The U.S. Congress passed a sprawling spending bill over the weekend — a massive piece of legislation that will fund the federal government for the next nine months — that contained a number of social riders that have gone largely unnoticed in this holiday season of tax standoffs and shutdown threats. One in particular should trouble advocates of evidence-based policy: Congress has once again banned federal funding for sterile syringe exchange programs. Public health advocates consider such harm-reduction programs a crucial tactic in halting the spread of HIV/AIDS. Research suggests ... Read More
A Brief History of Combat Trauma
July 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
One side effect of NATO's 10-year war in Afghanistan is a steady rise in post-traumatic stress in Western Europe — especially Germany and Britain — for the first time since World War II. The statistics are small compared to America's, but German experts were startled by a spike in the number of registered PTSD victims in the Bundeswehr, or German military. The Germans unexpectedly found themselves not in a peaceful reconstruction project but in a war. Car bombings and other attacks against German troops flared in provinces like Kunduz between 2006 and 2009, and the number of PTSD cases ... Read More
More Can Also Be Less in Medical Effectiveness
December 10, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
When the public turns its attention to medical effectiveness research, as Miller-McCune.com did earlier this fall, ("For Dying Cancer Patients, Geography is Destiny") a discussion often follows about how this research might restrict access to new medical innovations. But this focus obscures the vital role that effectiveness research will play in evaluating current medical and surgical care. I am now slogging through chemotherapy for stomach cancer, probably the result of high doses of radiation for Hodgkin lymphoma in the early 1970s, which was the standard treatment until long-term side ... Read More
The AIDS Funding Dilemma
June 21, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
Dr. Jerome Kabakyenga has just walked a pair of visitors through a pair of vividly different Ugandan hospital laboratories — one ultramodern, the other an outdated relic. In the first, highly trained technicians investigate blood samples using a battery of high-throughput computerized systems. The brightly lit, air-conditioned facility is spotless. In the second lab on Kabakyenga's tour, there's little equipment beyond a clutter of microscopes, a pair of old refrigerators and a few centrifuges. The technicians here depend on daylight from a set of dusty windows, one of which is cracked. As ... Read More
Convincing the Public to Accept New Medical Guidelines
April 20, 2010 • By • 9 Comments
They call it "vitamin I." Among runners of ultra-long-distance races, ibuprofen use is so common that when scientist David Nieman tried to study the drug's use at the Western States Endurance Run in California's Sierra Nevada mountains he could hardly find participants willing to run the grueling 100-mile race without it. Nieman, director of the Human Performance Lab at Appalachian State University, eventually did recruit the subjects he needed for the study, comparing pain and inflammation in runners who took ibuprofen during the race with those who didn't, and the results were ... Read More
(Wheel) Running Addictions Away
December 28, 2009 • By • 3 Comments
Running can become compulsive — but can it help kick more destructive addictions? For mice, at least, there's hope for decreasing (obviously force-fed) amphetamine, cocaine and alcohol intake: wheel running. In a new study, conducted by Marissa A. Ehringer at the University of Colorado, wheel running serves as a de facto treadmill for mice kicking an alcohol addiction. The new study used a two-bottle testing model where mice were given unlimited access to water and ethanol (alcohol) diluted in tap water. Each of the 15-mL tubes was reversed daily to prevent the mice from developing ... Read More
Special K is Tough on Pain
September 28, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
Ketamine has captivated physicians and teens ever since 1970 when the FDA approved the drug as a surgical anesthesia, and young adults started getting high on it. First marketed as a veterinary anesthetic, ketamine — which is chemically related to PCP and encourages psychological and physical dependence — quickly caught on with drug abusers. By 1981 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommended ketamine's reclassification as a controlled substance, but the DEA rejected the idea until 1992 when it received 775 reports of ketamine abuse, including veterinary clinic burglaries ... Read More
Addiction Advances Haven’t Made AA Obsolete — Yet
July 24, 2009 • By • 3 Comments
Alcoholics Anonymous may have pioneered the concept of alcoholism as a disease, but will scientific research that proves the point eventually make AA obsolete? Studies that reveal brain and genetic links to addiction seem to suggest that future cures may come in pill boxes or, even better, in vials of vaccine that prevent it to begin with. Surely, that could impact 12-step programs that have been the prototype of recovery regimes for three quarters of a century. It's an intriguing issue invited by imaging studies that have identified differences in addicts' brains, including a 2007 ... Read More
A New Weapon Against Staph Infections
May 13, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Every year in the United States, staph infections result in more than 11 million outpatient and emergency room visits, plus more than 460,000 hospital admissions. The bacteria Staphylococcus aureus also frequently infects patients while they're in the hospital for other reasons; if the bacteria reach the bloodstream, heart, lungs or urinary tract, the infections can be fatal. And drug-resistant strains of staph are on the rise. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 94,000 of these cases occur each year, killing 19,000 people. "We've seen ... Read More
