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August 2008
Can lithium slow down Lou Gehrig’s disease?
Researchers are trying to find out if early studies on the drug lithium can slow the progression of Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). ALS is one of the cruelest diseases: It robs the body of muscle strength until patients are so weak they can’t breathe.
A small Italian study on ALS and lithium — better known for treating bipolar disorder — showed promise. And now the ALS Association, among others, are jumping in to fund major studies.
“Lithium has generated a lot of interest in the ALS community,” says Lucie Bruijn, a senior vice president the ALS Association, in a news release this week about the study. “This trial is vital for testing the efficacy of lithium in a well-controlled way.”
The association will do the gold standard double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. It plans to enroll 84 patients and possibly expand to 250.
The Muscular Dystrophy Association’s ALS Division also is launching a clinical trial of lithium in 10 sites across the United States. It plans to enroll 100 patients. One site listed on the MDA Web site is in Houston. No one answered when I tried calling this morning to see whether patients could still enroll, but the phone number is (713) 441-3420.
Most news about ALS is sad; this is encouraging.
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Is your kid’s bad behavior ADD, or exhaustion?
Many misbehaving children who are labeled as having Attention Deficit Disorder may actually suffer from sleep apena, a disorder more commonly seen in adults, according to an article published this week on Newswise, a resource of news and research for journalists.
The article contends that thousands of children may have enlarged tonsils, causing them to stop breathing many times during the night and depriving them of sleep.
“If kids aren’t sleeping at night it can affect their school work and mental development,” says Stephen Landers, an ear, nose and throat doctor at Our Children’s House at Baylor Health Care System in Dallas. “If children are allowed to sleep properly a lot of these behavioral issues are improved.”
This is not the first time the connection has been made. Several studies in recent years also have concluded that many children labeled as ADD may actually have sleep apnea.
Apnea has some telltale signs. If the child snores loudly, gasps or snorts, the article advises parents to see a doctor. The solution? A tonsillectomy.
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UPDATE: Sperm U airs tonight at 6…..At sperm bank, parents picked athlete
UPDATE: The time reported below for ESPN’s E:60 has been corrected to 6 p.m.
When a Round Rock couple considering sperm donors named the traits important to them in a child, athletic ability ultimately won out.
“I kind of let my husband pick. Randy wanted someone who was very athletic,” Kristie Rodriguez told me in an interview.
The Rodriguezes found themselves in the position of choosing traits when they wanted to start a family because Randy had suffered a childhood sports injury and they could not conceive. Kristie, 36, said a sperm donor gave her the chance to carry a baby.
Randy, who is 50, used to play football. Kristie said she also was athletic. When their doctor recommended a sperm bank in California, they initially had different ideas on the ideal donor, Randy says in an upcoming TV interview. But they ultimately agreed: They chose a college football player who was 6 foot 3 inches tall, 230 pounds with blond hair and blue eyes.
The couple is being featured on ESPN’s E:60, a news magazine. The program featuring the Rodriguezes airs this Tuesday at 6 p.m. The report, “Sperm U,” suggests that more couples are choosing sperm donors who are athletes. It also says the sperm bank invests more heavily in recruiting “jock” sperm, which sells faster than sperm from donors who are non-athletes.
The report shows the Rodriguez’s daughter, Chloe, 4, going through gymnastics training. She’s in a class with kids twice her age, the report says.
“The minute she could start walking she was kicking a soccer ball,” Kristie told me.
The couple also has another child, Ava, 11 months, from the same sperm donor.
That the children are healthy and happy are the most important things, Kristie said. “If they turn out to be true athletes, it’s icing on the cake,” she said.
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More than half of college students had suicidal thoughts, UT survey says
More than half of 26,000 U.S. college students surveyed by University of Texas researchers thought of killing themselves at least once in their lives, according to research just released.
The survey, done in 2006 across 70 colleges and universities, also found that 15 percent of students said they had “seriously considered suicide” and more than 5 percent reported making at least one attempt, according to a news release posted today on the UT-Austin Web site.
The students included undergraduates and graduate students and said their reasons for thinking of suicide included relief from emotional or physical pain; relationship problems; a desire to end their lives; and problems with school.
