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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18618\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/Neuro1-e1397066807510.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18618\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/Neuro1-640x480.jpg\" alt=\"Neurosurgeon Katherine Ko stands next to her painting "Craniotomy in G Sharp," a depiction of her drilling a skull in preparation for brain surgery. "It's kind of a self portrait," she says. (April Dembosky/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Neurosurgeon Kathryn Ko stands next to her painting \"Craniotomy in G Sharp,\" a depiction of her drilling a skull in preparation for brain surgery. \"It's kind of a self portrait,\" she says. (April Dembosky/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>SAN FRANCISCO -- Most of the Moscone Center exhibit hall is full of looming medical machines: brain scanners and brain mappers. Men in suits wait for the wandering neurosurgeon to pass by so they can pounce with their pitch for the latest, greatest technology that will change brain surgery forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Patterns repeat themselves over and over in nature. We see that in our work and in anatomy.” \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>But back at exhibit booth 630, it’s a different scene. An art show. Paintings and photographs depict abstract interpretations by neurosurgeons of their work, portraits of neurosurgery patients and natural landscapes that offer a striking resemblance to the human brain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Music, art, the visual, the senses -- matches and melds with medicine,” says Dr. Kathryn Ko, a neurosurgeon from New York who curated the show. “We like to see that left brain, right brain cross over. It’s a respite where you don’t have to concentrate. You can just let your eyes roam.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/147635003&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true\">\u003c/iframe>\u003cbr>\n\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The theme of this year’s American Association of Neurological Surgeons annual conference is “Expanding Neurosurgery” and Ko wanted to expand beyond the scientific. Throughout the exhibit space, she hung sheets of music from Modest Mussorgsky’s \"Pictures at an Exhibition.\" It was an insightful choice for a neurosurgeon. The composer wrote the piano suite after a dear friend died of a brain aneurysm, and he based the work on his experience walking through an exhibit of the friend’s drawings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ko played on the theme further, creating installations that overlaid surgical instruments on the sheet music. She dropped medical supplies into her own paintings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18619\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/Neuro2-e1397066869933.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-18619 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/Neuro2-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"(April Dembosky/KQED)\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The photographer-neurosurgeon who took this picture at Yellowstone National Park says it reminded her of the surface of the brain. (April Dembosky/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“One of my pieces is called 'Craniotomy in G sharp,'” she says, pointing to a canvas that closes in on a surgeon's hands opening a skull. “It’s because the drill that we use to open the brain, when it’s properly working, emits the sound that is G sharp. And because I have perfect pitch I can tell whether or not the nurses have turned the drill on properly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another piece, displayed on a music stand, uses white and red gauze to create an impression of a needle holder, a tool used to suture skin after surgery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The needle has a little bit of glitter on it so it catches your eye as you walk by,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Shelly Timmons, a trauma neurosurgeon from Pennsylvania, she sees her work in nature. She displayed two photographs she took of geysers in Yellowstone National Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Patterns repeat themselves over and over in nature,” she says. “We see that in our work and in anatomy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One photo shows a flat sandy rock flanked by blue and clear water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This particular piece reminds me a lot of the surface of the brain,” she says. “There’s a structure in the brain called the choroid plexus, which produces spinal fluid. This piece reminds me of that, and it’s surrounded by fluid so it’s sort of thematic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18620\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/Neuro3-e1397066910486.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-18620\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/Neuro3-300x252.jpg\" alt=\"A neurosurgeon's portrait of a mother and child in Mombasa, Kenya. The child was treated for hydrocephalus, a condition where spinal fluid builds up in the brain. (April Dembosky/KQED)\" width=\"300\" height=\"252\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A neurosurgeon's portrait of a mother and child in Mombasa, Kenya. The child was treated for hydrocephalus, a condition where spinal fluid builds up in the brain. (April Dembosky/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The human side of neurosurgery comes through as well. Dr. Bob Dempsey, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Wisconsin, displayed a portrait of a woman he took while working in Africa. She is dressed in a colorful wrap, gazing down at her child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I call this the face of hydrocephalus,” he says. “Hydrocephalus is a condition where spinal fluid in the central nervous system builds up in the brain, causing pressure. It ends in mental retardation, paralysis or death. It’s a very endemic problem in the developing world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is reversible, though, and after he treated this woman’s child, he asked if he could take her picture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The compositor was hers, just the way she cared for the child, and all I did was try to capture that,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"lk38Ol9MQrIXsEdWRDQRORc9nG8qMnco\"]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18618\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/Neuro1-e1397066807510.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18618\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/Neuro1-640x480.jpg\" alt=\"Neurosurgeon Katherine Ko stands next to her painting "Craniotomy in G Sharp," a depiction of her drilling a skull in preparation for brain surgery. "It's kind of a self portrait," she says. (April Dembosky/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Neurosurgeon Kathryn Ko stands next to her painting \"Craniotomy in G Sharp,\" a depiction of her drilling a skull in preparation for brain surgery. \"It's kind of a self portrait,\" she says. (April Dembosky/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>SAN FRANCISCO -- Most of the Moscone Center exhibit hall is full of looming medical machines: brain scanners and brain mappers. Men in suits wait for the wandering neurosurgeon to pass by so they can pounce with their pitch for the latest, greatest technology that will change brain surgery forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Patterns repeat themselves over and over in nature. We see that in our work and in anatomy.” \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>But back at exhibit booth 630, it’s a different scene. An art show. Paintings and photographs depict abstract interpretations by neurosurgeons of their work, portraits of neurosurgery patients and natural landscapes that offer a striking resemblance to the human brain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Music, art, the visual, the senses -- matches and melds with medicine,” says Dr. Kathryn Ko, a neurosurgeon from New York who curated the show. “We like to see that left brain, right brain cross over. It’s a respite where you don’t have to concentrate. You can just let your eyes roam.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/147635003&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true\">\u003c/iframe>\u003cbr>\n\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The theme of this year’s American Association of Neurological Surgeons annual conference is “Expanding Neurosurgery” and Ko wanted to expand beyond the scientific. Throughout the exhibit space, she hung sheets of music from Modest Mussorgsky’s \"Pictures at an Exhibition.\" It was an insightful choice for a neurosurgeon. The composer wrote the piano suite after a dear friend died of a brain aneurysm, and he based the work on his experience walking through an exhibit of the friend’s drawings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ko played on the theme further, creating installations that overlaid surgical instruments on the sheet music. She dropped medical supplies into her own paintings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18619\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/Neuro2-e1397066869933.