Back to School Safety: Avoiding Backpack Injury
While it seems that every child carries a backpack during the school year, most parents - and children - are unaware of the potential injury that too-heavy packs can cause.
With school starting in just a few weeks, Dr. Leonel Hunt, director of spine trauma at Cedars-Sinai Institute for Spinal Disorders and Orthopedic Center, offers some advice to reduce the back and shoulder pain that as many as half of all school children experience each year.
“While backpacks are considered the most efficient way to carry books and other items kids need for school, it’s important they weigh less than 15 percent of a child’s body weight,” says Hunt. “Otherwise, over time, a child can experience back pain and soreness that can lead to problems that may require medical treatment.”
Racial differences in hepatitis C viral responses
African American patients with hepatitis C (HCV) infections experience a lower response rate to the peginterferon alfa-2a and ribavirin combination treatment than Caucasian Americans*, according to a study published in the August issue of Gastroenterology, the journal for the members of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA).
Racial differences in viral responses were seen as early as the fourth week of treatment. A pegylated interferon combined with ribavirin is standard therapy for HCV.
Researchers from the Study of Viral Resistance to Antiviral Therapy for Chronic Hepatitis C (Virahep-C), which is funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), conducted the study to determine the potential mechanisms of antiviral resistance among patients who fail to respond to current optimal therapy regimens. While African Americans have a higher prevalence of HCV infection, they have been underrepresented in most therapeutic clinical trials, making it difficult to estimate response rates in these patients.
Sex workers march for rights at AIDS conference
Sex workers and their supporters from 21 countries marched on Wednesday through the 16th International AIDS Conference to demand their own place not only at the conference, but in their own societies.
Wearing turquoise T-shirts, they marched from a gauze-draped bed in the Toronto conference’s Stiletto Lounge, one of the exhibits at the meeting, through art displays, exhibits about prisoners with AIDS and around booths offering information to drug users and religious groups.
“Sex work is work. Sex workers are workers,” said Philal Sri Kumzaw from Thailand, standing amid pillows and sex toys in the Lounge.
Cost of stroke in U.S. expected to skyrocket
The cost of treating people who suffer strokes in the U.S. is projected to exceed $2 trillion between 2005 and 2050, according to new estimates.
The researchers who came up with this estimate hope that the figure will spur improvements in stroke prevention and treatment, particularly in underserved populations.
For their analysis, reported in the journal Neurology, Dr. D. L. Brown, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues used data from two stroke surveillance studies and from the 2000 US Census. They added in the cost of ambulance services, inpatient hospitalization and rehabilitation, nursing home care, drugs and outpatient services. Also included were costs of informal caregiving, and potential lost earnings.
Man aged 50 dies in Scotland from anthrax
A 50-year-old man has died in Scotland from the deadly toxin anthrax—the first such case there since 1987, health officials said on Wednesday, stressing that there was little risk to anyone else.
The man, who worked with materials including untreated animal hides, died in July after a short illness and the cause of death has only just been diagnosed.
“Anthrax is a very rare disease and generally presents as a skin infection,” Health Protection Scotland said in a statement. “Working with animal hides is known to be a risk factor for acquiring anthrax.”
Immunisation gaps linked to China polio outbreak
A group of Chinese scientists has linked a 2004 outbreak of polio in an impoverished Chinese province to gaps in China’s immunisation program, according to a study to be published in September.
In the article, to be published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, the scientists recommend more widespread immunisation of China’s population as well as an end to the use of vaccines containing live but weakened strains of the polio virus.
“The outbreak ... highlights the need to carefully reconsider the risks associated with OPV (oral polio vaccine with live virus) use when formulating future polio immunization policies for China,” the researchers wrote in the article.
Breast cancer chemo side effects elevated
Chemotherapy drugs may cause more serious side effects for breast cancer patients under age 64 than once thought, a U.S. study released on Tuesday said.
Researchers mined insurance claims for 3,526 women who had intravenous chemotherapy for breast cancer and tallied problems serious enough to require emergency care or a hospital stay.
Their review found more than 8 percent of women underwent treatment for a fever or infection compared with less than 2 percent reported in an earlier review of clinical trials.
Possible key human evolution genes identified
They could be the missing links of human genetic evolution - areas of human DNA that changed dramatically after the evolutionary division from chimpanzees, though they had remained almost unchanged for millennia before.
Scientists from the United States, Belgium and France identified 49 “human accelerated regions” (HARs) showing a lot of genetic activity.
In the most active, identified as HAR1, they found 18 out of the 118 nucleotides had changed since evolutionary separation from chimps some 6 million years ago, while only two had changed in the 310 million years separating the evolutionary lines of chimps and chickens.
Flat-foot treatment often not needed, study finds
Flat feet in young children improve on their own in the great majority of cases, meaning that treatment with arch supports or special shoes may often be unnecessary, according to a new study.
“Children with typical flexible flat foot should not be burdened with arch supports or corrective shoes,” Dr. Martin Pfeiffer of the Medical University of Vienna and colleagues conclude in the journal Pediatrics.
Babies are born with flat feet, with arches gradually developing in the first years of life, Pfeiffer and his team note. While many parents will seek treatment for a young child’s flat feet, they add, researchers increasingly believe that such treatment is not necessary in most cases.
