Month: November 2013

Officials ink deal to create medical school in Las Vegas

Nevada’s university leaders have signed a partnership agreement to begin establishing a new M.D.-granting medical school in Southern Nevada.

The agreement, or memorandum of understanding, outlines a vision for UNLV and the University of Nevada School of Medicine at UNR to work together to create a four-year medical school at UNLV that would mint medical doctors.

The UNLV medical school would open under the University of Nevada medical school’s accreditation, but will eventually become its own independently operated, separately accredited and financially-sustainable medical school.

Nevada System of Higher Education Chancellor Dan Klaich, UNR President Marc Johnson, University of Nevada School of Medicine Dean Tom Schwenk and UNLV President Neal Smatresk signed the agreement on Wednesday. Nevada regents are expected to vote on the agreement at their December board meeting.

“Increasing the medical education and health care options for Nevadans has always been a top priority for the Nevada System of Higher Education,” Klaich said in a statement. “I’m proud of the collaboration between our two universities and their efforts to bring these long-discussed plans from the drawing board to reality.”

Earlier this year, Nevada’s higher education leaders — led by Regent Mark Doubrava — directed UNLV and UNR to begin developing plans for a UNLV medical school while continuing to develop the medical school at UNR. UNLV’s faculty senate and graduate student government also supported plans for an on-campus medical school.

Currently, UNR operates the University of Nevada School of Medicine; students complete their core classes in Reno and can complete their clinical training in Reno and at University Medical Center in Las Vegas.

Proponents of a UNLV medical school have long argued that the current model for medical education in Nevada has not served Southern Nevada, by solving its shortage of physicians. Las Vegas is the largest metropolitan area in the United States without an allopathic medical school.

Over the years, Nevada’s higher education leaders have proposed different ways to expand the current medical school’s footprint in Southern Nevada by purchasing a Las Vegas home for the medical dean and kicking around the idea for a $220 million academic medical center at UNLV.

Ultimately, regents decided upon creating a separate medical school for Southern Nevada that could educate high-quality physicians, spur new medical businesses and make Las Vegas a mecca for medical tourism.

“We’ve known for a long time that it is imperative that we build the health care capacity of Southern Nevada,” UNLV’s Smatresk said in a statement. “This collaborative agreement is a substantial step forward and offers a path that effectively utilizes the resources of two great institutions to address our critical needs in health care.”

The signed partnership agreement between UNR and UNLV would not only kickstart a second medical school in Nevada but help the two universities attract federal funding for medical research that would benefit northern, southern and rural communities.

“The ultimate goal is to best apply our resources and steward the investment placed in our organizations to result in improved medical care, health care services and quality of life for Nevadans,” UNR’s Johnson said in a statement.

Developing a Southern Nevada medical school will require a collaborative partnership not only between UNR and UNLV, but also among UMC, Las Vegas hospitals and the medical community. All parties must coordinate designing, financing and building a medical facility that will house clinical research and medical science training.

Building a Southern Nevada medical school will require “substantial incremental funding” from state and private sources, according to the partnership agreement. The construction cost for the UNLV medical school is expected to cost about $80 million.

The agreement calls for funding to be maintained to the UNR medical school and for more funding to create fellowships and residencies to keep physician interns in Nevada, where they are more likely to settle down and open a local practice.

“The quality of life and economic development of the state are dependent on our ability to educate more medical students, train more residents and fellows in more specialties and subspecialties, and improve the quality of care through clinical research,” Schwenk said in a statement. “This agreement is a huge step forward in accomplishing those goals.”

Earlier this year, UNLV’s Lincy Institute commissioned Tripp Umbach, a top national health care consulting firm, to conduct an economic impact study for a Southern Nevada medical school.

Tripp Umbach estimated that a UNLV School of Medicine could have a $1.9 billion total economic impact to Nevada, including the creation of 5,353 jobs and and $94 million in tax revenue by 2030. That represents six times the current economic impact of the UNR medical school, at $285 million.

The firm also recommended that UNLV medical school begin in 2016 with an initial class of 60 medical students, and grow to an incoming class of 120 students by 2030. To support its new medical school graduates and to retain them in-state, Tripp Umbach also advised that Las Vegas must create a minimum of 240 new residency positions.

In the coming months, higher education leaders will discuss the Tripp Umbach recommendations and set a timetable for the construction, programming, financing and accreditation of a UNLV medical school.