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-18619 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/Neuro2-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"(April Dembosky/KQED)\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The photographer-neurosurgeon who took this picture at Yellowstone National Park says it reminded her of the surface of the brain. (April Dembosky/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“One of my pieces is called 'Craniotomy in G sharp,'” she says, pointing to a canvas that closes in on a surgeon's hands opening a skull. “It’s because the drill that we use to open the brain, when it’s properly working, emits the sound that is G sharp. And because I have perfect pitch I can tell whether or not the nurses have turned the drill on properly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another piece, displayed on a music stand, uses white and red gauze to create an impression of a needle holder, a tool used to suture skin after surgery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The needle has a little bit of glitter on it so it catches your eye as you walk by,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Shelly Timmons, a trauma neurosurgeon from Pennsylvania, she sees her work in nature. She displayed two photographs she took of geysers in Yellowstone National Park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Patterns repeat themselves over and over in nature,” she says. “We see that in our work and in anatomy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One photo shows a flat sandy rock flanked by blue and clear water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This particular piece reminds me a lot of the surface of the brain,” she says. “There’s a structure in the brain called the choroid plexus, which produces spinal fluid. This piece reminds me of that, and it’s surrounded by fluid so it’s sort of thematic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18620\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/Neuro3-e1397066910486.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-18620\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/Neuro3-300x252.jpg\" alt=\"A neurosurgeon's portrait of a mother and child in Mombasa, Kenya. The child was treated for hydrocephalus, a condition where spinal fluid builds up in the brain. (April Dembosky/KQED)\" width=\"300\" height=\"252\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A neurosurgeon's portrait of a mother and child in Mombasa, Kenya. The child was treated for hydrocephalus, a condition where spinal fluid builds up in the brain. (April Dembosky/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The human side of neurosurgery comes through as well. Dr. Bob Dempsey, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Wisconsin, displayed a portrait of a woman he took while working in Africa. She is dressed in a colorful wrap, gazing down at her child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I call this the face of hydrocephalus,” he says. “Hydrocephalus is a condition where spinal fluid in the central nervous system builds up in the brain, causing pressure. It ends in mental retardation, paralysis or death. It’s a very endemic problem in the developing world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is reversible, though, and after he treated this woman’s child, he asked if he could take her picture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The compositor was hers, just the way she cared for the child, and all I did was try to capture that,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"lk38Ol9MQrIXsEdWRDQRORc9nG8qMnco\"]\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "School Nurses on Front Lines to Raise Vaccine Rates",
"title": "School Nurses on Front Lines to Raise Vaccine Rates",
"headTitle": "State of Health | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18566\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/SchoolnurseGrassVallNo2March2014JA.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18566 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/SchoolnurseGrassVallNo2March2014JA-640x426.jpg\" alt=\"(Jane Meredith Adams/EdSource)\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robyn Ettl, Grass Valley Unified school nurse, gives a vision test to second grader Chase Littlejohn at the Grass Valley Charter School. (Jane Meredith Adams/EdSource)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Jane Meredith Adams,\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"http://edsource.org/2014/under-new-law-school-nurses-aim-to-stop-rise-in-vaccination-opt-outs/60044#.U0LWDf2PSDV\" target=\"_blank\"> EdSource\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her 33 years as a school nurse, Robyn Ettl has listened, sometimes quietly, sometimes not, to parents in rural Nevada County explain why their children don’t need vaccinations against contagious and potentially fatal diseases, including polio, diphtheria, measles and pertussis.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Parents must now meet with health provider before opting-out of vaccines for their children. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Now, with nearly a half a million children in California registering for kindergarten in the fall, school nurses like Ettl are more invested than ever in a delicate task: trying to change the minds of parents intent on opting out of school-entrance immunizations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under a\u003ca href=\"http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120AB2109\" target=\"_blank\"> state law\u003c/a> that took effect Jan. 1, parents may no longer simply file a letter to opt-out of vaccines. Instead, they are required to consult with a health practitioner –- doctor, naturopath or credentialed school nurse –- before they’re allowed to obtain what's known as a \"personal-belief exemption\" from their child’s required immunizations.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nowhere is the impact of the law more anticipated than in Nevada County, a former gold mining haven in the Sierra foothills, northeast of Sacramento. The county had the highest opt-out rate in the state for many years and is now a close second to sparsely populated Trinity County. Here, 20 percent of kindergartners have a personal belief exemption on file.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Public Charter Schools Have Highest Opt-Out Rates\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That exemption rate is driven by huge percentages of vaccination opt-outs at public charter schools in the county, led by Yuba River Charter School in Nevada City. In the current school year, 81 percent of kindergarteners at the school received personal-belief exemptions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Caleb Buckley, director of the Yuba River Charter School, said many students’ parents steer clear of Western medicine and, by association, its core tenet that immunizations save lives. “I don’t know too many that go to see the local pediatrician group, unless they really have to,” Buckley said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Trevor Michael, president of the Nevada County Board of Education, explained, “Our county is rural. People live alternative lifestyles and have alternative beliefs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Grass Valley Unified, Ettl hears parents state that it is better for a child’s immune system to get the disease than the vaccination, and that polio is passé. And even though a research paper alleging a link between vaccinations and autism was \u003ca href=\"http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/S0140673610601754.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">retracted\u003c/a>, deemed a \u003ca href=\"http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452\" target=\"_blank\">fraud\u003c/a> by the British Medical Journal and its author \u003ca href=\"http://www.gmc-uk.org/Wakefield_SPM_and_SANCTION.pdf_32595267.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">stripped of his medical license\u003c/a>, they say they’re still not sure that a vaccination won’t give their child autism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t argue with them,” Ettl said. In the past, when she has refuted their claims, “They get mad and head right to Holly,” she said, referring to Holly Hermansen, superintendent of the Nevada County Office of Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/09/06/more-california-parents-opting-out-of-vaccines-look-up-your-school-online/\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cstrong>[Related: More California Parents Opt-Out of Vaccines -- Look Up Your School Online]\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At some charter schools in the county, a philosophical opposition to vaccinations has become a defining feature of the culture, said Sharyn Turner, coordinator of school health services at the Nevada County Office of Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of a sudden it becomes socially unacceptable to be one of the few parents immunizing your child,” Turner said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Public charter schools lead the state in enrolling the highest percentage of kindergarteners with personal-belief exemptions – 10.1 percent in 2013-14, according to \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/09/06/more-california-parents-opting-out-of-vaccines-look-up-your-school-online/\" target=\"_blank\">new data \u003c/a>from the California Department of Public Health. At private schools, 5.6 percent of kindergarteners received personal-belief exemptions, while 2.3 percent opted out at public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those high rates are driving an overall increase in personal belief exemptions statewide. The percentage of exempted kindergarteners more than doubled, from 1.4 percent in 2007 to 3.1 percent in 2013-14, according to the state Department of Public Health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fading Awareness of Dire Infectious Diseases\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If roughly 90 percent of a population is fully vaccinated, “\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/08/23/5-things-you-should-know-about-vaccines/\" target=\"_blank\">herd immunity\u003c/a>” helps keep at bay infectious diseases including measles, pertussis or rubella. But with longstanding herd immunity comes fading awareness of dire infectious diseases. “There’s no fear,” said Lindsay Dunckel, executive director of First 5 Nevada County, which funds community programs for babies and young children. “These diseases that were once so frightening have disappeared.