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Help! Our hospitals are filthy!
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According to an article by Betsy McCaughey in the U.S. News &World Report Best Hospitals issue hospitals in the U.S. are not inspected for cleanliness.
I would love to hear what others have to say about this – especially health and medical bloggers. Does the article seem accurate to you? Reasonable? Overreactive?
Personally I found it alarming, but I’m a scientist and I don’t work in medicine so maybe I just don’t understand the situation well enough. Please enlighten me.
Here are a few quotes from the article:
“The Joint Commission, which inspects and accredits U.S. hospitals, doesn’t measure cleanliness. Neither do most state health departments, nor the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
“Sad to say, cleanliness is not a priority for hospital administrators or most medical professionals. “
“A new University of Maryland study shows that 65 percent of physicians and other medical professionals admitted they hadn’t washed their lab coat in at least a week, even though they knew it was dirty. Nearly 16 percent said they hadn’t put on a clean lab coat in at least a month.”
“In a recent Johns Hopkins Hospital study, 26 percent of supply cabinets were contaminated with a dangerous bacterium, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and 21 percent with another stubborn germ, vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE).”
“Stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, and EKG wires are used on successive patients without being cleaned. Studies published as long ago as 1978 warn that blood pressure cuffs frequently carry live bacteria, including MRSA, and are a source of infection. In a newly released British report, one third of blood pressure cuffs were found to be contaminated with Clostridium difficile, a germ that can cause lethal diarrhea if it enters via the mouth. “
“Hospitals once tested surfaces for bacteria, but in 1970, the CDC and the American Hospital Association advised them to stop, saying testing was unnecessary and not cost effective.”
“Asked whether bacterial levels should be measured, Wise [Robert Wise, Joint Commission] answers: “You can only ask hospitals to do so much.”
For more information read the article: Why Aren’t Hospitals Cleaner? and visit the web site of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (chaired by the author of the article).
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Related Posts:
- This week in health and science – 8/3/07
- Friday Favorites
- Women’s Health Weekly Review: June 22 – June 28
July 27, 2007
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This week in health and science – 7/27/07
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(With so many good blog posts and news stories out there – more than I can write about – I’m going to test posting once a week with highlights of the stories that caught my attention. Hopefully you will find them interesting too!)
Allergies
The journal Allergy reports that a new sublingual immunotherapy, called ‘SLIT’, shows promise in treating cat allergies by placing allergen containing drops under the tongue.
In other allergy news, Ruth from Allergizer reports that a new process to inactivate peanut allergens has been discovered.
Cancer
At Lively Women Kristen discusses the recent survey conducted by the American Cancer Society indicating that many Americans do not really have a good understanding of cancer – many people tend to believe popular wisdom rather than facts about cancer.
New data suggests that dietary calcium may reduce the risk of developing breast cancer – read more from Gloria at Dairy Calcium May Reduce Risk of Breast Cancer
Ramunas has a really informative post at www.cancer-genetics.com about gene-expression profiling oncotests: Gene-expression Profiling in Cancer | A Brief Review
That whole cancer and low cholesterol thing that came out this week – I was avoiding it, but thankfully Dr. Val wrote a good post about it. She describes it as a “gross misinterpretation of the metanalysis”.
Biotechnology
Two really cool things this week: a neuroprosthetic chip made to be implanted in the brain which may make it possible in the future for paralyzed people to control a prosthetic device with their thoughts. And a robotic ankle that is light and flexible and also allows people to walk more normally.
Nutrition
At Eating Fabulous Ruth brought up a good point about eating fruit peels and pesticides – we’re usually told the peeling is good for you – has more vitamins, fiber, etc. – but much pesticide residue is left behind?
Longevity
FuturePundit reports the news that in states where people take the latest drugs they have longer life expectancies. I wouldn’t have expected this and didn’t know which state you lived in made that much difference.
Other News
Hsien-Hsien Lei ran a poll on her blog concerning whether or not you would like to have your whole genome sequenced. She also wrote about the Personal Genome Project – which sounds pretty cool, except there is no way I would have my medical records made public – my DNA – yes!, but not the medical records.
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Related Posts:
- This week in health and science – 9/21/07
- This week in health and science – 8/26/07
- This week in health and science – 8/11/07
July 26, 2007
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Breast cancer update – 7/26/07
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A few short news bits concerning breast cancer:
Breast cancer and breast feeding
“Breastfeeding can offset the increased risk of invasive breast cancer for women who had their first full-term pregnancy after the age of 25, a study led by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) suggests.” Read more.
