Illness and medical bills cause half of all bankruptcies
... families were bankrupted by medical expenses well below the catastrophic thresholds of high deductible plans that are increasingly popular with employers. The authors comment that even their own coverage from Harvard leaves them at risk for out-of-pocket costs above levels that often led to medical bankr...Drinking alcohol increases risk for cancer
...oes not determine "whether there is any threshold, below which no effect is evident."...Views from space help oil prospectors see deep underground
...we can interpret its presence indirectly from well below a half a metre. "Basalt is a massive reflector, functioning like a shield between the surface and the hydrocarbon reservoirs. We can't work on surface basalt the baseplate simply jumps back but there are optimal design geometries we ca...Study sheds light on cross-species infection for BSE
...eural tissue from an infected animal that was just below the detection limit when tested negative at the slaughterhouse, to be at risk of developing variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). Jean-Phillipe Deslys (Commissariat l'Energie Atomique, France) and colleagues gave two adult primates a 5g oral do...Discovery of pathway in learning impairment caused by liver disease may lead to drug treatment
... impair learning and that it must be kept high but below a certain threshold to reach maximum learning ability. The authors conclude: "Although caution must be taken considering the possible deleterious increase in the existing vasodilatation in liver disease by sildenafil, pharmacological manipulation of ...Study of CPR quality reveals frequent deviation from guidelines
...percent of the cases, chest compression rates fell below 90 per minute. Thirty-seven percent of the chest compressions were too shallow. Ventilation rates were usually too high; in 61 percent of the 30-second segments ventilations rates were over 20 per minute. In 40 percent of cases the no-flow fractio...2001-2002 survey finds that many recover from alcoholism
...lcohol abuse and either abstain or drink at levels below those known to increase relapse risk. They include roughly equal proportions of abstainers (18.2 percent) and low-risk drinkers (17.7 percent). The analysis is based on data from the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Cond...New network of gastrointestinal immune cells discovered
...lls throughout the small intestine in a layer just below the epithelial lining. It previously had been believed that gastrointestinal dendritic cells were few in number and restricted to specialized immune organs called Peyer's patches. Three-dimensional computer-assisted tissue reconstruction allowed d...Spinal cord injury patients show improvement in early device study
...oved motor function. The patients had no sensation below the level of their injury prior to the implantation of the OFS, said Dr. Shapiro. Afterwards, the patients' sensation was almost back to normal in the immediate area affected by their injury where nerve regeneration occurred. "This was a pilot devic...More precise radiation therapy lets prostate cancer patients avoid erectile dysfunction
... this area on CT scans, we just assume if we treat below the prostate it's no big deal. But it is a big deal. There is no cancer below the prostate, but there are critical structures related to erectile function as well as urine sphinc...Environmental tobacco smoke linked to reading, math, logic and reasoning declines in children
... if their serum (blood) cotinine levels were at or below 15 ng/ml, a level consistent with environmental to...cline for each unit increase in cotinine at levels below 1 ng/ml. In the United States, 43 percent of children are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke in...New findings on patient safety at children's hospitals
...udy period, 19 had in-hospital infection rates far below the average, and 11 had rates above the average. Sedman notes that the new study complements one published last year by a team that looked at the safety of hospital care for newborns and children treated in general hospitals. That study, by research...Study models impact of anthrax vaccine
...to take them for 60 days. Prevention rates dropped below 50 percent if antibiotics were delayed more than 10 days. In 2001, some postal workers did not begin taking antibiotics until 9 days after exposure. The current licensed anthrax vaccine requires six doses over an 18-month period to provide immunit...Research by scientists affiliated with the Earth Institute at Columbia University
...nary findings on what is driving active structures below the earth's surface. Michael Steckler, Doherty Senior Scientist, steckler@ldeo.columbia.edu , 845-365-8479, Art Lerner-Lam, Director, Center for Hazards and Risk Research, Earth Institute at Columbia ( lerner@ldeo.columbia.edu , 845-365-8356), Leona...New study links lead exposure with increased risk of cataract
...lead in the tibia, the larger of the two leg bones below the knee, had a 2.5-fold increased risk for cataract, the leading cause of blindness and visual impairment. "These results suggest that reducing exposure of the public to lead and lead compounds could lead to a significant decrease in the overall inc...Another step towards understanding the causes of narcolepsy
...ventive strategy before loss of hypocretin neurons below a critical threshold....NIAID seeks applicants to lead revamped HIV/AIDS clinical trials networks
...w by interested parties on the NIAID Web site (see below for details). A second RFA, to be released in early 2005, will solicit applications for the Clinical Trial Units (CTUs) that will implement the research plans of the networks. Funding for the two RFAs is expected to total up to $300 million for the f...Ugandan study highlights best drug combinations for treating malaria in Africa
...s were far more effective, with treatment failures below 10% at one month's follow-up; by contrast, the failure rate of chloroquine+sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine was 35%. Professor Rosenthal comments: "African countries are faced with a challenge. Escalating drug resistance has rendered chloroquine ineffe...Study highlights importance of pesticide worker dermal exposure
...al exposure even though exposure levels were found below current occupational health standards and guidelines. For nearly one-half of the workers monitored (34 out of 77) in this study, more chlorpyrifos was absorbed through the skin than was inhaled. The researchers compared methods for estimating worker ...