Restricting kids to a vegan diet could be considered child abuse punishable by jail time in Italy if a new proposal by a lawmaker in that country passes.
Tag Archives: Public Health
Public Health Officials Struggle To Identify Sepsis Before It Becomes Deadly
After Rory Staunton fell at the gym and cut his arm in March of 2012, the 12-year-old became feverish and vomited during the night, complaining of a sharp pain in his leg. When his parents called his pediatrician the next day, she wasn’t worried. She said there was a stomach virus going around New York City, and his leg pain was likely due to his fall.
However, she advised his parents, Orlaith and Ciaran Staunton, to take the youngster to the emergency department because he might be dehydrated. There hospital workers did some blood work, gave him fluids and sent him home.
The next day Rory’s pain and fever were worse. His skin was mottled and the tip of his nose turned blue. The Stauntons raced back to the hospital, where he was admitted to intensive care. The diagnosis: septic shock. Rory was fighting a system-wide infection that was turning his skin black and shutting down his organs. On Sunday, four days after he dove for the ball in gym class, Rory died.
“It was frightening to think that something could kill my son so fast and it would be something that I had never heard of,” said Orlaith Staunton.
She’s not alone. Sepsis kills more than 250,000 people every year. People at highest risk are those with weakened immune systems, the very young and elderly, patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer or kidney disease and those with illnesses such as pneumonia or who use catheters that can cause infections. But it can strike anyone, even a healthy child like Rory.
Sepsis is a body’s overwhelming response to infection. It typically occurs when germs from an infection get into the bloodstream and spread throughout the body. To fight the infection, the body mounts an immune response that may trigger inflammation that damages tissues and interferes with blood flow. That can lead to a drop in blood pressure, potentially causing organ failure and death.
Anabolic steroids taint Olympic competition, but it’s what they do to the human brain that is terrifying
ring the Olympic Games, the world gazes admiringly upon athletes with preternatural musculature and athletic ability — and then laments every tainted urine test, every revelation of doping. In the mind of the public, this is the problem with anabolic steroids: They undermine fairness in competition between elite athletes.
Damaging the spirit of sport, however, is a minor concern compared with how anabolic steroids impair the health of those who use them — not only Olympians and professional athletes, but also high school football players and rank-and-file weightlifters.
Last month, as more than 100 Russian athletes were banned from Olympic competition for doping, federal investigators revealed that Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people at an Orlando nightclub on June 12, had a long history of steroid use. That detail had a chilling echo: Norwegian killer Anders Breivik deliberately used steroids to fuel his 2011 attack that killed 77 and injured hundreds. It received little attention in the American news media at the time, but Breivik methodically experimented with the drugs and, as documented in his diary, carefully selected the steroid and dose for his “mission.”
These cold-blooded killings should tell us that even the direst health warnings about steroids — damage to the heart, liver, and reproductive system — don’t go far enough. It’s what anabolic steroids do to the brain that can be truly terrifying.
Where Lead Lurks And Why Even Small Amounts Matter
When There’s Lead Underground
When there is a problem with lead in drinking water, service lines are the most likely culprit. Service lines are like tiny straws that carry water from a utility’s water main, usually running below the street, to each building.
In older cities, many of them in the Midwest and Northeast, these service lines can be made of pure lead.
Wherever lead service lines are in place, there is a risk of water contamination. The toxic metal can leach into the water whenever something jostles the pipes, like nearby construction, a heavy truck coming down the road or when the water just sits still for too long.
Civil engineer Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech professor who helped document the lead problems with water in Flint, calls lead service lines “ticking time bombs.”
Elderly Hospital Patients Arrive Sick, Often Leave Disabled
Not A Priority
Hospitals can be hazardous places for elderly patients, who are at increased risk of falling, drug-induced injury and confusion.
But as the nation’s senior population grows, many facilities are ill-equipped to address their unique needs.
Kaiser Health News visited hospitals around the country, reviewed data and interviewed dozens of patients, family members and health providers to document the extent of the problem and highlight possible solutions.
How hospitals handle the old — and very old — is a pressing problem. Elderly patients are a growing clientele for hospitals, a trend that will only accelerate as baby boomers age. Patients over 65 already make up more than one-third of all discharges, according to the federal government, and nearly 13 million seniors are hospitalized each year. And they stay longer than younger patients.
