufacturing principles to accelerate treatment times, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke.

In a prospective observational study, the average time between patients arriving at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Mo., and receiving the clot-busting agent tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), decreased 21 minutes using process improvement techniques adapted from auto manufacturing. Data from more than 200 patients was included in the study analysis, ranging over 3 years.

Simply knowing a child's home address and some socioeconomic data can serve as a vital sign – helping hospitals predict which children admitted for asthma treatment are at greater risk for re-hospitalization or additional emergency room visits, according to new research in the American Journal of Public Health.

Segregation is supposed to be a bad thing but African-American and Mexican-American seniors living in communities where their neighbors are most like them get cancer or heart disease less than their counterparts in a more diverse neighborhood.