Culture

SEATTLE – New research by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington shows that innovative and improved methods for analyzing verbal autopsies – a method of determining individuals' causes of death in countries without a complete vital registration system – are fast, effective, and inexpensive, and could be invaluable for countries struggling to understand disease trends.

Philadelphia, PA -- Proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR), or the formation of scar tissue within the eye, is a serious, sight-threatening complication in patients recovering surgical repair of retinal detachment.

The results of a large-scale community-randomized trial presented at the 42nd World Conference on Lung Health in Lille, France today show that the Zambia-South Africa TB and AIDS Reduction (ZAMSTAR) project reduced the prevalence of tuberculosis by 22%.

The use of bath salts as recreational drugs has greatly escalated in recent years. Researchers from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma describe an incident of a man experiencing significant agitation, paranoia, and hallucinations who also exhibited violent behavior upon his emergency department arrival.

Measuring specific, exercise-related responses can help physicians determine who may be more at risk for severe high altitude illness (SHAI), according to a study conducted by researchers in France. The researchers also found that taking acetazolamide (ACZ), a drug frequently prescribed to prevent altitude illness, can reduce some of the risk factors associated with SHAI.

The findings were published online ahead of the print edition of the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Official assessments of a doctor's professionalism should be considered carefully before being accepted due to the tendency for some doctors to receive lower scores than others, and the tendency of some groups of patient or colleague assessors to provide lower scores, claims new research published on bmj.com today.

Researchers from the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry in Exeter investigated whether there were any potential patient, colleague and doctor-related sources of bias evident in the assessment of doctors' professionalism.

• The current classification system for the kidney disorder called lupus nephritis is too detailed
• Physicians would benefit from a simpler classification system when they treat kidney problems in patients with lupus
• Lupus nephritis affects approximately 3 out of every 10,000 people, and it can be serious and lead to kidney failure

• Patients with an autoimmune disease called anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis produce antibodies that damage blood vessels in the kidneys.
• Patients with the disease harbor elevated blood levels of the protein Flt1, which hinders blood vessel repair.
• Inhibiting Flt1 may help prevent kidney failure in the 1:50,000 patients around the world who have anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis, plus those with other more frequent diseases involving blood vessels in the kidneys.

• Pyridorin, a vitamin B6 derivative, may help slow or prevent the progression of mild kidney disease in some patients with diabetes.
• The drug does not appear to help diabetics with more advanced kidney disease.
• The prevalence of type 2 diabetes is expected to double by 2030. Kidney disease cases are sure to rise in parallel.

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it's good for the student, according to a new study published in Perspectives in Psychological Science. The authors show that curiosity is a big part of academic performance. In fact, personality traits like curiosity seem to be as important as intelligence in determining how well students do in school.

WASHINGTON – Being reminded of the concept of God can decrease people's motivation to pursue personal goals but can help them resist temptation, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

ANTWERP – Over the last years, many low and middle-income countries have removed user fees in their health care sector and researchers from Africa, Asia, North America and Europe have studied these policies and gathered their thoughts in a supplement of Health Policy & Planning. Experiences from Afghanistan, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Mali, Nepal , Rwanda and Uganda, among others, are documented in this supplement. Conclusion: it is possible, but should not be done ill-advised.

The main lessons from their analyses are:

As the global media speculate on the number of people likely to inhabit the planet on Oct. 31 an international team of population and development experts argue that it is not simply the number of people that matters but more so their distribution by age, education, health status and location that is most relevant to local and global sustainability.

Children who are persistently aggressive, defiant, and explosive by the time they're in kindergarten very often have tumultuous relationships with their parents from early on. A new longitudinal study suggests that a cycle involving parenting styles and hostility between mothers and toddlers is at play.

The study was done by researchers at the University of Minnesota and appears in the journal Child Development.

Viewing TV coverage of terrorism has more negative effect on women. This has been shown in a new study from the University of Haifa. "It is possible that the differences between men and women are founded in gender socialization: 'teaching' women to respond to terrorism with more anxiety than men," said Prof. Moshe Zeidner, one of the authors of the study.