Health and Disability

They spotted that immune system of patients contains high level of cytokine other than ordinary people. Cytokines is a large group of protein that is essential for inflammatory responses. Undoubtedly, it is strong evidence that the syndrome is serious biological illness instead of physical one.

It turns out that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is really a medical condition and not just a matter of the mind. Dr. Mady Hornig, the director of translational research at the Center for Infection and Immunity and associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia’s Mailman School, led a study to investigate.

In this study, Horning describes that people who suffer from this condition actually do exhibit certain physiological markers in common, which lends more to a medical condition—like an infection—than to a psychological delusion—like the placebo effect.

Horning says, “Their immune system is no longer resilient and able to bounce back after this cytokine surge [in response to infection]. We need the system to be regulated, so it shuts off after the disease is gone, and that isn’t happening here.”

The truth is, I had no idea what autoimmune disease really was. For years, I’d known that two of my mother’s sisters had rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis (and my father’s youngest sister had recently learned she had Hashimoto’s). But I didn’t understand that these diseases might somehow be connected. At Christmas, I’d had lunch with three of my mother’s sisters—humorous, unself-pitying Irish-American women in their fifties—at my grandmother’s condo on the Jersey Shore, and they told me that two of my cousins had been feeling inexplicably debilitated. “None of the doctors can figure out what it is,” one said, “but I think it’s thyroid-related.” Another aunt told us that, along with the rheumatoid arthritis she’d had for years, she, too, had recently been given a diagnosis of Hashimoto’s, and both were autoimmune in nature. The third aunt had ulcerative colitis, and told me that a cousin had just been given that diagnosis, too. “They’re all connected,” one of them explained.

Independent researchers around the world have identified a select group of microbes that seem important for gut health and a balanced immune system. They belong to several clustered branches of the clostridial group. Dubbed “clostridial clusters,” these microbes are distantly related to Clostridium difficile, a scourge of hospitals and an all too frequent cause of death by diarrhea. But where C. difficile prompts endless inflammation, bleeding and potentially catastrophic loss of fluids, the clostridial clusters do just the opposite—they keep the gut barrier tight and healthy, and they soothe the immune system. Scientists are now exploring whether these microbes can be used to treat a bevy of the autoimmune, allergic and inflammatory disorders that have increased in recent decades, including Crohn's and maybe even obesity.

F. prausnitzii was one of the first clostridial microbes to be identified. In Sokol's patients those with higher counts of F. prausnitzii consistently fared best six months after surgery.

Mr. R, my 67-year-old patient who already received Pneumovax23, was not enthusiastic about the idea. “But I already got one! Why do I need another? What is the difference from the one I already got?”

In the UK the number of people aged 65 and over is expected double to 19 million by the year 2050. As a result, more family members will have to step in as caregivers and this can have serious consequences for their wellbeing and productivity at work.

Professor Calvano argues that if employers are supportive then staff in this position will experience less stress and fewer work-family conflicts. Where formal employee support programmes exist, people must know about them, feel comfortable asking about them and be assured there will be no penalty for using them. So education of supervisors and managers is crucial to increasing employees' awareness and use of such programmes.

On February 12, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it was making changes to its Nursing Home Compare 5-Star Quality Rating System, which allows consumers to learn about and compare nursing homes in terms of their performance on surveys (inspections), staffing levels and quality measures. According to CMS, the following changes are being made: 

1. Adding 2 new antipsychotic quality measures - one for long stay residents, the other for short stay residents - to the 5-star calculations.  Antipsychotic medication use had previously not been calculated into the rating;

When parliament is paralysed, the courts must act.’ So said lawyer Joseph Arvay, representing the appellants in a case about the legal status of assisted suicide, at the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) last October. The SCC now apparently agrees; last week it struck down the ban on assisted suicide and gave the government 12 months to draft a replacement law.

What is perhaps most shocking about the judgement is that this potentially monumental decision was based on some fundamentally flawed arguments. One particular assertion made by the court beggars belief: ‘The prohibition [of assisted suicide] deprives some individuals of life, as it has the effect of forcing some individuals to take their own lives prematurely, for fear that they would be incapable of doing so when they reached the point where suffering was intolerable.’ There is simply no evidence to support this. In fact, there is evidence presented by advocates of assisted suicide in the UK that indicates legalising assisted suicide will increase the suicide rate among the terminally ill three-fold. A study of Danish cancer patients between 1971 and 1999 found that an estimated average of 31 cancer sufferers per year took their lives. If assisted suicide was legalised, the Oregon statistics suggest that the number would rise to 67. In other words, all evidence indicates that suicides will increase by a factor of two or three should legalisation occur. This crucial point, on which the court’s decision was based, is simply wrong.

The numbers are daunting -- must have been those rock bands in the 60s and 70s.  Hearing loss is a big problem among baby boomers -- but their propensity to solve it with hearing aids? Not so much. In 2012, there were 4.5 million of those aged 50-59 with hearing loss, but only 4.5% wearing hearing aids. Hearing aids are associated with the stigma of aging -- but facts are facts. Hearing issues may be attributed to overly loud rock bands from long ago.  Hearing aids are costly and typically not covered by insurance, irritating to wear -- just a few reasons cited by various sources. But those serving the boomer health market, take heed -- once boomers are seniors and take their untreated hearing loss with them into older age ranges, theirgait is also impacted, and we know with gait issues comes the risk of falling -- and we know how health risks and costs risewith the frequency and severity of falls. Here are some recent technology introductions that can enhance the ability to hear -- text is from the companies' own material:

(For example:)

"The first way Nix Tinnitus Amp can help with tinnitus is its white noise generator. The white noise can be turned on at any time to mask tinnitus. The second way the app treats tinnitus is with notch therapy. This works by listening to the iPhone microphone and then playing the sound in the headphones with the tinnitus pitch removed. Listening to sound without the tinnitus frequency helps the brain adjust to tinnitus.

The lawsuit accused the home of depriving Scampone of adequate food, water and medicine.

Her lawyers wanted to use inspection reports showing the home was cited for inadequate staffing and failure to prevent some residents from dehydration.

But the nursing home fought back, citing a disclaimer on the Health Department website saying inspection reports are "not intended to be evidence of compliance with any legal standard of care in third-party litigation."

Reporter Paul Van Osdol asked Highland Park Care Center attorney John Bass if he thought the disclaimer meant the inspections are not supposed to be used in lawsuits.

“Well that's how I read it. And that's what we have taken the position, absolutely,” Bass said.

That was a surprise to Scampone family attorney Peter Giglione.

“We were even more surprised later when we found out the circumstances surrounding how it came out,” Giglione said.

They learned the department began working on the disclaimer only after the nursing home industry's chief lobbyist -- Stuart Shapiro of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association -- sent an email to then-state health secretary Michael Wolf.