The Medicine Bag NewsOK.com Blogging Community

A Vanderbuilt University study shows cockroaches go from moron to genius in the same day.

Studies like this make my job easy. Everybody loves to read about cockroach research. I’m no different.

Researchers discovered “dramatic daily variations” in the cockroach’s learning ability, according to a Vandy press release. The study was published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This is the first example of an insect whose ability to learn is controlled by its biological clock,” Terry L. Page, the professor of biological sciences who directed the project, said in the release. 

A handful of studies suggest mammals’ learning ability varies with the time of day.

“The Vanderbuilt researchers taught cockroaches to associate peppermint — a scent that they normally find slightly distasteful — with sugar water, causing them to favor it over vanilla, a scent they find universally appealing,” according to the release.

Here’s the good part.

The researchers trained cockroaches at different times in the 24-hour cycle and then tested them to see how long they remembered the association. They found that roaches trained during the evening retained the memory for days while those trained in the morning were “totally incapable” of forming new memories, although they could recall memories from other times.

Page suggested circadian rhythm could be influencing a number of senses beyond vision.

Jeff Raymond, Medical Writer

For all of you who obsessively spray alcohol and water at the gym or clean your hands with sanitizers, Canadian researchers have found what medical professionals already knew — old-fashioned soap and water works better than anything to clean your hands.

Hospital-acquired infections — called nosocomial infections — are a huge problem worldwide. One of the most difficult bugs to combat is Clostridium difficile. Michael Libman, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal studied the most effective ways to eliminate C. difficile from the hands of health care workers.

Researchers tested five hand-washing protocols that emulated hospital conditions as closely as possible, according to a McGill press release. After the hands of 10 volunteers were contaminated with the bacterium, they washed with regular soap and warm or cold water, antiseptic soap and warm water, an alcohol-based solution and a disinfectant towel.

“The results were striking: the protocols that involved washing with water eliminated more than 98 percent of the bacteria, while washing with an alcohol-based solution eliminated almost none! The protocol involving a disinfectant towel eliminated around 95 percent of bacteria,” according to the release.

Part of the challenge in controlling the bacterium is eliminating the resistant spores it produces. Alcohol eliminates “living” bacteria but not spores, the researchers postulated. The chemical action of soap and mechanical action of hand washing eliminates both. Alcohol rubs remain effective in killing bacteria but not spores.

And, by the way, soap is all antibacterial. So unless you get your soap from a hospital supply closet, washing your hands is more mechanical than chemical. And don’t rush it!

 Jeff Raymond, Medical Writer

Here’s a window into why tuberculosis is so devilishly hard to treat and eradicate.

The Sept. 7 “Bulletin of the World Health Organization” explains how researchers in Tomsk, Siberia, studied success and adherence to treatment among  a group of 237 Siberians.

The Russian Federation has been hit hard by TB, and Tomsk had one of the world’s highest rates of multi-drug-resistant TB.

Substance abuse was strongly correlated with non-adherence to treatment, researchers found.

No surprise to me, but this is documented, not conjecture.

Patients who began treatment in the hospital or were hospitalized during their treatment were more likely to develop drug-resistant TB.  Researchers speculated the patients harbored a drug-resistant strain that emerged upon treatment or contracted the strain while hospitalized.

I’m sure there are similar studies published elsewhere, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they say the same thing.

Drug-resistant TB and sloppy adherence or lack of adherence to treatment go hand in hand. While this study was interesting for looking at the correlation with alcohol use and other substance abuse, the same likely would apply to many of Americans who are most vulnerable to TB — especially IV drug users.

Although researchers are working in quicker-course TB drugs, the current drugs take months and must be taken regularly. In the past, sufferers were locked in sanatoriums. Today, they’re followed by health department personnel, not an easy task when the person is transient.

A positive point emerged from the study, too: Most patients completed treatment, and relatively few contracted drug-resistant TB.

 Something to think about.

Jeff Raymond, Medical Writer

A Florida State University study shows what we all thought was true but didn’t want to believe — good-looking people catch and keep our attention.

To quote a press release on the study:

“Whether we are seeking a mate or sizing up a potential rival, good-looking people capture our attention nearly instantaneously and render us temporarily helpless to turn our eyes away from them.”