The research was done by David Drum, a professor in the College of Education’s Department of Educational Psychology, and Chris Brownson, director of the campus Counseling and Mental Health Center.
The researchers draw some sobering conclusions. Suicidal thoughts are frequently recurring, like “substance abuse, depression and eating disorders,” according to the release. And treating students in crisis is not an adequate way to help all students who may need it.
More than half of the students who reported feeling suicidal did not seek professional help, Drum said.
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79 million Americans struggling to pay medical bills
Earlier this year I wrote about an Austin woman who found her high school sweetheart in middle age and then soon lost him to liver disease. She went bankrupt trying to pay his medical bills and lost their home after he had died.
At the time the story ran in February, experts I spoke with did not have recent data but they predicted that bankruptcies would rise as the economy worsened and that more people would end up in “medical bankruptcy.” Today, a report from the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that promotes improvements in health care, says a “perfect storm” of ill economic winds, including soaring gas prices, expensive food and rising unemployment, are making it harder for adults and families to pay their medical bills. The report says that in 2007 “nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults, or an estimated 116 million people, struggled to pay medical bills, went without needed care because of cost, were uninsured for a time, or were underinsured.”
The report goes on to say that the “share of U.S. adults reporting that the costs of health care prevented them from getting needed care increased from 29 percent in 2001 to 45 percent in 2007.”
The Commonwealth Fund found that the problem touched all income groups, regardless of whether they had insurance.
There are other interesting nuggets in the report, and it’s worth checking out. Here are a few:
In 2007, 28 percent of U.S. adults, or an estimated 50 million people, were uninsured for some time during the past year, up from 24 percent in 2001.
One third of adults spent at least 10 percent or their incomes on health care, up from 21 percent in 2001.
More than 70 percent of adults with gaps in their health insurance coverage said they did not get needed care because of cost, up from just more than 50 percent in 2001.
Did you ever fear medical bills would cause you to go bankrupt?
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UT developing Star Trek-like device for diagnosing skin cancer
Remember Dr. McCoy in the old “Star Trek” TV series waving a tricorder over a patient and making an instant medical diagnosis or gravely saying, “Jim, he’s dead” ? Name a doctor who doesn’t want one of those.
A team at the University of Texas is developing a pen-shaped probe that is held next to a person’s skin while it emits tiny pulses of light. It could be used some day to diagnose skin cancers, including deadly melanomas.
Assistant Professor of biomedical engineering James Tunnell and graduate student Narasimhan Rajaram, who built the device, are working with UT’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to make the instrument commercially available. The goal is to diagnose cancers on the spot and avoid wait times and invasive biopsies.
The light at the end of Tunnell’s ‘pen’ changes color when it is moved over cancerous tissue, and while the change can’t be seen by the naked eye, it can be read by an accompanying instrument, Tunnell said.
“We have measured 100 patients so far … and it looks promising,” Tunnell said today. He declined to give data from that study but said the numbers were strong enough to merit an award from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation to continue the development and testing of the device. The school put out a news release Monday announcing that Tunnell will get $260,000 over the next two years to press forward. The release has photos of the device and Tunnell.
The pre-clinical testing is expected to lead to regular clinical trials in humans within two to three years, Tunnell said. If all goes well, the device could be on the market in about five years.
You could say the 23rd century arrived early.
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Typhus in Austin: It’s probably always been lurking around here
The latest wrinkle in the typhus investigation in Travis County: What was thought to be new is actually old.
State officials who initially could not recall seeing typhus in Travis County before this year said today that a review of records going back more than two decades uncovered two cases between 1980 and 1984 in the county, according to Jeff Taylor, a manager in infectious diseases at the Department of State Health Services.
And a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report in March 1983 describes a typhus outbreak in Comanche County in 1982. Comanche County is about 100 miles southwest of Fort Worth.
In the current outbreak, 14 people in Travis County have been confirmed to have typhus between March and July 14, and now a 15th suspected case is under investigation, said Carole Barasch, spokeswoman for the Austin/Travis County Department of Health and Human Services. She did not know when the person became ill. Of the 14 known cases, 10 of the people were hospitalized, Barasch said. So far, no cases have been reported in counties surrounding Travis.
