public health
ejohnson | June 14, 2010Is it distant thunder? A passing freight train? World Cup fans celebrating a goal?
Nope...that's the sound of the ScienceBlogs Book Club becoming active again!
It's been awhile since we hosted a Book Club discussion here on the blog - not since Paul Offitt's Autism's False Prophets back in 2008 - but we thought it was about time to get things going again. Luckily Mark Pendergrast, author of the recently published Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service agreed to lead a discussion of the book, and starting next week you can follow along…
mmckenna | June 10, 2010A coule of days ago, I talked about the link between a potentially massive hepatitis B outbreak in West Virginia and the lack of access to primary dental care. I was mushy qualitatively descriptive, ahem, about the number of people who lack access to dental insurance.
Comes now the CDC to save the day. In a statistical brief posted today, the National Center for Health Statistics gives a concise but thorough overview of the state of dental insurance in the US. Short version: Ain't pretty.
Crude preliminary population math:
There are currently 309 million Americans.
Based on census tables…
mikethemadbiologist | June 10, 2010Back when I owned a car*, car insurance payments were always depressing. In the best case scenario, I'm paying money for no purpose; in the worst case, I've been in a collision. Public health is a lot like car insurance, in that it's really important when something bad happens, but when something bad doesn't happen--either because it didn't happen due to dumb luck, or because other public health measures prevented the problem--public health appears to be wasteful spending. Once the waste charge get bandied about, some people won't be content with that--they have to start indulging in…
terrasig | June 7, 2010On the heels of the recruitment of Deborah Blum to ScienceBlogs, I am happy to welcome journalist Maryn McKenna to our neck of the ether.
Her inaugural post can be read here.
McKenna's blog is called Superbug, reflecting the title of her most recent book, SUPERBUG: The Fatal Menace of MRSA, and her general interests in infectious diseases and food safety. Her 2004 book, BEATING BACK THE DEVIL: On The Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), named among Top Science Books of 2004 by Amazon.com and an "…
mmckenna | June 7, 2010Via ProMED Mail comes a news report that about 2,000 people in 5 states are being sought by health departments so they can be checked for hepatitis B infection. The potential source: the Mission of Mercy Dental Clinic, a free dental-care fair held just about a year ago in Berkeley County in the far north-east corner of West Virginia. The potentially infected include 1,137 people who were treated at the two-day clinic and 826 of the volunteers who worked there, from West Virginia, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Three patients and two volunteers have…
mikethemadbiologist | June 1, 2010So I was at the ASM meeting last week, and one of the talks I heard was by Kim Ware about Clostridium difficile infection control: how one hospital learned to contain and prevent outbreaks (Note: these are from my notes; I haven't downloaded the presentation yet). C. difficile is a bacterium that causes diarrhea and more serious intestinal conditions such as colitis. It is often associated with antibiotic therapy and stays in healthcare environments: this is primarily a 'hospital disease.' While most cases result in diarrhea (which isn't trivial if you're already very sick), eleven…
grrlscientist | June 1, 2010tags: HIV and 'Flu -- The Vaccine Strategy, microbiology, epidemiology, virology, vaccines, medicine, public health, viruses, influenza, HIV, Seth Berkley, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
Seth Berkley explains how smart advances in vaccine design, production and distribution are bringing us closer than ever to eliminating a host of global threats -- from AIDS to malaria to flu pandemics.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers…
terrasig | May 26, 2010Regular readers know that I hold equivocal views of the broad area of dietary supplements, particularly botanical supplements. On one hand, I have seen some great new compounds come from the systematic investigation of herbal and fungal concoctions to the point that 25% of prescription drugs are derived from natural products. On the other hand, some corners of the dietary supplement industry are little more than turn-of-the-last-century snake oil operations, with offenses so egregious that even their own trade associations try to distance themselves from those who adulterate, mislabel, and…
terrasig | May 19, 2010The leadership team and all the staff here at Terra Sigillata world headquarters was taken aback yesterday when reports surfaced about the appearance of tar balls on the beach at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park and Bahia Honda State Park, the closest long beach to Key West, Florida. A Coast Guard marine laboratory in Connecticut is currently examining the content of the tar balls to determine if they are indeed from, as feared, the BP Deepwater Horizon well. (Someone in the field has to help me out here but I believe there are an awful lot of LC/tandem mass spectrometers at Florida's…
elerner | May 17, 2010As one clever commenter at Effect Measure's farewell post observed, the past tense of Revere is "Revered." And while we're sad to see one of the longest running ScienceBloggers go, Revere's departure is matched with the arrival of The Pump Handle, fantastic public health group blog, principally maintained by George Washington University's Liz Borkowski and Celeste Monforton. Their timing is impeccable; as another new recruit has noted, the growing environmental disaster in the gulf coast is also a public health disaster, with a toxic stew of oil and clean-up chemicals coming in contact with…
tsmith | April 29, 2010Student guest post Dayna Groskreutz
Pulmonary hypertension (PH) refers to a condition in which there is high blood pressure in the vessels carrying blood from the heart to the lungs. Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a subset of PH referring specifically to an increase in the pressure within the pulmonary arteries (rather than the pulmonary veins or capillaries). The high blood pressure in the vessels causes thickening of these arteries, making it hard for the heart to pump blood to the lungs. Pressure builds up and backs up. Over time, stress on the heart causes it to enlarge, and it…
tsmith | April 29, 2010Student guest post by Raj Nair.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory demyelinating disease that affects the central nervous system (CNS) consisting of the brain and the spinal cord [1]. It is thought to be an autoimmune disease since individual's immune system attacks their own healthy tissues [1]. However, studies to ascertain triggering factors such as genetic, environmental, and infectious causes are still in progress [2]. So one wonders "Who is more susceptible to develop MS" Literature reveals that typically people between 20 and 50 years of age are commonly diagnosed…
tsmith | April 27, 2010Student guest post by Shylo Wardyn
"Of all the parasites I've had over the years, these worms are among the... hell, they are the best".
