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NEWS:
Adopting Pediatric Readiness Standards Improves Survival In Hospital Emergency Departments
Emergency departments that have the highest levels of coordination of health care, personnel, procedures and medical equipment needed to care for ill and injured children have far higher rates of survival than hospitals with low readiness, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Researchers found that more than 1,400 children’s deaths may have been prevented if hospital emergency departments had adopted national pediatric care readiness standards as laid out by the National Pediatric Readiness Project. The six-year study of 983 emergency departments in 11 states followed nearly 800,000 children.
The National Pediatric Readiness Project was established to ensure that all emergency departments have the coordination of health care, personnel, procedures and medical equipment needed to care for ill and injured children. According to the project’s checklist(link is
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Low-Grade Inflammation May Cause Arterial Stiffness And Preclinical Atherosclerosis In Otherwise Healthy Adolescents
Early vascular damage and atherosclerosis in adolescents may be caused by low-grade inflammation, a paper published in the Journal of Applied Physiology concludes. The study was conducted in collaboration between the University of British Columbia in Canada, the University of Bristol in the UK, the University of Exeter in the UK, the University of Illinois in the US, and the University of Eastern Finland.
In adults, it is known that low-grade inflammation is a major cause of circulatory, musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal, and nervous system diseases and it can also get worse due to ageing and poor lifestyle habits. However, in healthy growing children and adolescents, it remains unclear whether low-grade inflammation contributes to premature vascular damage.
“Contrary to some earlier findings, we now know that premature inflammation-induced vascular damage in adolescents, such as highe
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Why A High Fat Diet Could Reduce The Brain’s Ability To Regulate Food Intake
Regularly eating a high fat/calorie diet could reduce the brain’s ability to regulate calorie intake. New research in rats published in The Journal of Physiology found that after short periods of being fed a high fat/high calorie diet, the brain adapts to react to what is being ingested and reduces the amount of food eaten to balance calorie intake. The researchers from Penn State College of Medicine, US, suggest that calorie intake is regulated in the short-term by cells called astrocytes (large star-shaped cells in the brain that regulate many different functions of neurons in the brain) that control the signalling pathway between the brain and the gut. Continuously eating a high fat/calorie diet seems to disrupt this signalling pathway.
Understanding the brain’s role and the complex mechanisms that lead to overeating, a behaviour that can lead to weight gain and obesity, could help
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Balancing Spousal Loss And Career Is A One-Two Punch For Health Of Widowed Individuals
Coping with the loss of a spouse while dealing with the 9-to-5 grind can take a serious toll on the health of widows or widowers, according to new research from the Biobehavioral Mechanisms Explaining Disparities Lab (BMED) at Rice University.
“Employment and Family Income in Psychological and Immune Outcomes During Bereavement ” examines the mental and physical health of individuals who lost a spouse three months prior to being surveyed for the study. The researchers were specifically interested in how employment status and income affected health outcomes of surviving partners.
The researchers found that surviving spouses who worked had overall higher perceived stress levels and bodily inflammation (tracked through blood work looking at levels of specific markers of inflammation) than retirees who had lost their partner. High levels of stress and chronic inflammation are a good indica
