Friday 28 July 2017

Get Health Insurance Through The Internet

Get Health Insurance Through The Internet.
Americans difficult to secure health insurance through the federal government's online health care exchange are having an easier experience navigating the initially dysfunctional system, consumers and specialists say. Glitches that stymied visitors to the online switch for weeks after its Oct 1, 2013 launch have been subdued, allowing more consumers to look at information on available insurance plans or select a plan. More than 500000 relations last week created accounts on the website, and more than 110000 selected plans, according to a statement Tuesday in The New York Times.

The Obama administration had set a deadline of Nov 30, 2013 to regulate an embarrassing array of hardware and software problems that hampered enforcement of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The behave requires that most Americans have health insurance in room by Jan 1, 2014, or pay federal tax penalties. "I'm 80 percent satisfied," Karen Egozi, captain executive of the Epilepsy Foundation of Florida, told the Times.

And "I meditate it will be great when it's 100 percent". Egozi supervises a team of 45 navigators who supporter consumers get insurance through the HealthCare dot gov system. With the system functioning better, the guidance expects to receive a crush of applications before Dec 23, 2013 the deadline for consumers buying ungregarious insurance to get Jan 1, 2014 coverage. But even as the computer combination becomes more user-friendly, some consumers are finding other unanticipated obstacles in their quest for health insurance: a providing that they provide proof of identity and citizenship, and a roughly week-long wait for a determination on Medicaid eligibility.

Typically, common people cannot receive tax credits intended to help pay for insurance premiums if they are qualified for other coverage from Medicaid or Medicare. Despite these holdups, representatives of the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the instrumentality responsible for operating HealthCare dot gov, said the technique is functioning well for most users. "We've acknowledged that there are some consumers who may be better served through in-person assistance or call centers," spokesman Aaron Albright told the Times.

Wednesday 26 July 2017

Risk Of Injury Of The Spinal Cord During Diving Is Very High

Risk Of Injury Of The Spinal Cord During Diving Is Very High.
About 6000 Americans under the adulthood of 14 are hospitalized each year because of a diving injury, and 20 percent of diving accidents denouement in a punitive spinal line injury, researchers say. To encourage diver safety, University of Michigan (U-M) researchers impetus bathers to use caution near any body of water and to jump feet first in shallow distilled water or if the depth is unknown. "Our neurosurgery team here at U-M knows how heartbreaking spinal twine injuries can be," Karin Muraszko, chair of the department of neurosurgery and chief of pediatric neurosurgery, said in a word release. "We can provide these patients with top-notch, state-of-the-art care, but we'd much rather they are not marred to begin with.

We can't put the spinal cord back together. So the best thing we can do is prevent these injuries". You don't have to hit bottom to get injured, the line-up pointed out. "The surface tension on the fizzy water can be enough to injure the spinal cord," cautioned Dr Shawn Hervey-Jumper, a neurosurgery resident, in the same statement release.

The spinal cord transmits signals from the brain to a muscle. When the spinal rope gets injured, the brain's signal is blocked, Hervey-Jumper explained. To drive tellingly the message, the department of neurosurgery has launched a series of public service announcements and videos that will appearance at movie theaters in Michigan this summer.

Monday 24 July 2017

Stroke Remains A Major Cause Of Death

Stroke Remains A Major Cause Of Death.
Stroke deaths in the United States have been dropping for more than 100 years and have declined 30 percent in the ago 11 years, a unknown write-up reveals. Sometimes called a brain attack, stroke is a peerless cause of long-term disability. Stroke, however, has slipped from the third-leading cause of death in the United States to the fourth-leading cause. This, and a alike decline in heart disease, is one of the 10 great public-health achievements of the 20th century, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Even so, there is still more to be done, said George Howard, a professor of biostatistics in the School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Howard is co-author of a regulated allegation describing the factors influencing the declivity in stroke deaths. The expression is scheduled for publication in the journal Stroke.

And "Stroke has been declining since 1900, and this could be a denouement of changes leading to fewer people having a stroke or because people are less likely to die after they have a stroke," Howard said in a university news programme release. "Nobody really knows why, but several things seem to be contributing to fewer deaths from stroke". It is doable that the most important reason for the decline is the happy result in lowering Americans' blood pressure, which is the biggest stroke risk factor.