Source: Las vegas Sun

 

Burning Fats In The Winter With Chili Peppers

When you wake up in the dark at 7:00 am in the morning, you know that winter is here. For me, this is the time of the year when I crave for hot spicy stews every meal. But like most girls, I am afraid of gaining weight from eating so much and constantly find myself on the dilemma of whether to dig in or not. If you find yourself in the same situation as me, here is the good news! Research has found that low temperatures and chili peppers could help burn our body fat!

Researchers from the Hokkaido University of Japan recently found that spending time in cold weather and consuming chili peppers allow a person to burn more energy because low temperature and the chemicals in chili peppers seem to stimulate and increase the activity of brown fat cells.

There are two types of fat in our body, namely the brown adipose tissue and thewhite adipose tissue. While brown fat cells burn off energy, white fat cells store energy and are responsible for making some people fat. Brown fat cells appear red-brown because they contain many mitochondria, which produce a large amount of energy in the form of ATP. And white fat cells appear white, or pale, under the microscope. Below is a clip which I found very clear on explaining the differences between the two different fats.

In the Japanese study, eight subjects with little brown fat tissue were recruited and exposed to a low temperature of 17 °C for two hours daily for six weeks. Comparing with the control participants who went about their normal lives during the experiment, the study found that the eight subjects who were exposed to low temperature had an average of 5% less body fat and less white fat cells. They also burned on average more energy than those in the control group.

In addition, the researchers studied people who ate chili peppers, which contain capsinoids, or substances that give chili peppers the hot taste. It was also found the participants burned more energy than the control group when exposed to cold. This result was consistent with a previous study which found that Ingesting capsinoids increased the levels of fat breakdown in our body, showing that capsinoid plays a pivotal role in fat reduction in mildly obese individuals.

Even though the reduction of white adipose tissue from cold exposure was somewhat expected, it was not expected that capsinoid in chili pepper would have an impact on energy and fat metabolism. The researchers concluded the study by stating that “capsinoids appear to [simulate] brown fat in the same way as cold, by ‘capturing’ the same cellular system that the body’s nervous system uses to increase heat production.”

While chemicals like capsinoids, which stimulate brown fat cells, demonstrate potential application in obesity treatments in the future, it is comforting to know that eating a bit more hot spicy stew than normal will not have a significant impact weight for now!

Source: Communicating science

Helmets May Never Prevent Concussions

A third of Americans said they’re less likely to allow their boys to play football because they understand the head injury risks it poses, a poll showed last week. So it’s no wonder that helmet companies are racing to reassure parents that their products can lessen that risk. Meanwhile, researchers are analyzing whether helmet technology really plays a role in reducing concussions.

A current study of high school players found no differences among brand or age of helmet, said study co-author and University of Wisconsin — Madison Assistant Professor of sports medicine Alison Brooks. She will present the abstract at an American Academy of Pediatrics conference in Orlando today.

What happens to a player’s brain during hard tackles, and what can be done to keep the athletes safe?

“We were surprised that there was not a statistically significant difference in concussion incidence when comparing older age helmets (purchased in 2008 or older) to newer helmets,” she said.

But Stefan Duma, who has studied the Virginia Tech football team for years as head of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, says that there are big differences among helmets. His research led to a rating system, the Summation of Tests for Analysis of Risk (STAR) ratings, that ranks helmets from 1 to 5. He’s guessing that most of the players in Brooks’s study were already wearing quality helmets.

“The important thing is, there’s a big difference between the bad and the good,” he said. “There’s a big difference between a 1-star helmet and a 4-star. There’s not so much difference between a  4-star and 5-star.”

Analyzing nine years of data from Virginia Tech, in which players wore helmets equipped with sensors, Duma’s team found an 85 percent reduced risk of concussion in a 4-star helmet vs. a 1-star helmet.

Brooks’ study will factor helmet ratings in in the next year of research, which involves 1,332 players from 36 high schools, she said. Brooks also found that brands of mouth guards probably aren’t important in terms of reducing concussion risk: Players who were generic, school-issued mouth guards actually had fewer concussions than those who wore specialized mouth guards.

Helmets alone won’t solve the concussion problem. That’s partly because of the nature of the brain’s anatomy.

“The anatomy of the brain floating freely inside the skull and the subsequent mechanism of injury will make it difficult to significantly reduce concussion risk using helmet technology alone,” Brooks said. “I think focus could be better spent on rule enforcement and coaching education on tackling technique to limit/avoid contact to the head, perhaps limiting contact practices, and behavior change about the intent of tackling to injure or ‘punish’ the opponent.’”