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now some of them are coming back, and the role of unvaccinated people in spreading disease is under scrutiny. In 159 cases of measles across the country last year, 82 percent of those infected \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6236a2.htm\" target=\"_blank\">were unvaccinated\u003c/a> and of those, 79 percent had philosophical objections to vaccinations, according to the CDC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far in 2014, the California Department of Public Health has received reports of \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/discond/Pages/Measles.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">51 cases\u003c/a> of measles in the state, the largest number since 2000, when measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. In the decade before the introduction of a measles vaccine in 1963, the disease killed about \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm#measles\" target=\"_blank\">450 people a year \u003c/a>in the U.S., according to the CDC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also increasing in California is the number of cases of pertussis, better known as whooping cough. Reported cases in 2013 hit more than \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Pages/PertussisSummaryReports.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">2,300\u003c/a>, including an infant who contracted the disease at 4 weeks old and died. During a 2010 California outbreak of pertussis, in which 10 infants died and more than 9,000 cases were reported, children with personal-belief exemptions \u003ca href=\"http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2013/09/24/peds.2013-0878.abstract\" target=\"_blank\">played a role\u003c/a> in transmitting the disease. Communities with high rates of personal-belief exemptions were 2.5 times more likely to also have pertussis clusters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Can the New Law Help Raise Vaccine Rates?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Grass Valley Unified, Ettl met recently with a parent of an incoming kindergartener who was dead-set against immunizations. The meeting was perfunctory: The parent read the vaccination information sheet, and Ettl explained that an unvaccinated child may not attend school for 21 days if an outbreak of whooping cough or measles occurs. Then Ettl and the parent signed the new \u003ca href=\"http://eziz.org/assets/docs/CDPH-8262.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">personal belief exemption form\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ettl’s hopes, and the hopes of public health officials, rest largely with parents whose opposition to vaccination is not entirely locked in. “‘I’ll ask, ‘Are you against every vaccine or some of them?’” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One mother of a kindergartener recently told Ettl that although her child had received one vaccination, she was now inclined to opt out of the rest. Ettl talked to her about the risk of tetanus, a bacterial infection that can be contracted through a wound or animal bite. “We live in a rural place and tetanus is a serious disease,” Ettl recalled telling her. “I said, ‘Why don’t you start with one?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mother left without a personal belief exemption in hand, saying she would think about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s just what the law is intended to do. The state of Washington passed a similar law in 2011 and its opt-out rate has dropped about 40 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Some parents are never going to change their mind,” said Catherine Flores Martin, director of the California Immunization Coalition, “but there is a larger number that want to have their vaccine concerns acknowledged and answered.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"XFhbYjl34gl1ZRPLwBP1QZhMQzjUqiEo\"]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18566\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/SchoolnurseGrassVallNo2March2014JA.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18566 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/SchoolnurseGrassVallNo2March2014JA-640x426.jpg\" alt=\"(Jane Meredith Adams/EdSource)\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Robyn Ettl, Grass Valley Unified school nurse, gives a vision test to second grader Chase Littlejohn at the Grass Valley Charter School. (Jane Meredith Adams/EdSource)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Jane Meredith Adams,\u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"http://edsource.org/2014/under-new-law-school-nurses-aim-to-stop-rise-in-vaccination-opt-outs/60044#.U0LWDf2PSDV\" target=\"_blank\"> EdSource\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her 33 years as a school nurse, Robyn Ettl has listened, sometimes quietly, sometimes not, to parents in rural Nevada County explain why their children don’t need vaccinations against contagious and potentially fatal diseases, including polio, diphtheria, measles and pertussis.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Parents must now meet with health provider before opting-out of vaccines for their children. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Now, with nearly a half a million children in California registering for kindergarten in the fall, school nurses like Ettl are more invested than ever in a delicate task: trying to change the minds of parents intent on opting out of school-entrance immunizations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under a\u003ca href=\"http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120AB2109\" target=\"_blank\"> state law\u003c/a> that took effect Jan. 1, parents may no longer simply file a letter to opt-out of vaccines. Instead, they are required to consult with a health practitioner –- doctor, naturopath or credentialed school nurse –- before they’re allowed to obtain what's known as a \"personal-belief exemption\" from their child’s required immunizations.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nowhere is the impact of the law more anticipated than in Nevada County, a former gold mining haven in the Sierra foothills, northeast of Sacramento. The county had the highest opt-out rate in the state for many years and is now a close second to sparsely populated Trinity County. Here, 20 percent of kindergartners have a personal belief exemption on file.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Public Charter Schools Have Highest Opt-Out Rates\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That exemption rate is driven by huge percentages of vaccination opt-outs at public charter schools in the county, led by Yuba River Charter School in Nevada City. In the current school year, 81 percent of kindergarteners at the school received personal-belief exemptions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Caleb Buckley, director of the Yuba River Charter School, said many students’ parents steer clear of Western medicine and, by association, its core tenet that immunizations save lives. “I don’t know too many that go to see the local pediatrician group, unless they really have to,” Buckley said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Trevor Michael, president of the Nevada County Board of Education, explained, “Our county is rural. People live alternative lifestyles and have alternative beliefs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Grass Valley Unified, Ettl hears parents state that it is better for a child’s immune system to get the disease than the vaccination, and that polio is passé. And even though a research paper alleging a link between vaccinations and autism was \u003ca href=\"http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/pdfs/S0140673610601754.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">retracted\u003c/a>, deemed a \u003ca href=\"http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452\" target=\"_blank\">fraud\u003c/a> by the British Medical Journal and its author \u003ca href=\"http://www.gmc-uk.org/Wakefield_SPM_and_SANCTION.pdf_32595267.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">stripped of his medical license\u003c/a>, they say they’re still not sure that a vaccination won’t give their child autism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t argue with them,” Ettl said. In the past, when she has refuted their claims, “They get mad and head right to Holly,” she said, referring to Holly Hermansen, superintendent of the Nevada County Office of Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/09/06/more-california-parents-opting-out-of-vaccines-look-up-your-school-online/\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cstrong>[Related: More California Parents Opt-Out of Vaccines -- Look Up Your School Online]\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At some charter schools in the county, a philosophical opposition to vaccinations has become a defining feature of the culture, said Sharyn Turner, coordinator of school health services at the Nevada County Office of Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of a sudden it becomes socially unacceptable to be one of the few parents immunizing your child,” Turner said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Public charter schools lead the state in enrolling the highest percentage of kindergarteners with personal-belief exemptions – 10.1 percent in 2013-14, according to \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/09/06/more-california-parents-opting-out-of-vaccines-look-up-your-school-online/\" target=\"_blank\">new data \u003c/a>from the California Department of Public Health. At private schools, 5.6 percent of kindergarteners received personal-belief exemptions, while 2.3 percent opted out at public schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those high rates are driving an overall increase in personal belief exemptions statewide. The percentage of exempted kindergarteners more than doubled, from 1.4 percent in 2007 to 3.1 percent in 2013-14, according to the state Department of Public Health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fading Awareness of Dire Infectious Diseases\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If roughly 90 percent of a population is fully vaccinated, “\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/08/23/5-things-you-should-know-about-vaccines/\" target=\"_blank\">herd immunity\u003c/a>” helps keep at bay infectious diseases including measles, pertussis or rubella. But with longstanding herd immunity comes fading awareness of dire infectious diseases. “There’s no fear,” said Lindsay Dunckel, executive director of First 5 Nevada County, which funds community programs for babies and young children. “These diseases that were once so frightening have disappeared.