State health officials said that as they have learned more about the outbreak, they now think typhus likely circulated all over Texas years ago. For reasons that they can’t explain, it has re-emerged.
“In the 1940s, I would say typhus was common in Central Texas,” Taylor said. “Typhus was present throughout the southeast United States. There were thousands of cases.”
Back then, Texas and the southeast were more agricultural than they are today. Rats roamed in grocery store corners and farmhouses — places where grain was stashed and people congregated, Taylor said.
An old state health department flier, “Combat the Rat: The Spread of Typhus in Texas,” shows that typhus was an increasing problem in Travis County between 1930 and 1944, when the number rose from two cases to 31, said Jim Schuermann, an epidemiologist for vectorborne and zoonotic diseases at the state health department.
As rats were controlled, so was typhus, an illness transmitted by fleas feeding off of infected rats, opossums, cats and other animals. Murine typhus, which is more commonly seen today in South Texas, is the strain believed to be circulating in Travis County.
Based on re-testing of human blood in recent days, “it’s looking more and more like murine typhus,” Schuermann said. “It’s not definitive.”
The CDC is helping to trap animals and hopes to finish that work by Friday. Health authorities will determine the strain and conclude their investigation some time after that, Schuermann said.
Murine typhus is not spread from one person to another. A number of comments made on this blog have pointed to Mexican immigrants as the source of the typhus outbreak. “It’s not about Mexico,” Taylor said. “It’s about controlling fleas on your pets, and you can’t leave dog and cat food outside. That encourages opossums and rats and … brings fleas in from the outside.”
Those infected fleas then bite people and make them ill.
The Travis County typhus patients have ranged in age from 7 to 62 and live in ZIP codes 78703, 78705, 78722, 78723, 78728 and 78731, but they could have been infected elsewhere, Barasch said. The health department does not identify patients, but some were found by the Statesman and one case was described in this article.
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When Willed Body Program closed, future donor never heard “a peep”
James Cutwright of Austin planned to donate his body to science, specifically to the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
But Cutwight was pretty upset when he called me yesterday after reading a story I had written about the program being shut down after a body-selling scandal at the school in 2002. Six years have passed since the program quit accepting bodies, but Cutwright, who has lived at the same Austin address for 18 years, said he has never heard “a peep” from UTMB about it.
The last thing he wants, he said, is to leave his children with a hefty funeral bill.
UTMB “did not bother to tell me hello or goodbye,” Cutwright said. “I have a very poor opinion of UT.”
Florence Frost, the administrative specialist for UTMB’s Willed Body Program, said that because the school no longer accepts body donations, it refers callers to other schools. UTMB has a list of 1,700 people like Cutwright and would love to send them a letter explaining that the program is closed to donors — at least for now — but it can’t. The reason? It doesn’t know who is living and who isn’t, Frost said.
Some prospective donors never told their families of their plans and have since died, and other arrangements were made, Frost said. “I would not want to mail a letter to someone who may be deceased,” she said. “I don’t think the families would appreciate it.”
So, when a family or prospective donor contacts UTMB about what they should do now, Frost, who can be reached at (800) 828-1402, refers them to schools that accept bodies. People who have a strong desire to donate to UTMB are referred to the UT Health Science Center in Houston, which provides bodies to UTMB for education and research.
I suspect Cutwright won’t end up there.
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Typhus update: Another case, federal investigators arrive
(ANOTHER UPDATE BELOW)
Federal disease detectives from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta met with local and state health officials in Austin today to begin their investigation of a typhus outbreak in Travis County that has reached 14 known cases — up one from last week, a local health department spokeswoman said.
Ten of the 14 were hospitalized with the flea-borne illness, said Carole Barasch, spokeswoman for the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department.
All of the cases have occurred between March and July 14, but because of confirmatory testing, there is a lag time in reporting cases. “There’s still opportunity out there for more cases,” Barasch said. “It’s still hot. It’s still dry.”