Breast cancer vaccines
Someday vaccines may be developed that can help the body’s immune system to “stimulate an antibody and cellular response against cancer cells”. Some researchers trying to find a vaccine against breast cancer have a new strategy to boost T cells (a type of white blood cell) to fight against cancer cells. They used mice bred to carry the oncogene HER-2/neu and gave them a synthetic peptide vaccine. The vaccine resulted in all “samples either slowing or stopping the progression of breast cancer”. Read more.
Preoperative chemotherapy
A Cochrane Systematic Review indicates that “using chemotherapy to reduce the size of tumours before surgery does not compromise survival rates and enables women to retain better self-image and overall health because of the reduced impact of the surgery.” Read more.
More personalized treatment
A test may someday be available to help identify people who might react badly to radiation. “The research could mean people who might react badly to radiotherapy could be warned in advance or alternative treatments be sought.” Read more.
Abortion / miscarriage
And lastly – no surprises here: “Neither induced abortion nor spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) appears to be associated with breast cancer risk in premenopausal women”. Read more.
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Related Posts:
- Recent developments in breast cancer research
- Breast cancer update – 7/12/07
- Breast cancer – detection and treatment updates
July 24, 2007
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A possible antiretroviral therapy of the future
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Retroviruses, such as HIV, are viruses whose genetic material is coded by RNA rather than DNA. They reproduce by first infecting a host cell, reverse transcribing their RNA into DNA and then integrating this DNA into the host cell’s genome.
So far treatments for retroviral infections like HIV consist of suppressing the virus’s life cycle, but do not actually eliminate the integrated virus’s genetic material from the infected cells.
The June 19 issue of Science has a paper by a group in Germany at the Max-Planck Institute who have found a way to actually cut the genetic material from HIV-1 out of infected cells.
They engineered a recombinase enzyme to recognize and cut out the DNA from HIV-1 using a method called substrate-linked protein evolution. Recombinases are enzymes that recognize a specific DNA segment, delete it and then rejoin the two remaining ends. Cre is a recombinase that recognizes a segment called loxP which is 50% similar to the segments called long terminal repeats (LTR) in HIV-1. Cre doesn’t recognize these LTR’s however. The Max-Planck group, as mentioned above, used a technique to create a modified Cre they called Tre that does recognize and remove DNA between HIV-1’s LTR’s.
They were able to express Tre in cultured human cells that were infected with HIV-1 – and it succeessfully deleted the HIV-1 DNA from the cells.
It is still too far away to be used in people with HIV – safe and efficient ways to deliver it to target cells in the body without causing any harm still need to be developed – but it has the potential to be useful in treating HIV and other retroviral infections among other things at some point in the future.
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Related Posts:
- FDA approves vaccine to prevent cervical cancer
- Women’s Health Weekly Review: April 26 – May 3
- Women and HIV/AIDS
July 20, 2007
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Breast cancer research update – 7/20/07
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A few months ago it was discovered that four specific gene products are closely involved in breast cancer cells spreading (metastasize) into the lung. The work was published in PNAS and Nature.
The researchers took human breast cancer cells and using a technique called RNA interference they blocked the expression of each of these 4 genes individually and in different combinations. They then implanted these cancer cells into mice.
When any of the individual genes were inactivated the primary tumor growth and lung metastasis were inhibited a little. But when all four were inactivated – the tumor growth and spread into the lungs was almost completely stopped!
The four genes are:
- epiregulin – involved in the growth and progression of some cancers
- cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2) – involved in inflammation responses
- matrix metalloproteinase 1 (MMP1) – involved with angiogenesis and tumor cell migration
- matrix metalloproteinase 2 (MMP2) – involved with angiogenesis and tumor cell migration
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Using drugs already available:
- celecoxib (Celebrex) – an inhibitor of COX2
- cetuximab (Erbitux) – and antibody against EGFR
- GM6001 – a broad MMP inhibitor (still in preclinical trials)
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they were able to get the same results in the mice – almost all the primary tumor growth and metastasis were eliminated.
Future research will include investigating whether or not these four genes are involved in metastasis into other organs and if multidrug targeting of these gene products will be effective in people.
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