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now some of them are coming back, and the role of unvaccinated people in spreading disease is under scrutiny. In 159 cases of measles across the country last year, 82 percent of those infected \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6236a2.htm\" target=\"_blank\">were unvaccinated\u003c/a> and of those, 79 percent had philosophical objections to vaccinations, according to the CDC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far in 2014, the California Department of Public Health has received reports of \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/discond/Pages/Measles.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">51 cases\u003c/a> of measles in the state, the largest number since 2000, when measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. In the decade before the introduction of a measles vaccine in 1963, the disease killed about \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm#measles\" target=\"_blank\">450 people a year \u003c/a>in the U.S., according to the CDC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also increasing in California is the number of cases of pertussis, better known as whooping cough. Reported cases in 2013 hit more than \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Pages/PertussisSummaryReports.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">2,300\u003c/a>, including an infant who contracted the disease at 4 weeks old and died. During a 2010 California outbreak of pertussis, in which 10 infants died and more than 9,000 cases were reported, children with personal-belief exemptions \u003ca href=\"http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2013/09/24/peds.2013-0878.abstract\" target=\"_blank\">played a role\u003c/a> in transmitting the disease. Communities with high rates of personal-belief exemptions were 2.5 times more likely to also have pertussis clusters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Can the New Law Help Raise Vaccine Rates?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Grass Valley Unified, Ettl met recently with a parent of an incoming kindergartener who was dead-set against immunizations. The meeting was perfunctory: The parent read the vaccination information sheet, and Ettl explained that an unvaccinated child may not attend school for 21 days if an outbreak of whooping cough or measles occurs. Then Ettl and the parent signed the new \u003ca href=\"http://eziz.org/assets/docs/CDPH-8262.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">personal belief exemption form\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ettl’s hopes, and the hopes of public health officials, rest largely with parents whose opposition to vaccination is not entirely locked in. “‘I’ll ask, ‘Are you against every vaccine or some of them?’” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One mother of a kindergartener recently told Ettl that although her child had received one vaccination, she was now inclined to opt out of the rest. Ettl talked to her about the risk of tetanus, a bacterial infection that can be contracted through a wound or animal bite. “We live in a rural place and tetanus is a serious disease,” Ettl recalled telling her. “I said, ‘Why don’t you start with one?’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mother left without a personal belief exemption in hand, saying she would think about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s just what the law is intended to do. The state of Washington passed a similar law in 2011 and its opt-out rate has dropped about 40 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Some parents are never going to change their mind,” said Catherine Flores Martin, director of the California Immunization Coalition, “but there is a larger number that want to have their vaccine concerns acknowledged and answered.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Your Doctor's Skill at Colonoscopy May Reduce Your Later Colon Cancer Risk",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/136237601-e1396647760530.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18548\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/136237601-640x437.jpg\" alt=\"136237601\" width=\"640\" height=\"437\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\nIf you're going to go to the trouble of having a colonoscopy, you'd probably prefer that you get as much as you can out of the screening test. A new study this week shows that a doctor's rate of finding and removing adenomas -- these are pre-cancerous growths -- is linked to the patient's lower risk of developing colon cancer later.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">For every 1 percent increase in adenoma detection there was a 3 percent decrease a person's colon cancer risk. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Colonoscopy is one of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cancer.org/cancer/colonandrectumcancer/moreinformation/colonandrectumcancerearlydetection/colorectal-cancer-early-detection-acs-recommendations\" target=\"_blank\">recommended screening tests\u003c/a> for colon cancer. Yet doctors have differing rates at how often they find these adenomas. This is the first study in the U.S. to look at the association between finding adenomas and later cancer risk, as part of a national review funded by the National Cancer Institute. It was published in the\u003ca href=\"http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1309086\" target=\"_blank\"> New England Journal of Medicine.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the study, researchers at Kaiser Permanente Northern California reviewed more than 300,000 colonoscopies performed by 136 gastroenterologists between 1998 and 2010.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The doctors' detection rates for adenomas ranged from 7.4 percent to 52.5 percent. The researchers found that for every 1 percent increase in detection rate there was a 3 percent decrease in colon cancer risk over the next decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. Douglas Corley is research scientist with Kaiser's Department of Research and lead author of the study. \"The (doctors) who were at the higher end of the detection, their patients were actually less likely in the future to be diagnosed with a colon cancer, an advanced colon cancer and to die of colon cancer,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Medicare is in the process of setting standards for doctors' groups to report their detection of adenomas as a quality measure but \"patients certainly ask their physicians if their groups measure adenoma detection rates\" now, Corley said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>HealthDay spoke to a gastroenterologist not involved in the study who backed up Corley's recommendation. \u003ca href=\"http://consumer.healthday.com/cancer-information-5/colon-cancer-news-96/doctor-s-skill-at-colonoscopy-affects-patient-s-colon-cancer-risk-study-686446.html\" target=\"_blank\">From HealthDay\u003c/a>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\"Many (doctors) make quality measures available to their patients,\" said Dr. Lawrence Kim, who serves as the community private practice councilor for the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That information may be in the written materials your doctor gives you, or even on the practice's website, Kim said.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>A \"minimum threshold\" for finding adenomas is at least 15 percent for women and 25 percent for men, Corley noted. Adenomas are more common in men. Most of the doctors in the study were above 20 percent overall. Kaiser is working to develop interventions to improve adenoma detection rates among all doctors, he said. Those interventions may ultimately be applied to physicians beyond Kaiser.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"eyYxSV4FoBl5SCktFpYEH8WMHNf2BlSD\"]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/136237601-e1396647760530.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18548\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/136237601-640x437.jpg\" alt=\"136237601\" width=\"640\" height=\"437\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\nIf you're going to go to the trouble of having a colonoscopy, you'd probably prefer that you get as much as you can out of the screening test. A new study this week shows that a doctor's rate of finding and removing adenomas -- these are pre-cancerous growths -- is linked to the patient's lower risk of developing colon cancer later.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">For every 1 percent increase in adenoma detection there was a 3 percent decrease a person's colon cancer risk. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Colonoscopy is one of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cancer.org/cancer/colonandrectumcancer/moreinformation/colonandrectumcancerearlydetection/colorectal-cancer-early-detection-acs-recommendations\" target=\"_blank\">recommended screening tests\u003c/a> for colon cancer. Yet doctors have differing rates at how often they find these adenomas. This is the first study in the U.S. to look at the association between finding adenomas and later cancer risk, as part of a national review funded by the National Cancer Institute. It was published in the\u003ca href=\"http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1309086\" target=\"_blank\"> New England Journal of Medicine.