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Men’s Health News The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) joined with The Advertising Council today to launch a national public service campaign designed to raise awareness among middle-aged men about the importance of preventive medical testing.
Men are 25 percent less likely than women to have visited the doctor within the past year and are 38 percent more likely than women to have neglected their cholesterol tests (Source: AHRQ Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, 2005). Furthermore, men are 1.5 times more likely than women to die from heart disease, cancer and chronic lower respiratory diseases (Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2005).
The new campaign encourages men over 40 to learn which preventive screening tests they need to get and when they need to get them. This campaign complements AHRQ’s existing efforts toward improving the safety and quality of health care and promoting patient involvement in their own health care, including the "Questions are the Answer" campaign launched with the Ad Council in March 2007 and the "Superheroes" Spanish-language campaign launched in March 2008.
"We hope this campaign will inform men about the importance of prevention and show them that they should work with their health care providers to find out what they should do to stay healthy," said AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D.
Buy generic fosamax The campaign highlights the work of the AHRQ-sponsored U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which is an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention that systematically reviews the evidence of effectiveness and develops recommendations for clinical preventive services. "By taking steps to prevent disease and stay healthy, men can live longer and more productive lives," said Task Force Chair Ned Calonge, M.D., M.P.H. "Prevention is a decision that includes participating in regular physical activity, eating a healthy diet and finding out which preventive medical tests are right for you."
Created pro bono for the Ad Council by McCann Erickson Detroit, the public service advertising campaign includes new television, radio, print and Web advertising featuring the theme "Real Men Wear Gowns." The lighthearted ads incorporate family as a key motivating factor for men to take a more active role in preventive health. They show the target audience that being a real man means taking care of themselves (and their health) in order to be there for their families and in the future. Ad Council research showed this was a strong motivating factor for men. To view the PSAs, visit
"Our research conducted during the development of this campaign found that despite their increased health risks men aren’t taking preventive steps and are often only visiting their doctors when they experience symptoms," said Peggy Conlon, President & CEO of the Ad Council. "We are proud to continue our initiative with AHRQ with this wonderful series of PSAs designed to motivate men to take a more active role in their preventive health care.
The campaign encourages men to visit a comprehensive Web site. The site provides the recommended ages for preventive testing (as well as a list of tests), a quiz designed to test your knowledge of preventive health care, tips for talking with your doctor, a glossary of consumer health terms, and links to online resources where you can find more medical information.
Public service advertisements are being distributed to approximately 33,000 media stations nationwide this week. Per the Ad Council’s donated media model, all of the new public service advertisements will air and run in advertising time and space donated by the media.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality () is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. AHRQ’s mission is to improve the quality, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of health care for all Americans. AHRQ’s research helps people make more informed decisions and improve the quality of health care services.
The Ad Council is a private, non-profit organization that marshals talent from the advertising and communications industries, the facilities of the media, and the resources of the business and non-profit communities to produce, distribute and promote public service campaigns on behalf of non-profit organizations and government agencies in issue areas such as improving the quality of life for children, preventive health, education, community well-being, environmental preservation and strengthening families.
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Posted by poster on August 5th, 2008 under Uncategorized •
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Men’s Health News
Encapsulating magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles within a silica shell has yielded a new multifunctional nanoparticle that has the potential to image, target, and treat tumors with water-insoluble anticancer drugs. A report of this work appears in the journal ACS Nano.
Jeffery Zink, Ph.D., led a research team at the University of California, Los Angeles, that created the new nanoparticles, which contain an iron oxide nanoparticle core and a porous silica shell. The investigators coated the resulting nanoparticles with folic acid, a tumor targeting agent, and a fluorescent dye to enable optical imaging. Soaking the nanoparticles in a solvent containing either paclitaxel or camptothecin, both of which are poorly soluble in water and difficult to deliver to tumors as a result, resulted in significant drug loading through the pores in the silica shell. Buy diflucan without prescription Tests showed that the drug-loaded nanoparticles were stable for at least 2 months.
Experiments with pancreatic cancer cells demonstrated that the targeted nanoparticles were taken up rapidly by cancer cells, whereas untargeted control nanoparticles were not. The researchers were able to quantify nanoparticle uptake using both MRI and optical spectroscopy thanks to the iron oxide nanoparticle core and fluorescent dyes, respectively. The targeted nanoparticles were also more toxic to the tumor cells than were untargeted nanoparticles.
This work, which was supported in part by the NCI, is detailed in the paper "Multifunctional Inorganic Nanoparticles for Imaging, Targeting, and Drug Delivery." An abstract of this paper is available at the journal’s Web site. View abstract
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Posted by poster on August 4th, 2008 under Uncategorized Tags: stress •
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Real or perceived threats can trigger the well-known "fight or flight response" in humans and other animals. Adrenaline flows, and the stressed individual’s heart pumps faster, the muscles work harder, the brain sharpens and non-essential systems shut down. The whole organism responds in concert in order to survive.
At the molecular level, it has been widely assumed that, in single-celled organisms, each cell perceives its environment — and responds to stress conditions — individually, each on its own to protect itself. Likewise, it had been thought that cells in multicellular organisms respond the same way, but a new study by scientists at Northwestern University reports otherwise.
The Northwestern researchers demonstrated something very unexpected in their studies of the worm C. elegans: Authority is taken away from individual cells and given to two specialized neurons to sense temperature stress and organize an integrated molecular response for the entire organism.
The study, with results that show a possible parallel with the orchestrated "fight or flight response," is published in the May 9 issue of the journal Science.