Duma agrees that future technology probably won’t change concussion rates in football much more. Current technology in football helmets is “about as good as we can get,” he said.

Still, sports in which helmets haven’t been focused on to the same extent may have more room to benefit. Duma’s team will present a rating system for hockey helmets this fall, and they plan on rating lacrosse helmets next. And new technology, perhaps in the form of a headband, may be on the horizon for youth soccer.

Source: Daily me

 

Contaminated spices can cause salmonella

Imported spices are contaminated at a rate twice that of other imported food, according to an analysis by the Food and Drug Administration.

Not only were 7 percent of the spices it examined contaminated with the toxic bacteria salmonella, but 12 percent contained parts of insects, rodent hair or other filth. Salmonella is a bacterium that occurs mainly in the gut, especially a serotype causing food poisoning.

The agency’s findings “are a wake-up call” to spice producers, Jane M. Van Doren, a food and spice official at the F.D.A., told The New York Times. “It means: ‘Hey, you haven’t solved the problems.’”

During the three-year examination, the agency found more than 80 different types of salmonella. Many shipments were refused entry into the U.S.

There are almost 1.2 million annual salmonella illnesses in the United States every year, but the illness is hard to track back to spices because people don’t always keep track or remember what spices they’ve consumed. And because the amount of a spice consumed is so small, there is less of a chance of becoming ill.

How Does Salmonella Get Into Eggs?

Most of the spices eaten in the United States are imported. They come from a variety of farms and countries. Almost a quarter of spices, oils and food colors come from India. Mexico and India had the highest rates of contamination. Officials suspect that insects often find their way into spices during storage.

The FDA is “not recommending that consumers stay away from spices,” Michael Taylor, FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods, told NBC. New safety rules, he said, should help reduce the problem.

Source: Business day

Woman hosts dancing party before surgery

Undergoing a double mastectomy can be a scary experience.  Yet for one woman, her surgery became a much more upbeat occasion.

Breast cancer patient Deborah Cohan checked into Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco on Wednesday to have both of her breasts removed. But before she went under the knife, she hosted a dance party with her team of doctors.

In a now viral video, Cohan and her doctors can be seen smiling as they dance to Beyonce’s “Get Me Bodied” in the operating room.

Oh her CaringBridge site, Cohan also asked family and friends to organize their own dance party flash mobs in the hallway of her hospital room the day after her surgery.

“I have visions of nurses, patients, my community members (and maybe a few surgery residents) transforming the solemn space of a hospital into a vibrant healing ward,” she wrote.

Several other videos of Cohan’s family and friends dancing in the halls of Mount Zion have been posted to YouTube.  On her site, Cohan even encouraged people she did not know to send her pictures or videos of themselves dancing, so that she could make a dancing montage.

“Nothing brings me greater joy than catalyzing others to dance, move, be in their bodies,” she wrote.

Source: airing news

 

Giant Ball of Fungus Removed from Farmer’s Lung

A man who suffered from a bloody cough that persisted for more than a year was surprised to find that the cause was a giant ball of fungus growing in his lung, according to a recent report of his case

The man, a farmworker in Italy, may have contracted a fungal infection, called aspergilloma, while working in the fields. For a year, he struggled with not only the cough but also fever and weight loss. His symptoms hadn’t improved despite several courses of antibiotics, according to the report published Oct. 24 in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

Aspergilloma, a fungal infection that mainly infects the lungs, is relatively uncommon, and this particular clump of fungus was extremely large, at nearly 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) wide.

“My experience is very large, and it’s the biggest I’ve ever seen,” said study co-author Dr. Marcello Migliore, a thoracic surgeon at the University of Catania in Italy.

Aspergilloma enters the lungs through the respiratory tract. It creates a cavity inside the lungs, and then a ball of fungus grows inside that space. The fungus typically infects people with suppressed immune systems or lung problems such as tuberculosis. If left untreated, aspergillomas can cause pneumonia and death, Migliore said. (7 Devastating Infectious Diseases)

When the 42-year-old farmworker, a chronic smoker, initially came to see doctors, he had lost 77 pounds (35 kilograms) over the previous a year. Despite taking antibiotics for several months, the man’s symptoms worsened.

A computed tomography (CT) scan revealed a 2.75-inch by 2.5-inch (7 cm by 6.5 cm) “vegetative” mass in the left upper lobe of his lung. Depending on whether the man was lying down or sitting up, the position of the lesion moved.