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the study, researchers at Kaiser Permanente Northern California reviewed more than 300,000 colonoscopies performed by 136 gastroenterologists between 1998 and 2010.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The doctors' detection rates for adenomas ranged from 7.4 percent to 52.5 percent. The researchers found that for every 1 percent increase in detection rate there was a 3 percent decrease in colon cancer risk over the next decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. Douglas Corley is research scientist with Kaiser's Department of Research and lead author of the study. \"The (doctors) who were at the higher end of the detection, their patients were actually less likely in the future to be diagnosed with a colon cancer, an advanced colon cancer and to die of colon cancer,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Medicare is in the process of setting standards for doctors' groups to report their detection of adenomas as a quality measure but \"patients certainly ask their physicians if their groups measure adenoma detection rates\" now, Corley said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>HealthDay spoke to a gastroenterologist not involved in the study who backed up Corley's recommendation. \u003ca href=\"http://consumer.healthday.com/cancer-information-5/colon-cancer-news-96/doctor-s-skill-at-colonoscopy-affects-patient-s-colon-cancer-risk-study-686446.html\" target=\"_blank\">From HealthDay\u003c/a>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\"Many (doctors) make quality measures available to their patients,\" said Dr. Lawrence Kim, who serves as the community private practice councilor for the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That information may be in the written materials your doctor gives you, or even on the practice's website, Kim said.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>A \"minimum threshold\" for finding adenomas is at least 15 percent for women and 25 percent for men, Corley noted. Adenomas are more common in men. Most of the doctors in the study were above 20 percent overall. Kaiser is working to develop interventions to improve adenoma detection rates among all doctors, he said. Those interventions may ultimately be applied to physicians beyond Kaiser.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"eyYxSV4FoBl5SCktFpYEH8WMHNf2BlSD\"]\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18497\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/154216755_2-e1396421050813.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18497\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/154216755_2-640x424.jpg\" alt=\"(Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"424\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Nancy Shute,\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/04/01/297826238/review-finds-mammographys-benefits-overplayed-harms-dismissed\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two months ago, a widely publicized Canadian \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/02/12/275883427/latest-evidence-against-mammograms-adds-to-womens-uncertainty\" target=\"_blank\">study\u003c/a> found that mammograms did not reduce breast cancer deaths, but that study was fiercely criticized by the nation's radiologists as \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.acr.org/News-Publications/News/News-Articles/2014/ACR/BMJ-Article-on-Breast-Cancer-Screening-Effectiveness-Incredibly-Flawed-and-Misleading\" target=\"_blank\">incredibly flawed and misleading\u003c/a>.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few weeks earlier, an \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2014/02/04/the-cost-of-mammograms-is-a-picture-worth-7-billion/\" target=\"_blank\">analysis\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/02/04/271554425/are-we-paying-8-billion-too-much-for-mammograms\">f\u003c/a>ound that screening all women annually starting at age 40, as the American Cancer Society recommends, costs $6.5 billion more a year more than following the U.S. Preventive Service's Task Force recommendation that women be screened every other year starting at age 50.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, the latest entries — two studies that try to put all the previous research on mammography's harms and benefits in perspective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan>First, researchers at Harvard took a broad look at all the research on mammograms since 1960 — more than 50 years of study. They also looked at evidence on the harms of false positives and overdiagnoses, in which a woman is treated for a cancer that would never have proved deadly. And they reviewed whether current efforts to try to personalize a woman's cancer risk helped a woman figure out whether it was worth her while to get a mammogram.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their conclusion: The benefits of mammography, though real, have been oversold, while the harms have been minimized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Annual mammograms reduce the risk of dying from breast cancer by about 19 percent, but the benefit varies widely based on a woman's age and underlying cancer risk, the study found. For instance, about 1,904 women in their 40s would have to be screened to prevent one death, compared with just 377 women in their 60s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's because breast cancer becomes much more common as a woman ages. At age 40, a woman's risk of getting breast cancer in the next 10 years is 1.5 percent. At age 50, it's 2.3 percent. And a 60-year-old has a 3.5 percent risk in the next decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1853165\" target=\"_blank\">results\u003c/a> were published Tuesday in \u003cem>JAMA,\u003c/em> the journal of the American Medical Association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The analysis found that about 19 percent of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer as a result of a mammogram are overdiagnosed — getting surgery, chemotherapy or radiation to treat a cancer that would never be life-threatening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bottom line, the researchers say, is that mammography is a less-than-perfect screening test, and doctors and patients need a lot more help figuring out if and when to use it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Decisions about mammography should involve discussion of risks, benefits, uncertainties, alternatives and patient preferences,\" the authors write.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And women age 75 and older really need to consider whether they should be having mammograms at all, a second \u003ca href=\"http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1853134\">study\u003c/a> in \u003cem>JAMA\u003c/em> reports. As the researchers point out, there are no randomized controlled trials of mammography in women in that age group. So there's no way to know how much they might extend a woman's life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So the harms of screening probably outweigh any benefits in women who will live for less than 10 years, the researchers say, and women who think they will live longer than that should talk with their doctors about the benefits and risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"R92E2PtWb9ByYxKHc9uuHx9GMY4QWB2k\"]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18497\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/154216755_2-e1396421050813.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18497\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/04/154216755_2-640x424.jpg\" alt=\"(Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"424\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Nancy Shute,\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/04/01/297826238/review-finds-mammographys-benefits-overplayed-harms-dismissed\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two months ago, a widely publicized Canadian \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/02/12/275883427/latest-evidence-against-mammograms-adds-to-womens-uncertainty\" target=\"_blank\">study\u003c/a> found that mammograms did not reduce breast cancer deaths, but that study was fiercely criticized by the nation's radiologists as \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.acr.org/News-Publications/News/News-Articles/2014/ACR/BMJ-Article-on-Breast-Cancer-Screening-Effectiveness-Incredibly-Flawed-and-Misleading\" target=\"_blank\">incredibly flawed and misleading\u003c/a>.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few weeks earlier, an \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2014/02/04/the-cost-of-mammograms-is-a-picture-worth-7-billion/\" target=\"_blank\">analysis\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/02/04/271554425/are-we-paying-8-billion-too-much-for-mammograms\">f\u003c/a>ound that screening all women annually starting at age 40, as the American Cancer Society recommends, costs $6.5 billion more a year more than following the U.S. Preventive Service's Task Force recommendation that women be screened every other year starting at age 50.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, the latest entries — two studies that try to put all the previous research on mammography's harms and benefits in perspective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan>First, researchers at Harvard took a broad look at all the research on mammograms since 1960 — more than 50 years of study. They also looked at evidence on the harms of false positives and overdiagnoses, in which a woman is treated for a cancer that would never have proved deadly. And they reviewed whether current efforts to try to personalize a woman's cancer risk helped a woman figure out whether it was worth her while to get a mammogram.