US retirees still wary of Medicare drug plan
Most older Americans say they still do not understand how Medicare’s new prescription drug coverage will work and they are split over whether it will be worthwhile, a study released on Thursday found.
In a Kaiser Family Foundation survey of people aged 65 and up, 60 percent said they did not understand the new benefit, which opens for enrollment in November and is scheduled to start in January.
Drug may keep transplanted kidneys healthier longer
Transplanted kidneys may survive three or four years longer when treated with an experimental Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. drug instead of the standard drug cyclosporine, a study released on Wednesday showed.
A test of 218 transplant recipients at 22 centers in North America and Europe found that the six-month rejection rate for kidneys treated with either drug was equally low.
Kidney donor exchange programs catching on
Say you wanted to donate a kidney to a relative, but weren’t a match. Would you donate your kidney to a stranger who could use it, in exchange for a kidney from one of their relatives that was a match to your kin?
Seems like a good idea, and such plans are being set up.
A new Living Donor Kidney Exchange Program launched earlier this month by the New York Organ Donor Network will allow potential kidney donor-recipient pairs who are not suitable for reasons such as mismatched blood type to be matched with other willing donor-recipient pairs.
Sperm banking gives cancer patients emotional lift
Sperm banking may not only preserve young cancer patients’ ability to have children, but their emotional well-being as well, according to Japanese researchers.
They found that among 51 young men who banked their sperm before undergoing chemotherapy, 80 percent said that the move helped them in the “emotional battle against cancer.” Even those who were unsure whether they wanted to have children in the future gained some peace of mind from sperm banking, according to the researchers.
WHO hopes drugs will buy time against bird flu
The World Health Organization (WHO) began on Wednesday to build a first line of defense against a feared global bird flu pandemic with a major drug donation from a leading Swiss firm.
The United Nations agency said a donation by Swiss drug maker Roche of enough of its Tamiflu antiviral drug to treat 3 million people could slow the spread of the outbreak among humans, especially in countries too poor to afford their own stockpile.
Painkillers can cause fatal stomach bleeding
Approximately one third of all hospitalizations and deaths related to gastrointestinal bleeding can be attributed to the use of aspirin or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents (NSAIDs) painkillers like ibuprofen, a study in Spain suggests.
Moreover, up to one third of these painkiller-related incidents may be due to low-dose aspirin.
Lifestyle changes credited in drop in heart deaths
Healthier eating habits and a decline in smoking may explain a large share of the drop in Heart Disease deaths the UK has seen since the 1980s, a new study suggests.
Research has shown that since the 1980s, Heart Disease deaths have fallen by roughly one-half in many industrialized countries. The relative importance of the various reasons for this decline is not fully clear, however.
Why blacks less likely to have chemo still unclear
A recent study showed that black patients are much less likely than white patients to receive recommended chemotherapy after surgery for advanced colon cancer. A new study suggests that there is no single or simple explanation for why this is so.
To try to understand the factors involved in black-white differences in recommended colon cancer treatment, doctors took a look-back at 5,294 black and white patients 66 years of age or older who had surgery for advanced colon cancer. All of them had Medicare health insurance, and therefore the same access to care.
