Health beat - new medical research, United States - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Oct, 2002

A growing shortage of physicians in the coming decade looks inevitable, a study from Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa., warns. Since 1980, the research states, the U.S. population has grown 21%; per capita medical spending, adjusted for inflation, has soared 130%; but the number of new medical students declined from 17,197 in 1980 to 16,824 in 2000. Although some of the gap has been made up through an increase in nurses, chiropractors, and nonphysician clinicians, patients may find that they faced a decline in services in the future.

The cost of Medicare drug benefits could be reduced by tens of billions of dollars with more-effective use of generic medications, a study by the Schneider Institute for Health Policy at Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass., found. If generic drug incentives currently used in the private sector were successfully implemented, individual seniors could save hundreds of dollars a year, he maintains.

Eat meat is the advice given by Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., scientists who examined the role of fat in a study that combined nutritional analysis with anthropologic research about the diets of ancient hunter-gatherer societies. There is a catch, however. To be as healthy as a caveman, you have to eat certain kinds of fish, wild game such as venison, or grass-fed meat like beef. They found that wild game (elk, for example) and grass-fed beef contain a mixture of fats that lower cholesterol and reduce other chronic disease risk.

A brown-bag lunch can offer more opportunities for a health-protective midday meal at the office than the typical take-out counter or fast-food restaurant, suggests the American Institute for Cancer Research. In addition to providing better control over portion size and fat content, a homemade lunch can deliver the nutrients needed to lower the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases.

Costs of energy rates are increasing, so homeowners are adding more insulation to reduce the amount of energy needed for heating and cooling, notes Mike Kuhn of Housemaster, a national home inspection agency. This may cause the amount of indoor pollutants to rise, since there is a lack of ventilation and fresh air indoors, particularly during cold weather when doors and windows tend to be shut. "Some of the most-dangerous indoor pollutants are gases, including radon, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde--emitted from pressed wood, carpeting, and furniture--asbestos, water vapor, and microorganisms, as well as chemicals we find in everyday cleaning agents, deodorizers, and aerosol sprays."

Laboratory-grown human neural stem cells, the building blocks of the brain, have been successfully transplanted into aged rats, which dramatically improved the rodents' cognitive function, reports Kiminobu Sigaya, assistant professor of psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago. He found that, in a spatial memory task, aged rats that had received the transplants were able to perform as well as younger rats without memory impairments.

Utilizing herbal products instead of conventional medicines to treat health problems and failing to inform a physician about the use can put people at risk for potentially dangerous drug interactions. Jose Rivera, assistant dean in the University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy, indicates that more and more residents along the U.S.-Mexican border are doing so. For example, 59% of the population in El Paso, Laredo, and Brownsville, Tex., use some type of herbal product, compared to the national average of 12%. Just 31% of patients taking home remedies ever report their use to a conventional health care provider.

Malaria kills about 2,000,000 people annually worldwide. Case Western University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio, researchers are developing a genetically altered mosquito that one day could be added to the arsenal against the disease. They have created a gene--SM1--in the laboratory which encodes a protein that, after injection into the embryo, becomes part of the insect's DNA. It binds to the epithelial surface of the mosquito's midgut, competing with the malaria parasite and inhibiting its development by about 80%. Parasites that fail to cross the midgut die.