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their conclusion: The benefits of mammography, though real, have been oversold, while the harms have been minimized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Annual mammograms reduce the risk of dying from breast cancer by about 19 percent, but the benefit varies widely based on a woman's age and underlying cancer risk, the study found. For instance, about 1,904 women in their 40s would have to be screened to prevent one death, compared with just 377 women in their 60s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's because breast cancer becomes much more common as a woman ages. At age 40, a woman's risk of getting breast cancer in the next 10 years is 1.5 percent. At age 50, it's 2.3 percent. And a 60-year-old has a 3.5 percent risk in the next decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1853165\" target=\"_blank\">results\u003c/a> were published Tuesday in \u003cem>JAMA,\u003c/em> the journal of the American Medical Association.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The analysis found that about 19 percent of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer as a result of a mammogram are overdiagnosed — getting surgery, chemotherapy or radiation to treat a cancer that would never be life-threatening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bottom line, the researchers say, is that mammography is a less-than-perfect screening test, and doctors and patients need a lot more help figuring out if and when to use it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Decisions about mammography should involve discussion of risks, benefits, uncertainties, alternatives and patient preferences,\" the authors write.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And women age 75 and older really need to consider whether they should be having mammograms at all, a second \u003ca href=\"http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1853134\">study\u003c/a> in \u003cem>JAMA\u003c/em> reports. As the researchers point out, there are no randomized controlled trials of mammography in women in that age group. So there's no way to know how much they might extend a woman's life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So the harms of screening probably outweigh any benefits in women who will live for less than 10 years, the researchers say, and women who think they will live longer than that should talk with their doctors about the benefits and risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"R92E2PtWb9ByYxKHc9uuHx9GMY4QWB2k\"]\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Testing Complete DNA Sequences Yields Only Partial Info but Could Still Save Your Life",
"headTitle": "Testing Complete DNA Sequences Yields Only Partial Info but Could Still Save Your Life | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15547\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/GenomePerson.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15547\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15547\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/GenomePerson.jpg\" alt=\"Reading all of your DNA at once can’t yet find all of your future health risks. But if you get lucky, it just might save your life. (Richard Ricciardi/Flickr)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reading all of your DNA at once can’t find all of your future health risks yet. But if you get lucky, it just might save your life. (Richard Ricciardi/\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/ricricciardi/11622986115/\">Flickr\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For a while now, we have been told that soon we will be able to learn a whole lot about our health risks from studying our complete DNA sequence. Our future health will be read by scientists in the tea leaves that are DNA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24618965\">new study\u003c/a> out of Stanford University in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows just how far we are from that brave new world. For around $15,000 or so per patient, these researchers managed to only get a partial read of key health genes and to only catch around half of a certain class of DNA differences in twelve patients. Not only that, but they also struggled to understand what many parts of these DNA reads meant. We are not yet at a point where we can cheaply and easily get and interpret the complete set of instructions for a single person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, it isn’t all doom and gloom. You may not be able to learn everything from your DNA but as one patient in the study found, you can still find things that just might save your life. This kind of thing may make even an imperfect test worth the cost; it certainly was for this one patient.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Found Gene\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24618965\">study\u003c/a>, 12 people had their whole genome sequenced. This means that the scientists tried to get a read on all six billion or so of each person’s A, G, C and T nucleobases in their DNA. For one of the 12 patients, things went as everyone thinks these sorts of things eventually will.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Only an unbiased test could find her broken BRCA1 gene.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The researchers discovered that this woman had a difference in one copy of her BRCA1 gene; that meant she almost certainly had a very high chance of getting breast and/or ovarian cancer later in life. With this knowledge, she took steps to lessen her risk. She had her ovaries removed and will undergo much more frequent mammograms to catch any breast cancer early. This testing may have saved her from an early death from cancer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But out in the real world, she may never have found out that she had a broken BRCA1 gene. Breast cancer doesn’t run in her family, which means no one would recommend her for one of these tests. She could only find her cancer risk in a test that looked at lots of different genes. Only an unbiased test could find her broken BRCA1 gene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, this is just one of the many genes the researchers looked at in one of 12 patients. The results for the other genes and the other patients were not so clear-cut. A surprising number of important genes were not read and an equally surprising number of DNA differences missed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Missed DNA\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers first used a company called \u003ca href=\"http://www.illumina.com/\">Illumina Inc.\u003c/a> to do the sequencing. Depending on the patient, anywhere from 5%-34% (median was 10%) of genes known to be involved in disease didn’t get read well enough to draw any conclusions. Doing the same on nine of the patients with a second company, \u003ca href=\"http://www.completegenomics.com/\">Complete Genomics Inc.\u003c/a>, gave similar results. This time 18%-21% (median was 19%) of disease-related genes remained a mystery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15562\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/ReadTeaLeaves.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15562\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15562\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/ReadTeaLeaves.jpg\" alt=\"Reading DNA is still better than reading tea leaves to predict your future health. But we still have a long way to go. (MochaSwirl/Wikimedia Commons)\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reading DNA is still better than reading tea leaves to predict your future health. But we still have a long way to go.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This is a big deal because the test might miss an important DNA difference that could cause problems for the patient. Imagine that a second patient has a broken BRCA1 gene and the test missed it, or the BRCA1 patient had a different broken gene that caused some other problem. These types of false negative results might give the patients a false sense of security about their health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using two companies also gave the researchers the chance to compare the two results. The two did not line up as well as you might think.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two tests did very well for known, common, disease-causing variants (like those \u003ca href=\"https://www.23andme.com/\">23andMe\u003c/a> could see for a lot less money). These would be like the variant of the hemoglobin gene that can cause sickle cell anemia. The companies agreed on 99% of these. Where they had more trouble was with small insertions or deletions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An insertion is when one or a few letters are put into the DNA and a deletion is when one or a few are removed. This is the kind of thing that can, for example, cause some cases of cystic fibrosis or make people resistant to HIV infection. Here the two companies’ results only matched up between 53% and 59% of the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If anything, this is even more troubling than an unread gene. At least with an unread gene, you can tell a patient that you couldn’t read the gene or you could try to reread it. If you miss a disease causing DNA difference, you don’t have any way of knowing whether it was there or not. This leads to even more false negatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Interpreting DNA Is No Picnic\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Up until now, I have focused on problems in reading the DNA. Figuring out what the DNA means is no easy task either! I don’t have the space to go into it here, but suffice it to say that interpreting DNA is at least as tricky and time consuming as reading it and a whole lot more subjective. We don’t yet have a good handle on what it all means and what to do with it (although we are learning).