Tuesday 18 July 2017

The Link Between Allergies And Blood Cancer

The Link Between Allergies And Blood Cancer.
Women with pollen allergies may be at increased jeopardy for blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma, a creative study suggests Dec 2013. Researchers did not uncover the same bond in men. This suggests there is something only in women that causes chronic allergy-related stimulation of the immune system to increase vulnerability to the phenomenon of blood cancers, the study authors said. The study included 66000 people, elderly 50 to 76, who were followed for an average of eight years.

During the follow-up period, 681 rank and file developed a blood cancer. These people were more likely to be male, to have two or more first-degree relatives with a yesterday's news of leukemia or lymphoma, to be less active and to rate their health status as poor. Among women, however, a portrayal of allergies to plants, grass and trees was significantly associated with a higher risk of blood cancers.

Monday 17 July 2017

Drinking Increasing Among Girls And Young Women In The USA

Drinking Increasing Among Girls And Young Women In The USA.
Binge drinking is a significant difficulty mid women and girls in the United States, with one in five female exuberant school students and one in eight young women reporting frequent episodes, federal vigour officials reported Tuesday. For women, binge drinking means downing four or more drinks on an occasion. Every month, about 14 million women and girls binge tope at least three times, according to the publicize from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

And women who binge spirits average about six drinks at a time, the report said. "Although binge drinking is even more of a ungovernable among men and boys, binge drinking is an eminent and unrecognized women's health issue," CDC director Dr Thomas Frieden, said during a hours press conference. And the consequences for women, who process alcohol differently than men, are serious. "There are about 23000 deaths middle women and girls each year due to drinking too much alcohol. Most of those deaths are from binge drinking".

Binge drinking also increases the chance for many health problems such as core cancer, sexually transmitted diseases, heart disease and unintended pregnancy. In addition, fertile women who binge drink expose their baby to high levels of alcohol that can cause to fetal alcohol spectrum disorders and sudden infant death syndrome.

Frieden noted that the platoon of adult women who binge drink hasn't changed much in the past 15 years. But changing patterns surrounded by young people mean that high school girls are binge drinking nearly as often as boys. "While the take to task among high school boys fell considerably in modern decades, it has remained relatively constant among high school girls, which is why there is hardly any disagreement at this point between boys and girls in drinking".

Sunday 16 July 2017

How To Behave In Hot Weather

How To Behave In Hot Weather.
It's only advanced June 2013, but already soaring temperatures have hit some parts of the United States. So regulation health officials are reminding the obvious that while hundreds die from heat exposure each summer, there are way to minimize the risk. "No one should lose one's life from a heat wave, but every year on average, extreme heat causes 658 deaths in the United States - more than tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and lightning combined," Dr Robin Ikeda, acting pilot of the National Center for Environmental Health at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an operation communication release. A new news released from the CDC found that there were more than 7200 heat-related deaths in the United States between 1999 and 2009.

Those most at imperil included seniors, children, the poor and people with pre-existing medical conditions. One "extreme enthusiasm event" - with maximum temperatures topping 100 degrees - lasted for two weeks model July and centered on Maryland, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. That upshot alone claimed 32 lives, the CDC said. Storms can coverage a major role in heat-related deaths as well, the agency noted.

Immediately before the arrival of the extreme fever in the July event, intense thunderstorms with high winds caused widespread damage and faculty outages, leaving many without air conditioning. In 22 percent of the deaths, loss of mightiness from the storms was known to be a contributing factor, the report found. The median age of the relatives who died was 65 and more than two-thirds died at home.

According to the report, three-quarters of victims were unmarried or lived alone. Many had underlying vigour issues such as heart disease and chronic respiratory disease. There was one intense spot in the report: Fewer deaths were reported last year than in aforesaid extreme heat events. That's likely due to measures taken by local and state agencies, according to the gunfire published in the June 6 issue of the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Friday 14 July 2017

Heavy Echoes Of The Gulf War

Heavy Echoes Of The Gulf War.
Many of the soldiers who served in the premier Gulf War decline a poorly understood collection of symptoms known as Gulf War illness, and now a insufficient study has identified brain changes in these vets that may give hints for developing a prove for diagnosing the condition. Around 25 percent of the nearly 700000 US troops that were deployed to countries including Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia began experiencing a spread of concrete and mental health problems during or shortly after their tour that persist to this day. Common symptoms are widespread pain; fatigue; atmosphere and memory disruptions; and gastrointestinal, respiratory and skin problems.

New delving suggests that structural changes in the white matter of the brains of these vets could be at least partly to recrimination for their symptoms. White matter is made up of a network of nerve fibers or axons, which are the long projections on resoluteness cells that connect and transmit signals between the gray matter regions that carry out the brain's many functions.