Psychology professor Jon Maner compared the attraction to “magnetism” at the visual level. In technical terms, he calls it “attention adhesion.” He showed study participants pictures and then precisely judged reaction time for them to concentrate on something else.

Maner’s findings are published in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In three experiments, Maner and colleagues found that heterosexual men and women “fixated on highly attractive people within the first half of a second of seeing them.”

“Single folks ogled the opposite sex, of course, but those in committed relationships also checked people out, with one major difference: They were more interested in beautiful people of the same sex,” according to the release.  “If we’re interested in finding a mate, our attention gets quickly and automatically stuck on attractive members of the opposite sex,” Maner said. “If we’re jealous and worried about our partner cheating on us, attention gets quickly and automatically stuck on attractive people of our own sex because they are our competitors.”

The first study had 120 participants, while the second and third had 160 and 162, respectively.

Now men have an excuse when a pretty girl walks by — we couldn’t help but look.

Jeff Raymond, Medical Writer

OU Medical Center and OU Physicians will offer free prostate cancer screenings Saturday for men ages 40 to 70.

The screenings will be at the OU Physicians Building, 825 NE 10th St. Registration is required and is available by calling 271-5000.

The screening consists of Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) blood tests, funded by the Medical Center Volunteers Inc. and Digital Rectal Exams (DRE) performed by urologists.

Prostate cancer is the number one cancer affecting men in Oklahoma and is the second leading cause of death due to cancer in the United States. Each year, more than 500 Oklahoma men die from prostate cancer. The American Cancer Society recommends men 50 years old and older should have a screening once a year.

 Jeff Raymond, Medical Writer

As I cleaned out my e-mail inbox this morning, I came across a couple of interesting items.

USA Today reported:

Although health insurance premiums rose 6.1 percent this year, the lowest rate of increase since 1999, the jump still outpaced inflation and wage growth.

“The average cost of a family plan purchased by employers this year hit a new high, $12,106, according to a detailed annual survey of nearly 2,000 employers by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, a research group based in Menlo Park, Calif. Individual coverage premiums averaged $4,479,” USA Today reported.

And the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reports cholesterol-lowering blockbuster drug Lipitor ranked first, at almost $5 billion, in terms on total spending on prescription medicines by adults ages 18 to 64 in 2004. Zocor, a competing cholesterol drug, ranked fourth, at $2.3 billion.

Rounding out the top five were Nexium, at $2.7 billion; Prevacid, at $2.4 billion; and Zoloft, at $1.9 billion. Prevacid and Nexium reduce stomach acid, while Zoloft is an antidepressant.

For children ages 17 and under, the top five drugs were Singulair (asthma, allergies), Concerta (ADHD), Strattera (ADHD), Adderall (ADHD) and Zyrtec (allergies).

Does anyone notice a pattern here?

Jeff Raymond, Medical Writer

A recent policy brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation intriguingly dealt with the effects of well-documented medical insurance premium increases and cost sharing on senior citizens and young workers.

“This analysis examines the relative burdens of out-of-pocket spending on seniors and younger adults,” the Kaiser Web site said. “Seniors consistently spent a larger share of their income out of pocket on health care than younger people. Given the persistent differences between young and old, it suggests that even with Medicare’s prescription drug benefit, significantly narrowing the wide gap between seniors and younger adults in their out-of-pocket spending burdens is unlikely.”

Some things the report mentions:

• From 2000-05, average in-network deductibles for PPOs (as opposed to HMOs), almost doubled, while average monthly premiums for family coverage rose by two-thirds.
• During the same time frame, median (the point at which half of all families earn more and half earn less) family income rose by about 10 percent.
• During the same time frame, Medicare Part B premiums rose by 72 percent, while premiums rose by 35 percent for a popular “Medigap” plan.
• In 2003, median per-capita health care expenditures were five times higher for seniors than for others.

“Our findings document a persistent gap in financial burden between young and old which could have important implications for ongoing policy discussions in several areas, including the generosity of coverage for working age adults, rising health care costs, entitlements and more fundamental questions about the appropriateness of shifting more costs onto consumers,” the report states.

The main thing to keep in mind is that this cost growth shows no signs of stopping. Any thoughts? E-mail me below.

Jeff Raymond, Medical Writer