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Future Still Bright\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bottom line is that whole genome sequencing for health risks is not quite up to snuff yet. But that doesn’t mean it’s no better than reading tea leaves for predicting the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Warning: Right now results will be incomplete\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Even in its current form, this sort of test can help patients live healthier lives; it just won’t catch everything. Maybe the results should come with a warning that many health risks will have been missed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While we wait for the inevitable march of technology to further perfect this sort of test, one way around the technical issues may be to narrow the DNA we choose to read. For now, we could focus on those genes known to be involved in inherited disease and add more genes as they become available. The less DNA to read, the more likely we are to catch every last letter.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15547\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/GenomePerson.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15547\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15547\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/GenomePerson.jpg\" alt=\"Reading all of your DNA at once can’t yet find all of your future health risks. But if you get lucky, it just might save your life. (Richard Ricciardi/Flickr)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reading all of your DNA at once can’t find all of your future health risks yet. But if you get lucky, it just might save your life. (Richard Ricciardi/\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/ricricciardi/11622986115/\">Flickr\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For a while now, we have been told that soon we will be able to learn a whole lot about our health risks from studying our complete DNA sequence. Our future health will be read by scientists in the tea leaves that are DNA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24618965\">new study\u003c/a> out of Stanford University in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows just how far we are from that brave new world. For around $15,000 or so per patient, these researchers managed to only get a partial read of key health genes and to only catch around half of a certain class of DNA differences in twelve patients. Not only that, but they also struggled to understand what many parts of these DNA reads meant. We are not yet at a point where we can cheaply and easily get and interpret the complete set of instructions for a single person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, it isn’t all doom and gloom. You may not be able to learn everything from your DNA but as one patient in the study found, you can still find things that just might save your life. This kind of thing may make even an imperfect test worth the cost; it certainly was for this one patient.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Found Gene\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24618965\">study\u003c/a>, 12 people had their whole genome sequenced. This means that the scientists tried to get a read on all six billion or so of each person’s A, G, C and T nucleobases in their DNA. For one of the 12 patients, things went as everyone thinks these sorts of things eventually will.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Only an unbiased test could find her broken BRCA1 gene.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The researchers discovered that this woman had a difference in one copy of her BRCA1 gene; that meant she almost certainly had a very high chance of getting breast and/or ovarian cancer later in life. With this knowledge, she took steps to lessen her risk. She had her ovaries removed and will undergo much more frequent mammograms to catch any breast cancer early. This testing may have saved her from an early death from cancer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But out in the real world, she may never have found out that she had a broken BRCA1 gene. Breast cancer doesn’t run in her family, which means no one would recommend her for one of these tests. She could only find her cancer risk in a test that looked at lots of different genes. Only an unbiased test could find her broken BRCA1 gene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, this is just one of the many genes the researchers looked at in one of 12 patients. The results for the other genes and the other patients were not so clear-cut. A surprising number of important genes were not read and an equally surprising number of DNA differences missed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Missed DNA\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers first used a company called \u003ca href=\"http://www.illumina.com/\">Illumina Inc.\u003c/a> to do the sequencing. Depending on the patient, anywhere from 5%-34% (median was 10%) of genes known to be involved in disease didn’t get read well enough to draw any conclusions. Doing the same on nine of the patients with a second company, \u003ca href=\"http://www.completegenomics.com/\">Complete Genomics Inc.\u003c/a>, gave similar results. This time 18%-21% (median was 19%) of disease-related genes remained a mystery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15562\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/ReadTeaLeaves.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15562\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15562\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/ReadTeaLeaves.jpg\" alt=\"Reading DNA is still better than reading tea leaves to predict your future health. But we still have a long way to go. (MochaSwirl/Wikimedia Commons)\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Reading DNA is still better than reading tea leaves to predict your future health. But we still have a long way to go.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This is a big deal because the test might miss an important DNA difference that could cause problems for the patient. Imagine that a second patient has a broken BRCA1 gene and the test missed it, or the BRCA1 patient had a different broken gene that caused some other problem. These types of false negative results might give the patients a false sense of security about their health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using two companies also gave the researchers the chance to compare the two results. The two did not line up as well as you might think.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two tests did very well for known, common, disease-causing variants (like those \u003ca href=\"https://www.23andme.com/\">23andMe\u003c/a> could see for a lot less money). These would be like the variant of the hemoglobin gene that can cause sickle cell anemia. The companies agreed on 99% of these. Where they had more trouble was with small insertions or deletions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An insertion is when one or a few letters are put into the DNA and a deletion is when one or a few are removed. This is the kind of thing that can, for example, cause some cases of cystic fibrosis or make people resistant to HIV infection. Here the two companies’ results only matched up between 53% and 59% of the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If anything, this is even more troubling than an unread gene. At least with an unread gene, you can tell a patient that you couldn’t read the gene or you could try to reread it. If you miss a disease causing DNA difference, you don’t have any way of knowing whether it was there or not. This leads to even more false negatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Interpreting DNA Is No Picnic\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Up until now, I have focused on problems in reading the DNA. Figuring out what the DNA means is no easy task either! I don’t have the space to go into it here, but suffice it to say that interpreting DNA is at least as tricky and time consuming as reading it and a whole lot more subjective. We don’t yet have a good handle on what it all means and what to do with it (although we are learning).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Future Still Bright\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bottom line is that whole genome sequencing for health risks is not quite up to snuff yet. But that doesn’t mean it’s no better than reading tea leaves for predicting the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Warning: Right now results will be incomplete\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Even in its current form, this sort of test can help patients live healthier lives; it just won’t catch everything. Maybe the results should come with a warning that many health risks will have been missed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While we wait for the inevitable march of technology to further perfect this sort of test, one way around the technical issues may be to narrow the DNA we choose to read. For now, we could focus on those genes known to be involved in inherited disease and add more genes as they become available. The less DNA to read, the more likely we are to catch every last letter.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "NASA Sends Fruit Flies to Space to Prep for Mars Missions",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2014/03/20140324science.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15579\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Apollo-7-astronauts.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15579 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Apollo-7-astronauts.jpg\" alt=\"The Apollo 7 crew, from left to right: Command Module pilot, Donn F. Eisele, Commander, Walter M. Schirra Jr. and Lunar Module pilot, Walter Cunningham. (NASA)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In 1968, two members of the Apollo 7 crew developed head colds. Crankiness ensued. Crew members, from the left, are Command Module Pilot Donn Eisele, Commander Walter Schirra, Jr. and Lunar Module Pilot Walter Cunningham. (NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Scientists at NASA’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/home/#.UyzQ_oXDX_k\">Ames Research Center\u003c/a> in Mountain View are sending fruit flies (among other creatures) up to the International Space Station, hoping to better predict some of the physical challenges that may befall astronauts when, sometime after 2030, NASA sends up the first human mission to Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA has already learned some of these lessons the hard way. For instance: Having a head cold in space is no picnic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15581\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 288px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/9400_transform-288x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-15581 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/9400_transform-288x162.jpg\" alt=\"In the first live television transmission from space, astronauts Don Eisele and Walter Schirra Jr. deliver a message to viewers. (NASA)\" width=\"288\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the first live television transmission from space, astronauts Donn F. Eisele and Walter M. Schirra Jr. deliver a message to viewers. (NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The First Colds in Space\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1968, NASA needed some good press.