Unwilling to increase tobacco taxes enough for pay for changes to Medicare and children's health insurance, committees in the House of Representatives are proposing a reimbursement cut that jeopardizes the benefits of a half million seniors who depend on medical oxygen therapy to treat severe respiratory conditions such as COPD. The changes were proposed in H.R. 3162, titled "The Children's Health and Medicare Protection Act of 2007. [click link for full article]
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For infants with a common and potentially serious viral lower respiratory infection called bronchiolitis, a widely used steroid treatment is not effective. A new study co-authored by Dr. Joan Bregstein of the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia University Medical Center found that steroid treatment did not prevent hospitalization or improve respiratory symptoms for bronchiolitis, the most common cause of infant hospitalization. [click link for full article]
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A nurse is over twice as likely to suffer from occupational asthma, compared to the rest of the population, according to an article in The Lancet this week. The risk for cleaners is 71% higher. [click link for full article]
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Leptin, a protein secreted by fat cells, seems to be involved in mechanisms of ventilatory control in humans. Leptin induces satiation and reduction of appetite, and increases the rate of metabolism. This leads to the maintenance or reduction of weight (from the Greek leptos, meaning thin). Since most obese people have very high levels of leptin, obesity has been postulated as a state of leptin resistance. [click link for full article]
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Currently, there is a debate about how asthma should be defined, so that progress can be made in the understanding of underlying mechanisms and, particularly, in the identification of genes involved in this disease. Emmanuelle Bouzigon (INSERM U794, Evry, France) and her colleagues examined 110 asthmatic families who were already part of the French Epidemiological Study on the Genetics and Environment of Asthma (EGEA). The study involved more than 2,000 subjects aged 4 to 70 years. [click link for full article]
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Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is frequent in patients undergoing mechanical ventilation and is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. 10% of intensive care unit (ICU) patients receive invasive mechanical ventilation through a tracheotomy cannula during their ICU stay. Several recent studies identified tracheotomy as a risk factor for VAP. [click link for full article]
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The safety profile of bosentan (Tracleer®), an endothelin receptor antagonist approved for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), has been confirmed in a unique large-scale pan-European surveillance programme, according to a study undertaken by Marc Humbert (Antoine Beclere Hospital, Clamart, France) and his colleagues. [click link for full article]
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Asthma affects the lives of millions of people in the United States, negatively impacting both school and work performance. vThe effect of asthma on academic and occupational performance is multi-dimensional, including illness-related absences as well as impaired ability when present. [click link for full article]
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A study published by Wiley-Blackwell in the journal Acta Pharmacologica Sinica has identified the protein that plays a significant role in the development of lung disease - signaling that medical practitioners may potentially be able to isolate and prevent the onset of the disease in the near future. [click link for full article]
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Holidays (*vacations) are the time of the year that we all look forward to, yet for people suffering from allergy it is a time of even greater stress. Thanks to an educational grant from Merck Sharp & Dohme Limited, Allergy UK was able to survey 3,000 people, asking whether they allowed their allergies to influence their choice in holidays. Within two weeks 10%1 had responded 75% of whom stated that their choice of holiday was definitely influenced by their allergies. [click link for full article]
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