Culture

The number of newly diagnosed cases of autism has levelled off in the UK after a five-fold surge during the 1990s, finds research published in the online journal BMJ Open.

The findings differ from widely publicised results issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last year, which reported a 78% increase in the prevalence of the condition in eight year old children between 2004 and 2008 in the US.

TORONTO, Oct. 16, 2013--Babies born to teen mothers have less developed speaking skills at age five than children of older mothers, a new study has found.

"We don't believe that having a baby in your teens is the cause of underdeveloped speaking skills," said Dr. Julia Morinis, the lead author and researcher in the Centre for Research on Inner City Health of St. Michael's Hospital. "It's likely that being a teen mother is a risk factor that indicates poorer circumstance for development opportunities in some cases."

A research team led by Professor Noriyuki Tsumaki of the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) at Kyoto University and Dr. Hidetatsu Ohtani, a former CiRA member who now works as a post doctoral fellow at Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, has succeeded in directly converting human dermal fibroblasts into induced chondrogenic cells (iChon cells) without passing through an iPS cell stage in a process known as direct reprogramming. This finding has been published in PLOS ONE on October 16, 2013.

Philadelphia, Pa. (October 16, 2013) – The upcoming expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) won't lead physicians to reduce the number of new Medicaid patients they accept, suggests a study in the November issue of Medical Care, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

This news release is available in German.

Bethesda, MD – Articles in Health Affairs' October issue examine the pursuit of improved physical and mental health. Featured articles include:

This news release is available in German.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — A string of public mass shootings during the past decade-plus have rocked America leaving policymakers and mental health experts alike fishing for solutions to prevent these heinous crimes. A Mayo Clinic physician, however, argues that at least one proposal won't stop the public massacres: restricting gun access to the mentally ill. J.

WASHINGTON, DC and NEW YORK (Oct. 16, 2013)— A new report by the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) examines the impact of health reform on community health centers (CHCs) and their patients.

LOS ANGELES (Oct. 15, 2013) – For the first time, a simple blood test may be the best way to determine if a patient is suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), or another serious condition such as Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD,) according to Cedars-Sinai physician researcher Mark Pimentel, MD, lead author of a multicenter clinical trial.

Researchers conclusively identified a test for antibodies that form against a particular protein, vinculin, found in the guts of patients, many of whom suffered acute gastroenteritis at some point.

CHICAGO --- Doctors who make a lot of eye contact are viewed as more likable and empathetic by patients, according to a new Northwestern Medicine® study.

Patients also gave doctors higher empathy scores when their total visit length was longer and when doctors engaged in a few "social touches" such as a handshake or pat on the back. However, more than three social touches in one visit decreased empathy scores. The researchers said it's possible that too many social touches from a doctor may seem forced and not genuine to a patient.

The authors recommend closer monitoring for kidney problems in patients with 3% or more of their body surface area affected to help detect and treat signs early and suggest careful consideration of medications which may cause kidney disease in this at risk patient population.

Thanks to the popularity of open access and its pay-to-publish mentality, surveys by Adjunct Associate Professors in Health Services can be called medical articles.

A survey of 2,000 households across Iraq was used to estimate death rates for the two year-period before the war began in March 2003 and the subsequent years until mid-2011 - the result: 500,000 people dead.

"No organization recommends prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening in men older than 75 years. Nevertheless, testing rates remain high," write Elizabeth Jaramillo, M.D., of the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, and colleagues in a Research Letter appearing in the October 16 issue of JAMA. The authors examined whether PSA screening rates would vary substantially among primary care physicians (PCPs) and if the variance would depend on which PCP patients used.

For patients with diabetes and coronary artery disease in more than one artery, treatment with coronary artery bypass graft surgery provided slightly better health status and quality of life between 6 months and 2 years than procedures using drug-eluting stents, although beyond 2 years the difference disappeared, according to a study in the October 16 issue of JAMA.