Health and Disability

Researchers at the University of Chicago have shown that after a long stay in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) only a handful of pathogenic microbe species remain behind in patients' intestines. The team tested these remaining pathogens and discovered that some can become deadly when provoked by conditions that mimic the body'sstress response to illness.

"I have watched patients die from sepsis - it isn't their injuries or mechanical problems that are the problem," says John Alverdy, a gastrointestinal surgeon and one of two senior authors on the study.

Kessler researchers have published a pilot study showing the benefits of a 10-week psychoeducational wellness program in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Improvements were seen in mood, overall mental health, perceived stress, and pain. "Development and effectiveness of a psychoeducational wellness group for individuals living with MS: Description and outcomes" was epublished ahead of print in the International Journal of MS Care.

Of the 54 patients enrolled in the study, 43 participated in the program, which consisted of weekly 90-minute sessions for 10 weeks. The program's objective was to increase awareness of intellectual, emotional and spiritual factors that affect well-being. Participants were assessed by self-report for depression, anxiety, overall mental health, perceived stress, cognitive complaints, pain, social support and fatigue. The 11 participants who did not participate served as the control group.

"Our preliminary findings suggest that individuals with MS may benefit from a comprehensive wellness program," said Dr. McGuire. "In light of these positive findings for mood, mental health, and stress, further studies are warranted," she noted. "To confirm these results, larger, randomized controlled trials with longer followup need to be conducted." The study did not reveal any differences between participants and non-participants for cognitive complaints, social support or fatigue.

Weaning older patients off inappropriate medications which may harm them more than help them should be a priority for all prescribing clinicians, say the authors of two clinical focus articles published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Deprescribing - the process of reducing or stopping drugs, "with the goal of minimising polypharmacy and improving outcomes" - has the potential to relieve unnecessary medication- related adverse events and disability in vulnerable older people, the authors wrote.

Associate Professor Ian Scott, from the Department of Internal Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, and colleagues wrote that one in five prescriptions issued to older adults were "inappropriate".

"One in four community-living older people are hospitalised for medication-related problems over a 5-year period and 15% of older patients attending general practice report an adverse drug event (ADE) over the previous 6 months", the authors wrote.

The report makes the case that the risk of dementia in later life can be reduced among the general population if diabetes and high blood pressure are controlled, and efforts are made to reduce risk o fheart disease and to encourage people to quit smoking.

According to the report, diabetes increases the risk of dementia by 50%. By extension, the report also suggests that risk factors for diabetes and high blood pressure, such as obesity and lack of physical activity, should be targeted as part of Alzheimer's prevention.

Despite cardiovascular health improving among many high-income countries, the report acknowledges that many low- and middle-income countries have rising rates of diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

An Emergency Room Decision-Support (ERDS) program can significantly reduce ER visits and hospital admissions among older adults on Medicare. This could have important economic implications, helping to reduce the nearly 33% of avoidable ER visits that contribute to about $18 billion in unnecessary healthcare costs each year. Details of a successful ERDS program that had a positive return on investment are published in an article in Population Health Management, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Population Health Management website until October 18, 2014.

The flu took the lives of more than 100 children in the U.S. last flu season, and most of those kids didn’t get a flu shot.

That’s according to a new report by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, aimed to encourage Americans to get vaccinated now. The flu kills up to approximately 36,000 people each year, but less than half of the population gets an annual flu shot. That’s something the CDC wants to change.

“Flu hit young and middle-aged adults hard last year and just over 100 children died,” Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University told NBC News. “There is simply no reason to take the risk.”

Ninety percent of the children who died did not receive flu shot, according to the CDC’s Director Dr. Tom Frieden. He and other health officials gathered this week at a briefing sponsored by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases to discuss plans for the 2014-15 flu season.

In the latest study, conducted by the Health Behaviour News Service, it was revealed that older adults who have experience a serious fall might develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder after the event. They based their finding on the evaluation of the symptoms linked with PTSD in 27 out of 100 people aged 65 years, who were admitted at the hospital after the fall.

"Anyone who goes through an accident in which they feel their life may be in danger or they could get physically harmed can develop post-traumatic stress symptoms," noted lead author Nimali Jayasinghe, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology and faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.

The benefits and risks of artificial sweeteners have been debated for decades. Some studies show no link to diabetes and others suggest there is one. The new research, from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, finds that differences in gut microbes may explain why some people can handle artificial sweeteners just fine while in an unknown percentage of others the sweeteners lead to diabetes.

The human digestive system is home to millions of microbes, largely bacteria, that help digest food and may play a role in health.

The researchers were quick to note that their work needs to be repeated before it's clear whether artificial sweeteners truly can trigger diabetes.

Health insurance companies are no longer allowed to turn away patients because of their pre-existing conditions or charge them more because of those conditions. But some health policy experts say insurers may be doing so in a more subtle way: by forcing people with a variety of illnesses — including Parkinson's disease, diabetes and epilepsy — to pay more for their drugs.

Insurers have long tried to steer their members away from more expensive brand name drugs, labeling them as "non-preferred" and charging higher co-payments. But according to an editorial published Wednesday in the American Journal of Managed Care, several prominent health plans have taken it a step further, applying that same concept even to generic drugs.

The Affordable Care Act bans insurance companies from discriminating against patients with health problems, but that hasn't stopped them from seeking new and creative ways to shift costs to consumers. In the process, the plans effectively may be rendering a variety of ailments "non-preferred," according to the editorial.

Brain inflammation can rapidly disrupt our ability to retrieve complex memories of similar but distinct experiences, according to UC Irvine neuroscientists Jennifer Czerniawski and John Guzowski.

Their study - which appears in The Journal of Neuroscience - specifically identifies how immune system signaling molecules, called cytokines, impair communication among neurons in the hippocampus, an area of the brain critical for discrimination memory. The findings offer insight into why cognitive deficits occurs in people undergoing chemotherapy and those with autoimmune or neurodegenerative diseases.

Moreover, since cytokines are elevated in the brain in each of these conditions, the work suggests potential therapeutic targets to alleviate memory problems in these patients.

"Our research provides the first link among immune system activation, altered neural circuit function and impaired discrimination memory," said Guzowski, the James L. McGaugh Chair in the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory. "The implications may be beneficial for those who have chronic diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, in which memory loss occurs and even for cancer patients."