"This was surprising — that two neurons control the response of the 957 other cells in C. elegans," said Richard I. Morimoto, Bill and Gayle Cook Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Cell Biology in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He led the research team.
"It is well established that single cells respond to physiological stress on their own, cell by cell. Now we’ve shown this is not the case when individual cells become organized to form a multicellular organism. Now it is all for one — an integrated system where the cells and tissues only respond to stress when the neuronal signal says to respond as an organism."
The findings have implications for new ways of thinking about diseases that affect the stress pathways, says Morimoto. Neurons that sense the environment govern such important pathways as stress response and molecular chaperones, which play a significant role in aging and neurodegenerative diseases.
In their experiments, the researchers genetically blocked the two thermosensory neurons (known as AFDs) and their ability to sense temperature and discovered there was no response to stress in any cell in the organism without them. (C. elegans is a transparent roundworm whose genome, or complete genetic sequence, is known and is a favorite organism of biologists.)
"This shows, for the first time, that the molecular response to physiological stress is organized by specific neurons and suggests similarities to the neurohormonal response to stress," said Morimoto, who was the first to clone a human heat shock gene in 1985. "The two neurons control how all the other cells in the animal sense and respond to physiological stress."
The team also checked the "machinery" of the 957 other cells (those that are not thermosensory neurons) in the mutant animals and determined that the individual cells could sense an increase in temperature. But, because the thermosensory neurons were not working properly and sending signals, the cells did not initiate a heat shock response. No signal, no response.
The researchers proposed a model whereby this loss of cell autonomy serves to integrate behavioral, metabolic and stress-related responses to establish an organismal response to environmental change.
The researchers would predict, considering the study’s results, that other organisms including humans might have similar classes of neurons that organize and orchestrate a response to stress — a central neuronal control switch for regulating temperature and the expression of genes that protect the health of proteins.
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Buy lexapro without prescription Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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In addition to Morimoto, other authors of the paper, titled "Regulation of the Cellular Heat Shock Response in Caenorhabditis elegans by Thermosensory Neurons," are Veena Prahlad, a postdoctoral fellow, and Tyler Cornelius, an undergraduate student, both from Northwestern.
Source: Megan Fellman
Northwestern University
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Posted by poster on August 4th, 2008 under Uncategorized Tags: blood, hypertension, pressure •
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Focused and inexpensive measures improved high blood pressure control and treatment among veterans, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association’s 9th Scientific Forum on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research in Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke.
Researchers observed 53,936 Veteran Affairs (VA) patients for 39 weeks (21 weeks before and 18 weeks after the interventions) during outpatient visits for hypertension. Of the group, 33,967 (63 percent) reached their blood pressure goal. The proportion that reached their goal varied over time: pre intervention - 61.8 percent reached goal vs. post intervention - 64.3 percent.
Overall, absolute blood pressure control improved 2.5 percent during the intervention period, translating into another 1,349 persons who achieved control over hypertension.
"Over a four-month period we were able to highlight the importance of blood pressure control with Veteran Affairs Hospital providers and patients and make some small but significant changes," said Christianne Roumie, M.D., M.P.H., lead author of the study and staff physician for the Veterans Affairs Tennessee Valley Healthcare System.
Because hypertension is the most commonly treated chronic condition in VA hospitals, the chief of staff created a performance improvement committee to optimize local hypertension care, Roumie said.
High blood pressure, or hypertension, in an adult is systolic pressure of 140 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) or higher and/or diastolic pressure of 90 mm Hg or higher. High blood pressure increases the risk of heart attack, angina, stroke, kidney failure, peripheral artery disease (PAD) and the development of fatty deposits in arteries (atherosclerosis). Buy generic cialis Heart failure risk also increases due to the extra workload that high blood pressure places on the heart.
"For patients to effectively manage a chronic illness, such as hypertension, they need information that’s easy to understand and they need to be involved in the decision-making process," said Roumie, an assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
Researchers identified four interventions:
Improve measurement and documentation of blood pressure by using a nursing protocol.
Initiate patient education efforts at visits and give patients a blood pressure wallet card so they could track their own blood pressures and goals.
Distribute treatment guidelines on pocket cards to providers and display posters outlining treatment algorithms.
Initiate audit/feedback of the provider and firm’s performance.
Roumie said reducing blood pressure and getting patients to their goal has the potential to reduce:
stroke disease and death by 42 percent;
heart disease by 14 percent to 20 percent; and
heart failure by 30 percent to 50 percent.
The estimated 2005 prevalence for high blood pressure in the United States was 73 million (about 34 million men and 39 million women). One in three U.S. adults has high blood pressure, according to the American Heart Association’s Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics - 2008 Update.
Benefits derived from the study can be implemented at other hospitals both VA and non VA; however, each healthcare system "must do some work on the front end to understand what barriers to care exist, specifically, for their own system," Roumie said.
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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The research was funded through the local VA medical center.
Co-authors are: Neesha N. Choma, M.D.; Robert L. Huang, M.D., M.P.H.; Robert S. Dittus, M.D., M.P.H.; and Kathy E. Burnham, R.N., M.A., B.S.N.
The American Heart Association’s high blood pressure Web site features educational information and resources that patients can use to help achieve their blood pressure goal, including a link to the Blood Pressure Management Center of Microsoft’s HealthVault. For information about high blood pressure and to access the Blood Pressure Management Center, visit
Statements and conclusions of abstract authors presented at American Heart Association/American Stroke Association scientific meetings are solely those of the abstract authors and do not necessarily reflect association policy or position. The association makes no representation or warranty as to their accuracy or reliability.
NR08-1055 (QCOR 08/Roumie)
Abstract 161
Source: Karen Astle
American Heart Association
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