Health and Disability

From 2008-2011, male cancer survivors had annual medical costs of more than $8,000 per person, and productivity losses of $3,700 compared to males without a history of cancer at $3,900 and $2,300 respectively. During the same time, female cancer survivors had $8,400 in annual medical costs per person and $4,000 in productivity losses compared to females without a history of cancer at $5,100 and $2,700, respectively.

Study findings indicate:

• Cancer survivors were more likely to be female, non-Hispanic white, have multiple chronic conditions,or to be in fair or poor health.
• Employment disability accounted for about 75 percent of lost productivity among cancer survivors.
• Among survivors who were employed at the time of their diagnosis, cancer and its treatment interfered with physical tasks (25 percent) and mental tasks required by the job (14 percent); almost 25 percent of cancer survivors felt less productive at work.

The report also found that about 10 percent of survivors aged 65 years and younger were uninsured and likely to have a larger financial burden compared to survivors with some source of payment for medical services. Through the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans, including cancer survivors, have access to health coverage and preventive services. For more information, please visit www.healthcare.gov.

The evidence-based guidelines help make homes more accessible for people with both conditions and were developed after researchers gathered the views and experiences of people living with dementia and sight loss, their families and carers and a wide range of professionals.

Dr. Lynn Watson, Head of Housing Research, Thomas Pocklington Trust, says: "The combination of these two conditions is increasingly common yet guidelines for designing homes - both individual homes and care homes - have tended to focus on one or other of the conditions. We wanted to review existing research and add to it the real experiences of people living with both dementia and sight loss. The result is an important new set of guidelines that can make a real difference to people's lives."

Chronic pain due to disease or injury is common, and even prescription pain medications cannot provide acceptable pain relief for many individuals. Virtual reality as a means of distraction, inducing positive emotions, or creating the perception of "swapping" a limb or bodily area affected by chronic pain in a virtual environment can be a powerful therapeutic tool, as described in several articles in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

In "Application of Virtual Body Swapping to Patients with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome: A Pilot Study," Bomyi Jeon and coauthors from Korea evaluated the effectiveness of virtual body swapping therapy in improving pain intensity and "body perception disturbance" in patients with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, a chronic progressive disease characterized by severe pain and disturbed body perception.

Results of a new study on mice and a phase 1 trial of humans suggest that prolonged cycles of fasting - for 2-4 days at a time - not only protect against toxic effects of chemotherapy, but also trigger stem cell regeneration of new immune cells and clearing out of old, damaged cells.

The team believes the findings could benefit people with immune system damage, for example if they have receivedchemotherapy treatment for cancer. It could also benefit the elderly whose immune systems are weakened through aging, making them more susceptible to disease.

A new study suggests that light treatment tailored to increase circadian stimulation during the day may improve sleep,depression and agitation in people with Alzheimer's diseaseand related dementia.

Results show that exposure to the tailored light treatment during daytime hours for four weeks significantly increased sleep quality, efficiency and total sleep duration. It also significantly reduced scores for depression and agitation.

The pilot study involved 14 nursing home patients with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia. A light source producing low levels of 300 to 400 lux of a bluish-white light with a color temperature of more than 9000 K was installed in the residents' rooms. Light exposure occurred during daytime hours for a period of four weeks.

A persistent problem with antibiotic resistance is that patients tend to stop taking antibiotics once they feel better. In these instances, it is possible for some bacteria to survive and then grow impervious to the drugs that fight them.

One advantage of the new drug, called oritavancin, is that it has a long half-life, which allows for a single-dose treatment as the drug will continue working to kill bacteria over the whole treatment period.

"Having a single-dose drug could potentially prevent hospitalizations or reduce the amount of time patients would spend in the hospital," says Dr. G. Ralph Corey, lead author of the study.

To test this, researchers conducted a 3-year study of oritavancin, recruiting nearly 2,000 patients across two trials.

The search for good, reliable child care, as any working parent will tell you, nearly always requires diligent research, word-of-mouth referrals and just plain luck.

Sheila Marcelo believed that technology could improve the experience, so in 2006 she started Care.com. The company is an online marketplace for finding and managing family care, including care for children, aging parents and pets, as well as housekeeping services. Over the past five years, Care.com has grown from 500,000 members to 9.7 million members worldwide: 5.2 million families and 4.5 million caregivers. 

Similar to the experience of many entrepreneurs, the idea for Care.com was born from Marcelo's personal life. In the early 2000s, while working at Upromise, an online network that allows families to save for college, she needed to find care for her infant son and ailing father. The dilemma was especially acute, since Marcelo's parents were helping to care for her son. "Here I was, working at a technology company, but I was using the yellow pages to find care for my dad," she explained. "I knew there had to be a better way."

"Our findings are promising, but it is not entirely clear whether these improvements were the result of added vibration or just the effects of being more active," said lead author Tony Kaleth, associate professor in the School of Physical Education and Tourism Management at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

Whole-body vibration exercise involves standing, sitting or lying on a machine with a vibrating platform that causes muscles to contract and relax as the machine vibrates. The machines primarily are used by researchers but have begun appearing in fitness centers and are sold commercially.

"Vibration training is increasingly being studied in clinical populations as a potential therapeutic mode of exercise training," Kaleth said. "Although the results are largely equivocal and in need of further study, studies have reported improvements in strength, muscle spasticity and pain in select populations."

The Interagency Pain Research Portfolio (IPRP), a database that provides information about pain research and training activities supported by the federal government, has been launched by six federal agencies.

“This database will provide the public and the research community with an important tool to learn more about the breadth and details of pain research supported across the federal government. They can search for individual research projects or sets of projects grouped by themes uniquely relevant to pain,” said Linda Porter, Ph.D., Policy Advisor for Pain at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “It also can be helpful in identifying potential collaborators by searching for topic areas of interest or for investigators.”