Infected fleas from animals such as rats, opossums and cats jump onto humans to feed. The fleas can deposit feces onto the skin while feeding, causing a person to itch and rub the feces into the skin and get typhus. Symptoms may include fever, headache, nausea and a rash. If untreated, the disease can be fatal. (Because of the dry conditions, the animals are coming closer to homes looking for water.)
Most of the cases have been in Central Texas.
The CDC is helping to determine what kind of typhus fever is responsible for the outbreak. Officials suspect murine typhus, which is endemic to South Texas. It was not seen in Travis County before 2007, when two people contracted the disease. (It was not identified as typhus until March.)
The CDC mainly will be trapping and testing wildlife, Barasch said. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get results,” she said. “They’re planning to be here two weeks.”
UPDATE:
After reading the comments, here is some background that I hope will help. They include the first story we ran and a second one that has ZIP codes that the health department provided of people diagnosed with typhus. These ZIP codes represent home addresses and don’t necessarily mean the person contracted the disease at home. Also, the health department does not provide names of ill people or many details about them, but the Statesman learned about some patients and interviewed them.
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More women breastfeed, but not for long
More women than ever are breastfeeding their babies, but a new study says they don’t do it nearly as long as doctors recommend.
About three-fourths of American mothers tried breastfeeding, but only 36 percent were still doing it six months later and just 18 percent were breastfeeding a year later, according to the Brigham Young University study.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and continued breastfeeding through at least the baby’s first year, according to the study.
The rates the authors cite also are far from close to reaching a national goal set by federal health officials for 2010. Healthy People 2010 wants 50 percent of new mothers to breastfeed exclusively for six months and 25 percent through the first year.
Why is breastfeeding important? The study says: “Human milk provides the best nutrition for infant development and contains maternal antibodies that prevent disease; it also promotes maternal health; and reduces health care and environmental costs.”
So why do women stop? The study says many women are unprepared for the initial discomfort and physical challenges. Others don’t receive support from friends, family and health care providers.
“Studies indicate that women are more likely to stop breastfeeding if their health care provider recommends formula supplementation or if their clinician does not think his or her opinion matters,” the report says. “In contrast, women receiving breastfeeding counseling from health care providers report more positive experiences with breastfeeding compared with women receiving only routine care.”
Mothers with higher education and incomes were more likely to breastfeed. Rates were lowest among young, black and poor mothers, according to the report.
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Fight the fat in Second Life
We had a competition at work to lose weight, but it wasn’t anything like this.
The University of Houston’s Department of Health and Human Performance is launching an obesity prevention project that isn’t like any academic research I’ve heard about. Researcher Rebecca Lee is recruiting 500 people from the United States, Canada, Mexico and Switzerland to compete in a healthy eating, exercise and awareness contest that will take place entirely in Second Life.
For the uninitiated, Second Life is a virtual online world in which participants assume identities, or avatars, and earn Lindens — the currency of Second Life — for their efforts. For the project they will walk on treadmills, ride bikes and try new fruits and vegetables, according to Lee. The country team earning the most points wins.
Lee hopes contestants will take what they learn about healthy eating and exercise in Second Life and translate that into their real lives.
Second Life also provides “a great place to meet other avatars and share information and experiences,” said Lee, director of the Texas Obesity Research Center, in a news release. “Reducing obesity is an international priority, and (Second Life) provides a portal to an international community.”
People must sign up at Second Life to take part. For more information, participants can instant message Sirena Felisimo or Samu Sirnah in Second Life or call the University of Houston’s Texas Obesity Research Center at (713) 743-9310.
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State health and human services building battling rats
The state Health and Human Services Commission office at Braker Lane and Metric Boulevard has had rodents sneaking in from a vacant spot nearby, spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman said.
The problem started about two months ago, and some employees, apparently frustrated by the invaders, brought in mouse traps from home.
“We’ve had an exterminator install door sweeps, set traps inside and outside the building, and take other preventive measures to keep rodents from entering the building,” Goodman wrote in an e-mail.
And yes, she confirmed, some employees brought in their own traps. “We’re getting them with a one-two punch,” she said.