Still, the doctors didn’t know at that point what was causing the cavity, though the CT scans did reveal a suggestive halo around the lesion that is a signature of the fungus.

“When there is a large cavity like that, medical therapy does not do anything, so we must remove it,” Migliore told LiveScience.

When Migliore performed the surgery, he realized it was a large ball of fungus — the biggest he had ever seen. (Image of the fungus)

When the doctors followed up with the man 16 months after the surgery, they found he had improved greatly, and no longer had any troublesome symptoms.

“Now that half of the lung is away, things are going well, he is now happy,” Migliore said.

Source: Discovery news

Is Medical Education in a Bubble Market?

The costs of medical education must be reduced as part of efforts to rein in health care costs more generally, according to a Perspective published online this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The currently high costs of medical education – which at some schools rise above $60,000 per year – are sustainable only if physician salaries remain high, which the authors, led by a physician from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, say is less likely because of efforts to reduce health care costs.

 

Noting that students leave medical school with debt that often exceeds $150,000, the authors argue: “If we want to keep health care costs down and still have access to well-qualified physicians, we need to keep the cost of creating those physicians down by changing the way that physicians are trained. From college through licensure and credentialing, our annual physician-production costs are high, and they are made higher by the long time we devote to training.”

 

“People wonder whether we are in a bubble market in medical education,” says lead author David A. Asch, MD, MBA, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Health Care Innovation at Penn Medicine.  In bubble markets, such as the recent US housing market and the dotcom bubble of 2000, prices rise based on speculation rather than intrinsic value, as people buy houses or stocks with the hope of reselling them to those with even more optimistic views of their valuation. When clearer thinking returns, those who haven’t sold are left having overpaid, holding an asset they cannot unload.  “In the case of medical education, students buy their education from medical schools and resell that education in the form of services to patients.  Medical education can remain expensive only so long as there are patients, insurers, and employers who are willing to pay high prices for health care. But if prices for physician services decline, then the cost of medical education will have to decline too, or people won’t be willing to pay for medical school in the first place,” Asch says.

 

The authors warn that high debt-to-income ratios drive students away from less financially rewarding fields.  “Debt-to-income ratios reveal how much a student has to go into the hole financially for education compared to what a graduating student might earn,” says Asch.  “For example, it costs approximately the same to become an orthopedist, psychiatrist, or primary care physician, but orthopedists earn much more.”

 

That might suggest that there is already a medical education bubble for psychiatry and primary care, but as bad as the debt-to-income ratios might be for those fields, they are even worse for some other fields outside of medicine.  The authors note that veterinary medicine is closer to a bubble market situation, which could burst when potential students recognize that the high costs of becoming a veterinarian aren’t matched by high income later.

 

Source: Penn News

Five tips for healthy and strong bones

Eating a diet rich in calcium and vitamin D is very important to keep your bones healthy and strong. Human bones which are lost and then rebuilt in tiny amounts throughout life attain peak bone density by the age of 30. However, post 30, one tends to lose slightly more bone mass than one gains.

To have a healthy bone mass and to prevent conditions like osteoporosis it is important to eat healthy. Here are a few tips:

  1. Boost calcium consumption: Calcium is an essential mineral for the proper development of teeth and bones. Dairy products that include yogurt, cheese, milk and green leafy vegetables like spinach and collard greens are a great source of calcium.
  2. Get some sunshine: Including only calcium rich food will not help improve bone density as the body won’t absorb the calcium until and unless you have enough Vitamin D.
    Sunlight is the best and natural source of vitamin D – also called the ‘sunshine vitamin’ since it s formed in the skin through exposure to ultraviolet rays from the sun. Around 15 minutes of sun exposure is enough to provide the required amount of vitamin D.
    One can even boost Vitamin D by eating sea foods like shrimp, sardines, tuna, salmon; fortified cereals and egg yolks.
  3. Keep a check on protein intake: Too much of anything is not good. And this holds true for protein as well, which otherwise plays an important role in building healthy and strong bones. Excess of protein changes the pH balance in the body. This creates an acidic environment which can result in bone loss.
  4. Cut back on salt: Most of us consume much more than the recommended 2300 milligrams of sodium per day. A high intake of sodium means, more calcium is wasted through urine and sweat. Excessive sodium intake is also a risk factor for bone fragility.
  5. Go easy on caffeine, soda: Too much of caffeine can interfere with the body`s ability to absorb calcium. The more caffeine you consume, higher is the amount of calcium pulled into the urine. Phosphorus, in the form of flavouring agent phosphoric acid in soda also interferes with calcium absorption. Hence, moderation is the key.