Many seniors are already suspended precariously between independent living and reliance on others. They are weakened by multiple chronic diseases and medications.
Your Zipcode is Your Healthcare Destiny
“The high and increasing worldwide burden of hypertension is a major global health challenge because it increases morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular and kidney diseases and financial costs to society,” the authors concluded. “Implementation of innovative, cost-effective, and sustainable programs for hypertension prevention and control should be a public health priority for these [low- and middle-income] countries.”
NIH to begin testing Zika vaccine in humans
As the Zika virus continues its spread, infecting people in more than 50 countries and threatening fetal development in pregnant women, scientists have been racing to develop an effective vaccine for the disease.
Federal researchers on Wednesday announced a milestone in that effort: their first clinical trial in humans.
The trial will involve at least 80 healthy volunteers between ages 18 and 35 at three locations around the United States, including at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda. The main goal of the study will be to evaluate the vaccine’s safety and to see whether it generates an immune-system response in patients. If those early results are positive, researchers hope to began a larger-scale trial in Zika-affected countries in early 2017.
“A safe and effective vaccine to prevent Zika virus infection and the devastating birth defects it causes is a public health imperative,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a statement. “NIAID worked expeditiously to ready a vaccine candidate, and results in animal testing have been very encouraging. We are pleased that we are now able to proceed with this initial study in people. Although it will take some time before a vaccine against Zika is commercially available, the launch of this study is an important step forward.”
FDA temporarily halts blood donation in two Florida counties over Zika fears
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is asking blood centers in two Florida counties to immediately stop collections. The counties are investigating possible local transmission of Zika virus.
In a notice sent to blood centers and posted on the agency’s website Wednesday evening, the FDA said it is requesting all blood centers in Miami-Dade or Broward counties to “cease collecting blood immediately” until those facilities can test individual units of blood donated in those two counties with a special investigational donor screening test for Zika virus or until the establishments implement the use of an approved or investigational pathogen-inactivation technology.
The action by the FDA comes as health officials in Florida said Thursday they were continuing to investigate two Zika cases that could have been spread by local mosquitoes, in addition to two similar cases they announced last week. Health officials have not confirmed whether any of the infected individuals acquired the virus from local mosquitoes, but it seems increasingly likely.
“These may be the first cases of local Zika virus transmission by mosquitoes in the continental United States,” the FDA said in its notice and in a media statement Thursday. It said it was making the request of blood-collection establishments “in consideration of the possibility of an emerging local outbreak of Zika virus, and as a prudent measure to help assure the safety of blood and blood products.”
Lifelong care, heartaches ahead for babies born with Zika in the U.S.
At least 12 babies in the United States have already been born with the heartbreaking brain damage caused by the Zika virus. And with that number expected to multiply, public health and pediatric specialists are scrambling as they have rarely done to prepare for the lifelong implications of each case.
Many of Zika’s littlest victims, diagnosed with microcephaly and other serious birth defects that might not immediately be apparent, could require care estimated at more than $10 million through adulthood. Officials who have been concentrating on measures to control and prevent transmission of the virus are now confronting a new challenge, seeking to provide guidance for doctors and others who work with young children with developmental problems.
The White House and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are holding regular talks with experts and nonprofits about the array of services the infants and their families will need well into the future. Advocacy groups are seeking to raise awareness among parents and day-care providers, and some high-risk states are streamlining existing programs so that they can rapidly connect Zika babies with physical, occupational and other therapies.
5 health and medicine issues to watch for at the Democratic convention
5 health and medicine issues to watch for at the Democratic convention
Hillary Clinton led a health care reform effort in the 1990s, promoted medical research as a senator, and has been bashing price-hiking drug companies on the campaign trail and in TV ads.
So there’s every reason to expect her to make health care a major theme when she accepts the Democratic presidential nomination in Philadelphia on Thursday night. What she says about the future of medical research, public health, and the uninsured will give a valuable preview of what her priorities would be — and how far she’s willing to go to co-opt the ideas of her defeated rival, Bernie Sanders.
Here are the five biggest things to watch in health and medicine:
HENRY KOTULA 