Culture

CHICAGO – Nursing homes that used a multicomponent intervention that included staff training and supportive materials for staff, residents and relatives had a lower rate of use of physical restraints such as bilateral bed rails and belts, according to a study in the May 23/30 issue of JAMA.

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – Use of inhaled anticholinergics (IACs) has been associated with an increased risk of potentially dangerous heart arrhythmias among young asthma patients, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The medications are commonly used to help control asthma flare-ups, and recent studies have shown that they may be an effective treatment option for routine asthma management.

The study will be presented at the ATS 2012 International Conference in San Francisco.

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – On Tuesday afternoon, May 22, 2012, results from seven late-breaking clinical trials will be presented in session C91 at the ATS International Conference. These studies examine treatments for ventilator-associated pneumonia, cardiac surgery associated kidney injury, septic shock, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, smoking cessation, malignant pleural effusion and non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis.

Over the course of 2011's 'Arab Spring' uprisings, young women in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were able to break out of religious and cultural restrictions by using social media and cyberactivism to carve out central roles in the revolutionary struggles under way in their countries, according to a new study commissioned by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Periodontists routinely grow bone in the mouth to guarantee a stable environment for teeth and tooth implants. But whether it's better to build up bone before placing the implant, or to simply place the implant and allow bone to grow around it, has been a subject of considerable medical debate.

Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin have identified novel biomarkers that could be used to confirm exposure to damaging radiation in large groups of people potentially exposed to unknown and variable doses for the purpose of triage and treatment.

The findings are published in the May 1 issue of Radiation Research. John E. Baker, Ph.D., professor of surgery, biochemistry, pharmacology and toxicology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, is the lead author of the study.

Powerful and versatile new genetic tools that will assist in safeguarding both European fish stocks and European consumers is reported in Nature Communications (DOI 10.1038/ncomms1845 22/05/12). The paper reports on the first system proven to identify populations of fish species to a forensic level of validation.

SAN FRANCISCO, May 22 – Intensive care units (ICUs) that have no or limited access to critical care doctors during the day can improve patient outcomes by having the specialists, called intensivists, staff the unit at night, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC. However, the researchers were unable to find any incremental benefit of nighttime staffing in ICUs that were robustly staffed with the specialists during the day.

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – Inhibition of pre-B Cell Colony-Enhancing Factor (PBEF) could be a potential therapeutic target for pulmonary hypertension (PH), according to a preclinical study in an animal model of PH.

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – Common respiratory measurements are not effective in determining which asthma patients are able to significantly decrease their use of inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) medications without risk of flare-ups or exacerbations, according to a new study conducted by researchers in the United Kingdom. The study also showed that nearly three-quarters of asthma patients can safely decrease, or step-down, their use of ICS medications once their symptoms are under control.

The study will be presented at the ATS 2012 International Conference in San Francisco.

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, have found that critically ill patients were more likely to die if they were taking the most commonly prescribed antidepressants when they were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU).

The researchers conducted a retrospective study using the electronic medical records of 10,568 patients to look at in-hospital mortality and mortality a year after being admitted to the ICU.

CHICAGO – Treatment with bisphosphonate therapy appears to be associated with an increased risk of atypical fractures of the femur, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.

"Current evidence suggests that there is an association between bisphosphonate therapy and atypical femoral fractures, but the extent of this risk remains unclear," according to Raphael P. H. Meier, M.D., and colleagues from University Hospitals of Geneva and Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland.

CHICAGO – Treatment for Bell palsy (a condition involving the facial nerve and characterized by facial paralysis) with the corticosteroid prednisolone within 72 hours appeared to significantly reduce the number of patients with mild to moderate palsy severity at 12 months, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery, a JAMA Network publication.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - As Egypt prepares this week to elect its first president since the 2011 revolution, a new University of Maryland poll finds the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate tied for fourth place. Researchers describe the race as fluid.

The poll confirms the strategic damage inflicted by the Brotherhood's decision to field its own candidate, after saying it would not. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed (71 percent) called the decision a "mistake."