Denise Nichols was a cultivate in the US Air Force and worked with an aeromedical evacuation group for six months during the war. While still in theater, she developed bumps on her arms and had alternating constipation and diarrhea. Shortly after returning in 1991, her eyesight worsened and she developed hysterical muscle fag and memory problems that made it hard for her to help her daughter with her math homework.

So "I'm not working anymore because of it; I just could not do it," said Nichols, now 62. In reckoning to working as a army and civilian nurse, Nichols used to teach nursing and has helped conduct research on Gulf War disability and participated in studies including the current one.

And "There's people much worse who have cancers and enthusiasm problems, and pulmonary embolism has now started surfacing. It's frustrating because VA hospitals have not taught their doctors how to helve the illness ". VA doctors diagnosed her with post-traumatic prominence disorder (PTSD). "I told them I didn't have PTSD, but they were giving us PTSD from having to deal with them".

Lead researcher Rakib Rayhan put it this way: "This think over can help us move gone the controversy in the past decade that Gulf War illness is not real or that vets would be called crazy. Gulf War duties have caused some changes that are not found in natural people". Rayhan and his colleagues performed an advanced codify of MRI for visualizing white matter on 31 vets who experienced Gulf War illness, along with 20 vets and civilians who did not familiarity the syndrome.

Although the researchers focused on waxen matter in the current study, they are also investigating gray matter regions a researcher at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC. The results were published March 20, 2013 in the fortnightly PLoS One.

Thursday 13 July 2017

Visiting Nurse Improves Intelligence

Visiting Nurse Improves Intelligence.
Poor children get wise man and behavioral benefits from stamping-ground visits by nurses and other skilled caregivers, new research suggests. The inquiry included more than 700 poor women and their children in Denver who enrolled in a non-profit program called the Nurse-Family Partnership. This federal program tries to improve outcomes for first-born children of first-time mothers with minimal support.

The goal of the study, which was published online recently in the yearbook JAMA Pediatrics, was to determine the effectiveness of using trained "paraprofessionals". These professionals did not need college tuition and they shared many of the same social characteristics of the families they visited. The women in the study were divided into three groups.

Gene Therapy In Children

Gene Therapy In Children.
Using gene therapy, German researchers detonation that they managed to "correct" a malfunctioning gene stable for Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, a rare but telling childhood disorder that leads to prolonged bleeding from even minor hits or scrapes, and also leaves these children unshielded to certain cancers and dangerous infections. However, one of the 10 kids in the study developed excruciating T-cell leukemia, apparently as a result of the viral vector that was used to insert the salutary gene. The boy is currently on chemotherapy, the study authors noted.

This is a very good pre-eminent step, but it's a little scary and we need to move to safer vectors - said Dr Mary Ellen Conley, administrator of the Program in Genetic Immunodeficiencies at St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. "The think over shows proof-of-principle that gene remedial programme with stem cells in a genetic disorder like this has strong potential," added Paul Sanberg, a cut cell specialist who is director of the University of South Florida Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair in Tampa. Neither Conley nor Sanberg were complicated in the study, which is scheduled to be presented Sunday at the annual conjunction of the American Society of Hematology in Orlando, Fla.

According to Conley, children (mostly boys) with Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS) are born with an inherited genetic change sides on the X chromosome that affects the troop and size of platelets and makes the children remarkably impressionable to easy bleeding and infections, including different types of cancer. Bone marrow transplants are the pre-eminent treatment for the disorder which, if they succeed, basically cure the patient. "They originate up, go to college and they cause problems. But they're not an easy group of patients to transplant".

Flu In 2013 Has Killed More Than 100 Children In The USA

Flu In 2013 Has Killed More Than 100 Children In The USA.
This days of old flu period started earlier, peaked earlier and led to more matured hospitalizations and child deaths than most flu seasons, US salubriousness officials reported June 2013. At least 149 children died, compared to the usual series of 34 to 123, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The paramount strain of flu circulating in 2012-13 - H3N2 - made the illness deadlier for children, explained Lynnette Brammer, an epidemiologist with the CDC. "With children H3 viruses can be severe, but there was also a lot of influenza B viruses circulating - and for kids they can be bad, too.

Dr Marc Siegel, an companion professor of medication at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, added that H3N2 is unquestionably transmitted from man to person and has a high rate of complications, which accounts for the increased hospitalizations. "This is the thoughtful of flu that enables other infections like pneumonia. Really what common people need to know is that flu isn't the problem. The flu's make happen on the immune system and fatigue is the problem".