Was Fry from the animated show 'Futurama' right in his assessment of worms being good for him? Did he know something about parasitic worm infections that I was unaware of? Well, in the show, his parasites were doing remarkable things for his body, but does this translate to real life at all? Some people think so. Altman reviews the idea that over evolutionary time, our ancestors were infected with all sorts of parasites and this led to an interaction…
tsmith | April 27, 2010Student guest post by Desiré Christensen
Colorectal cancer (aka colon cancer) includes cancers of the colon, rectum, and appendix. Colorectal cancer is more common in developed countries (e.g. United States and Japan) compared to developing countries in Africa and Asia. Each year in the United States, there are around 150,000 cases of colorectal cancer diagnosed and about 50,000 people die from this cancer. Risk factors for colorectal cancer include lifestyle factors (e.g. habitual alcohol use; high-fat, low-fiber diet; obesity; sedentary lifestyle; smoking), family history of intestinal…
tsmith | April 26, 2010Student guest post by Andrew Behan
Malignant Mesothelioma (MM) is a rare type of cancer which manifests itself in the thin cells lining the human body's internal organs. There are three types of MM; pleural mesothelioma, peritoneal mesothelioma, and pericardial mesothelioma, affecting the lining of the lungs, abdominal cavity, and lining of the heart, respectively (1). Pleural mesothelioma is most common, consisting of about 70% of all MM cases and has a poor prognosis; patients live a median time of 18 months after diagnosis. (Note: for the purposes of this article, MM will be used to…
tsmith | April 26, 2010Student guest post by Jay Watson
Tired again? Perhaps it's the crappy weather, because you're sure that you've been getting enough sleep. After all, you can't remember the last time you spent less than ten hours in bed per night. Hopefully it's not mono; one of your friends had it a few months ago and it's all but knocked her out. However, you soon realize that you've only talked to her on the phone since she got engaged, so there's no way that's it. It's strange, even everyday activities like running errands has turned into something utterly exhausting. As you consider the reasons as…
j7uy5 | April 26, 2010National Geographic
href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100421-new-fungus-cryptococcus-gattii-deadly-health-science/">reports:
A new strain of hypervirulent, deadly Cryptococcus gattii
fungus has been discovered in the United States, a new study says.
The outbreak has already killed six people in Oregon, and it will
likely creep into northern California and possibly farther, experts
say...
Cryptococcus infections in humans are hardly new. And so
far, the public health impact of the outbreak has been very low
(understanding, of course, that the personal impact has…
tsmith | April 26, 2010Student guest post by Anne Dressler
Ninety percent of menstruating women experience some kind of premenstrual symptoms during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, with 20-30% experiencing moderate to severe symptoms. With an even more severe collection of symptoms, is premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). 3-8% of menstruating women report symptoms severe enough to be considered suffering from PMDD. Yet another designation, premenstrual magnification (PMM), is used to describe women who are symptomatic the entire cycle but have a premenstrual exacerbation of a diagnosed psychiatric,…
tsmith | April 23, 2010Student guest post by Zainab Khan
Schizophrenia has puzzled and often times scared not only the scientific community, but also the general public since its emergence. Cases of schizophrenia-like behavior have been well documented in history. As this disease has been studied, factors such as genetics, environment, and even personal habits have all been associated to some degree with schizophrenia. However, evidence in past years has mounted showing an association between infectious agents and schizophrenia. The three main infections associated/studied with schizophrenia have been…
tsmith | April 23, 2010Student guest post by Francis Mawanda
If you are like me, you probably always and almost faithfully, include a bottle of mouthwash on your grocery list especially after watching and/or listening to the numerous commercials in the media which claim that you will not only get long lasting fresh breath, but also freedom from the germs that cause plaque and gingivitis. However, many proprietary mouthwashes including my favorite brand contain Alcohol (ethanol) which also gives them the characteristic burn we have to endure, albeit for a few seconds each day, but safe in the knowledge that the…