For some men, sports pre-empts emergency room stop
Not even a medical emergency can pull some men away from a television showing their favorite sports teams, a U.S. study has determined.
University of Maryland emergency physician David Jerrard tracked nearly 800 regular season college and professional football, baseball and basketball games in the state over three years and found there always was an increase in the number of men who checked into emergency rooms after these events.
Jerrard’s study, to be presented on Sunday at the annual meeting of the American College of Emergency Physicians Research Forum in New Orleans, showed about 50 percent more men registered in emergency rooms after a football game than during the event itself. Thirty to 40 percent more men sought care following a baseball game.
Drug therapy for heroin addicts helps women quit smoking
New research is suggesting that women trying to quit smoking can be helped by taking medication approved for the treatment of alcohol and heroin dependence.
The medication naltrexone, when used in conjunction with nicotine patches and behavioral support, over a a two-month period, improved by almost 50 percent women’s ability to abstain from smoking for the duration of the program, compared to the same program minus naltrexone.
The researchers say that women having trouble quitting smoking may be helped in the short-term by taking the opiate blocker along with standard treatments and counseling.
High rates of pertussis found in States with easy immunization exemptions
States that easily permit parents to opt out of vaccinating their children for nonmedical reasons are at increased risk of pertussis (whooping cough), according to a new study from researchers with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the University of Florida and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
States that easily grant exemptions or offer personal belief exemptions have higher nonmedical exemption rates than states that offered only religious exemptions. The study is published in the October 11, 2006, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Pertussis is caused by a bacterial toxin that is spread easily through person-to-person contact, coughing and sneezing. It is more severe in infants and young children, who consequently have a greater risk of pneumonia, seizures, encephalopathy (a brain disorder) and other potentially deadly complications. Pertussis, which is characterized by severe coughing, is endemic in the United States. The incidence of the disease has increased nationwide in the last 20 years, with 25,827 cases reported in 2004, according to the CDC.