Should employees in the office at 11209 Metric Blvd. be concerned about the rats and an outbreak of typhus, which is spread by fleas from rats, opossums and cats? Goodman doesn’t think so.
“We haven’t had any reports of problems with fleas so we haven’t sprayed for them at this point,” she wrote in an e-mail. “We are hesitant to use pest control chemicals in our offices if we don’t have reports of problems, but we’re keeping a close eye on the situation in this office.”
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Typhus in Austin: Should health department have warned us sooner?
For the first time in decades and possibly ever (officials say they are unaware of cases before 2007), Austin is experiencing a typhus outbreak. The Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department didn’t put the word out until asked about it by reporters — although it said it was about to alert doctors and the public when the media beat them to the punch Wednesday.
“We didn’t get a good handle until the last four weeks,” Jill Campbell, a disease surveillance program supervisor for the health department told the Statesman in an article today. Campbell also said the health department didn’t put out information because no one had died and it didn’t seem urgent.
The health department usually notifies the public pretty quickly when it thinks someone might have touched a rabid bat. Rabies is almost always fatal.
Typhus can be deadly if left untreated, but the kind of typhus the health department thinks Austinites have, murine typhus (typically found in South Texas), kills less than 5 percent of people if untreated by antibiotics. But the health department doesn’t know yet what type of typhus is going around.
This is what officials do know:
Typhus is spread by fleas that feed off of rodents, opossums and cats and then the fleas bite humans. So because it’s not spread person-to-person it doesn’t create a more common public health threat.
Two people last summer diagnosed with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever turned out to have typhus, which the health department learned in March, Campbell said. Then, in April, the health department learned about new cases of typhus in people, mostly in Central Austin, and more cases were reported through mid-July. That makes 15 known cases in Travis County since July 2007, and 13 in this year’s outbreak.
Ten of the 13 people who were infected have been hospitalized. That’s a pretty high rate, but it might only mean that doctors didn’t immediately know what they were dealing with and were being cautious, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A local pediatrician said the children she saw were not that ill. A man quoted in today’s story, however, said his son, Louis Kolker, missed a month of school and still doesn’t feel right.
If the health department had alerted people sooner, would people have been more vigilant about protecting themselves, their pets and their property from fleas? Would doctors have been able to diagnose people faster? What do you think?
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Conference to explore healing power of music
Music can soothe the sick and calm the anxious, but can it heal the body?
The Alliance for Research in Music Medicine, Inc., will hold its third annual international conference to promote the idea and seek scientific research to back up its beliefs. It will meet Sept. 12 and 13 in Fort Wayne, Ind., on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University to “show how the study of the human body’s response to Music can lead us to the next wave of Medical Therapies.”
General admission is $75 with dinner, $60 without.
The organization’s Web site, says, “If your interest is in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Medicine, Nursing or Music, come and participate in panel discussions, hear the latest research about music’s impact on inflammation, chronic disease and learn new treatment strategies.”
Could music therapy be a gig for Austin musicians? I’ve heard some already do this.
“What if we applied theories from other scientific disciplines, say, quantum physics?” asks Dr. Angela LaSalle, co-founder and chairwoman of the Alliance for Research in Music Medicine in a brochure on the conference. “If we start with the simple quantum finding that all matter vibrates, then that must mean that our cells vibrate, too… including our DNA. Vibration results in a wave, which has a measured frequency. The musical term for frequency is pitch. …
“Granted, it will be a challenge to decipher the scientifically related language of music and cells.” But, she goes on: “What can’t we accomplish if we combine our scientific and artistic talents?”
The conference organizers hope people from the arts and sciences will come and brainstorm on the topic and bring research ideas to the table.
If anyone goes to this — or has gone — let us know what it’s like.
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Update: Emergency room waits are up
Have you been to the emergency room lately? Where did you go and how long did you wait?
We’ve all heard horror stories, and a new report confirms the situation has gotten worse.
The report released today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the average time people waited to see a doctor in the ER was 56 minutes (the median was 31), up from 38 minutes a decade earlier (in 1996), according to the Associated Press.