Source: Zee News

 

How 17th Century Fraud Gave Rise To Bright Orange Cheese

The news from Kraft last week that the company is ditching two artificial dyes in some versions of its macaroni and cheese products left me with a question.

Why did we start coloring cheeses orange to begin with? Turns out there’s a curious history here.

In theory, cheese should be whitish — similar to the color of milk, right?

Well, not really. Centuries ago in England, lots of cheeses had a natural yellowish-orange pigment. The cheese came from the milk of certain breeds of cows, such as Jersey and Guernsey. Their milk tends to be richer in color from beta-carotene in the grass they eat.

So, when the orange pigment transferred to the cow’s milk, and then to the cheese, it was considered a mark of quality.

But here’s where the story gets interesting.

Cheese expert Paul Kindstedt of the University of Vermont explains that back in the 17th century, many English cheesemakers realized that they could make more money if they skimmed off the cream — to sell it separately or make butter from it.

But in doing so, most of the color was lost, since the natural orange pigment is carried in the fatty cream.

So, to pass off what was left over — basically low-fat cheese made from white milk — as a high-quality product, the cheesemakers faked it.

“The cheesemakers were initially trying to trick people to mask the white color [of their cheese],” explains Kindstedt.

They began adding coloring from saffron, marigold, carrot juice and later, annatto, which comes from the seeds of a tropical plant. (It’s also what Kraft will use to color its new varieties of macaroni and cheese.)

The devious cheesemakers of the 17th century used these colorings to pass their products off as the full-fat, naturally yellowish-orange cheese that Londoners had come to expect.

The tradition of coloring cheese then carried over in the U.S. Lots of cheesemakers in Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and New York have a long history of coloring cheddar.

The motivation was part tradition, part marketing to make their cheeses stand out. There was another reason, too: It helped cheesemakers achieve a uniform color in their cheeses.

But Kindstedt says it’s not a tradition that ever caught on in New England dairy farms.

“Here in New England there was a disdain for brightly colored cheese,” Kindstedt says.

And that’s why to this day, we still see lots of naturally white cheddar cheese from places such as Vermont.

With the boom in the artisanal food movement, we’re starting to see more cheese produced from grass-fed cows.

And as a result, we may notice the butterlike color in summer cheeses — similar to what the 17th century Londoners ate.

“We absolutely see the color changes when the cows transition onto pasture in early May,” cheesemaker Nat Bacon of Shelburne Farms in Vermont wrote to us in an email. He says it’s especially evident “in the whey after we cut the curd, and also in the finished cheese. Both get quite golden in color, kind of like straw, with the beta-carotenes the cows are eating in the fresh meadow grasses.”

Source: npr

 

Cow’s milk may harbour gastric cancer cure

A new research has indicated that a peptide fragment derived from cow’s milk, known as lactoferricin B25 (LFcinB25), exhibited potent anticancer capability against human stomach cancer cell cultures.

Wei-Jung Chen, PhD, of the Department of Biotechnology and Animal Science of National Ilan University, Taiwan Republic of China evaluated the effects of three peptide fragments derived from lactoferricin B, a peptide in milk that has antimicrobial properties.

Only one of the fragments, LFcinB25 reduced the survival of human AGS (Gastric Adenocarcinoma) cells in a dose-dependent and time-dependent manner.

Under a microscope the investigators could see that after an hour of exposure to the gastric cancer cells, LFcinB25 migrated to the cell membrane of the AGS cells, and within 24 hours the cancer cells had shrunken in size and lost their ability to adhere to surfaces.

In the early stages of exposure, LFcinB25 reduced cell viability through both apoptosis (programmed cell death) and autophagy (degradation and recycling of obsolete or damaged cell parts). At later stages, apoptosis appeared to dominate, possibly through caspase-dependent mechanisms, and autophagy waned.

The research also suggested a target, Beclin-1, which may enhance LFcinB25’s cytotoxic action. Beclin-1 is a protein in humans that plays a central role in autophagy, tumour growth, and degeneration of neurons.

“Optimization of LFcinB using various strategies to enhance further selectivity is expected to yield novel anticancer drugs with chemotherapeutic potential for the treatment of gastric cancer,” Dr. Chen said.

The study is published in the Journal of Dairy Science.

Source; deccan chronicle

 

Cow’s milk

lactoferricin B25

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