The flu season started in September, which is unusually early, and peaked at the end of December, which is also unusual. Flu ripen typically begins in December and peaks in late January or February. Texas, New York and Florida had the most reported pediatric deaths. Except for the 2009-10 H1N1 flu pandemic, which killed at least 348 children, the history flu time was the deadliest since the CDC began collecting statistics on child flu deaths, according to the report, published in the June 14 young of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Older adults were targeted heavily by the 2012-13 flu. Those ancient 65 and older accounted for more than half of all reported flu-associated hospitalizations in the 2012-13 flu age - the most since the CDC started collecting data on flu hospitalizations in 2005-06, the mechanism reported. In addition, more Americans saw a doctor for flu than in up to date flu seasons, the CDC noted.

Monday 3 July 2017

The Larger Head Size Reduces Brain Atrophy In Alzheimer's Disease

The Larger Head Size Reduces Brain Atrophy In Alzheimer's Disease.
A original work suggests that Alzheimer's disease develops slower in relatives with bigger heads, perhaps because their larger brains have more cognitive power in reserve. It's not dependable that head size, brain size and the rate of worsening Alzheimer's are linked. But if they are, the inquire into findings could pave the way for individualized treatment for the disease, said study co-author Lindsay Farrer, prime of the genetics program at Boston University School of Medicine.

The terminating goal is to catch Alzheimer's early and use medications more effectively. "The prevailing view is that most of the drugs that are out there aren't working because they're being given to common man when what's happening in the brain is too far along".

A century ago, some scientists believed that the status of the head held secrets to a person's intelligence and personality - those views have been since discounted. But today, explore suggests that there may be "modest correlations" between brain size and smarts. Still, "there are many other factors that are associated with intelligence," stressed Catherine Roe, a into or academician in neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis.

Nevertheless, there could be a connection between the size of the leader and how many neurons are available to "pick up the slack" when others go dark because of diseases such as Alzheimer's. The redesigned study, published in the July 13 issue of Neurology, explores that possibility.

Laser Cataract Surgery More Accurate Than Manual

Laser Cataract Surgery More Accurate Than Manual.
Cataract surgery, already an bloody crypt and successful procedure, can be made more precise by combining a laser and three-dimensional imaging, a unusual study suggests. Researchers found that a femtosecond laser, used for many years in LASIK surgery, can shear into delicate eye tissue more cleanly and accurately than manual cataract surgery, which is performed more than 1,5 million times each year in the United States. In the ongoing procedure, which has a 98 percent good rate, surgeons use a micro-blade to cut a circle around the cornea before extracting the cataract with an ultrasound machine.

The laser plan uses optical coherence technology to customize each patient's comprehension measurements before slicing through the lens capsule and cataract, though ultrasound is still used to remove the cataract itself. "It takes some deftness and energy to break the lens with the ultrasound," explained outdo researcher Daniel Palanker, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University. "The laser helps to go like a bat out of hell this up and make it safer".

After practicing the laser procedure on pig eyes and donated hominid eyes, Palanker and his colleagues did further experiments to confirm that the high-powered, rapid-pulse laser would not cause retinal damage. Actual surgeries later performed on 50 patients between the ages of 55 and 80 showed that the laser draw circles in lens capsules 12 times more unyielding than those achieved by the conventional method. No adverse effects were reported.

The study, reported in the Nov 17, 2010 progeny of Science Translational Medicine, was funded by OpticaMedica Corp of Santa Clara, Calif, in which Palanker has an neutrality stake. The results are being reviewed by the US Food and Drug Administration, while the laser technology, which is being developed by several solitary companies, is expected to be released worldwide in 2011.

Saturday 1 July 2017

Some Bacteria Inhibit Cancer Progression

Some Bacteria Inhibit Cancer Progression.
Having a discount variety of bacteria in the despoil is associated with colorectal cancer, according to a new study. Researchers analyzed DNA in fecal samples unruffled from 47 colorectal cancer patients and 94 people without the disease to decide the level of diversity of their gut bacteria. Study authors led by Jiyoung Ahn, at the New York University School of Medicine, concluded that decreased bacterial variation in the gut was associated with colorectal cancer.

The sanctum was published in the Dec 6, 2013 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Colorectal cancer patients had put down levels of bacteria that ferment dietary fiber into butyrate. This fatty acid may repress inflammation and the start of cancer in the colon, researchers found.