This is happening at a time when more people are flocking to ERs for treatment and fewer ERs are open for business. The report says that in 2006, more than 119 million people visited U.S. ERs, up 32 percent in 10 years. But some money-losing ERs have closed in the past 10 years. The number of hospital ERs fell from 4,019 in 1996 to 3,833 in 2006, according to the report. (The AP report quotes different numbers from the American Hospital Association.)
While people waited longer to see a doctor, they also were sicker and in more pain. Half of the people admitted to the hospital came through the ER in 2006, up from 36 percent in 1996.
Just 17 percent were uninsured, contrary to popular belief. Many apparently could not get in to see their doctors or could not afford to leave work. Most people came after hours: the peak time was between 6 and 7 p.m., according to the report.
I’m waiting to hear back from the two major hospital systems in Central Texas — the Seton Family of Hospitals and St. David’s HealthCare — on their average ER wait times. When I do, I’ll update this post.
UPDATE: Emergency room patients at St. David’s five hospitals in Travis and Williamson counties waited an average of an hour to see a doctor so far this year, up five minutes from a year ago, according to David Thomsen, the system’s vice president of quality.
“Those who are critically ill are seen much faster,” Thomsen said. “So there’s a range … 15 minutes to 75 minutes depending” on how serious the emergency.
Seton doesn’t keep wait times in the same way. It tracks the numbers by how much total time patients spend in the ER, including the treatment time, spokeswoman Pam Crowther said.
For example, patients at Seton Medical Center spend an average of three hours and 33 minutes in the ER from the time they come in until they go out the door, she said. At Dell Children’s Medical Center, the average time in the ER is two hours and 17 minutes, she said.
According to the CDC report, most patients in U.S. ERs spent more than two hours but fewer than four hours in the emergency room.
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Global warming + ragweed = bad combo, group says
As an undisputed “Allergy Capital,” Austin almost always has some pesky pollen or allergen flying through the air and up sensitive noses.
The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, citing studies in recent years, says there is ample evidence linking global warming to the problem. It is devoting the September issue of its journal, Allergy and Clinical Immunology, to exploring the topic.
Research studies going back to at least 2003 contend that rising temperatures and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are making allergies worse. The association says those factors already are causing ragweed seasons to last longer and producing more concentrated pollen counts. Ragweed season starts this month.
Aside from treating ragweed allergy with shots, the association recommends:
- Keeping windows closed and using the air conditioner to filter, cool and dry the air.
- Staying indoors, especially between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., when pollen counts are highest.
- Changing clothes after being outside.
- Showering before bed to wash pollen from the hair and face.
The association also says that some people feel worse when they eat bananas, cucumbers, melons and zucchini because the proteins in those foods are similar to the ones in ragweed.
The association will post daily ragweed pollen counts on its Web site during the season.
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Should taxpayers compensate the tomato industry?
Tomato industry growers and packers say they should be compensated for their losses during the nationwide salmonella scare now that investigators have linked the illness to jalapeño peppers. And now several members of Congress have introduced a bill to do just that.
The losses have been estimated at $100 million, and Congress will hold hearings on the issue next week.
Since June, the Food and Drug Administration has warned consumers about eating fresh red round and Roma tomatoes in the outbreak that has sickened more than 1,300 people. Some health officials issued warnings about tomatoes even earlier as word of the salmonella sickness spread in Texas and other states.
The FDA still says nothing proves the initial connection to tomatoes was wrong. But many tomato growers and others are not convinced and wonder why it took the government took so long to nail jalapeño peppers. Investigators say tracing an outbreak back to the source is difficult and time-consuming. Many of those who became ill in the early part of the investigation had eaten tomatoes, they say.
If the industry is compensated for its losses, will the FDA and other government agencies be more reluctant to issue warnings about food suspected of making people ill before they’re positive of the source?
“The problem with that is, next time, you might have a situation where the FDA is slower to respond,” said U.S. Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., in an article carried by the Associated Press Thursday.
At the same time, no one doubts the tomato industry suffered tremendously.
So, should the government compensate the industry for its losses? What do you think?
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