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The year before had been a disaster. All three crew members of the Apollo 1 Mission had died in a cabin fire before the spaceship even launched.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If NASA was going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, it needed to win back public confidence in the program. And it would do so on live television during the Apollo 7 mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apollo 7 launched on October 11, 1968, with a plan to bring three astronauts safely into Earth’s orbit, and then back home again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the first time, Americans got to see what astronauts looked like floating around in zero gravity. On live television, they watched Command Module Pilot Donn Eisele, Commander Walter Schirra, Jr. and Lunar Module Pilot Walter Cunningham eat meals, bat a lens cap around the cabin and send radio reports to ground control.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Perhaps you’ve never considered the effect of zero gravity on snot?\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“Wally took one Actifed,” Cunningham reported. “He feels fine; he’s just got a little stuffy nose.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cunningham and Schirra indeed had head colds, and the stuffy noses turned out not to be such a “little” thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The astronauts had trouble sleeping. They worried about their eardrums rupturing. Their interactions with ground control became testy, particularly on the subject of whether or not they would wear helmets upon reentry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A New Policy: Quarantine\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So after Apollo 7, NASA set a new policy: Astronauts would now be quarantined before each launch to make sure they’re healthy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the quarantine isn’t a guarantee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA astronaut \u003ca href=\"http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/barratt-mr.html\">Mike Barratt\u003c/a> caught a cold during his six-month stay on the International Space Station in 2009. “It was probably the most miserable cold I’ve ever had,” he told me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15591\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 294px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-15591 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/International_Space_Station_after_undocking_of_STS-132-1024x652.jpg\" alt=\"The International Space Station. (NASA)\" width=\"294\" height=\"188\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The International Space Station. (NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Perhaps you’ve never considered the effect of zero gravity on snot? Barratt hadn’t either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Earth, Barratt said, “where you’d have a little gravity to help you drain things, all that was absent there. Everything kind of pools where it is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Barratt invented a zero-gravity nose-blowing technique, involving swinging his body in an arc as his hands clasped a metal handrail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That move created a sort of artificial gravity, Barratt said, propelling mucus out of his head.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You do what you gotta do,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Finding Work-Arounds in Zero Gravity \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humans evolved with gravity. Take it away and we start looking for work-arounds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of these are well known. For instance: in space, muscles atrophy, especially in the legs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“From the waist up, they look strong,” Barratt said, describing how this affects humans. “From the waist down they look more like Kermit the Frog.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So astronauts spend an enormous amount of time exercising—two or three hours a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the eyes. No one’s quite sure why, but over the course of a mission, some astronauts report problems with both nearsightedness and distance vision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/marshburn-th.html\">Tom Marshburn\u003c/a>, who has completed two missions to the International Space Station as a space surgeon, said he’s learned to bring multiple pairs of eyeglasses to suit his changing vision while in space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15584\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 285px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Drosophila_SingleFly.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-15584 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Drosophila_SingleFly.jpg\" alt=\"A single drosophila, or fruit fly. (Dominic Hart/NASA)\" width=\"285\" height=\"241\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A single drosophila, or fruit fly. (Dominic Hart/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s the only solution we have right now,” Marshburn said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mars Mission Brings Higher Stakes\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is minor stuff on the International Space Station, a mere two-day trip from Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But consider that by 2030, NASA wants to start sending people to Mars and back—a mission that could last five years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anticipating the ensuing physical problems of such a mission is the job of scientists like \u003ca href=\"http://women.nasa.gov/sharmila-bhattacharya-2/\">Sharmila Bhattacharya\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Battacharya is a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, where she runs a lab in the Space Biosciences Division.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her research focuses on fruit flies—Drosophila melanogaster—and is part of a major NASA effort to send bugs (including beetles, worms, bees and spiders) up to the International Space Station to see how space affects their biology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next week, Bhattacharya plans to travel to Florida to watch the lift-off for the first of 2014’s three scheduled fruit fly missions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15586\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 301px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/ACD14-0023-028-1024x982.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-15586 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/ACD14-0023-028-1024x982.jpg\" alt=\"Ames researchers Curran Reddy and Sharmila Bhattacharya are studying the effects of zero gravity on fruit flies' cardiovascular systems. (Dominic Hart/NASA)\" width=\"301\" height=\"288\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ames researchers Curran Reddy and Sharmila Bhattacharya are studying cardiovascular health on fruit flies in space.(Dominic Hart/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Since the demise of the NASA’s space shuttle program, the agency has relied on private contractors—specifically Tesla founder Elon Musk’s company SpaceX—to carry astronauts and science experiments to the International Space Station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bhattacharya’s launch, \u003ca href=\"http://www.spacex.com/news/2014/03/11/upcoming-mission-falcon-9-and-dragon-launching-space-station\">scheduled for March 30 or April 2\u003c/a>, will be the first effort to see how zero gravity affects the structure and function of the drosophila’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/ames/research/space-biosciences/heart-flies-spacex-3/\">cardiovascular system\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Weaker Flies, Stronger Microbes\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bhattacharya says one of the most \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3019151/\">intriguing discoveries\u003c/a> so far has to do with the flies’ white blood cells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"size-medium wp-image-15586\">“There are changes in the distribution of blood cells,” says Bhattacharya. “And, of course, blood cells are critical to immune function.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the flies’ immune systems appear to become weaker in space, certain microbes—the kinds that might make a fruit fly sick—actually get stronger. Bhattacharya says it’s potentially a deadly combination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Couple increased virulence of a pathogen with the decremented immune system of the host,” she said, “and that could be a problem for long-term space flight.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Battacharya will test that theory in fruit flies on a mission next fall. She says she expects to have results by late 2015.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA astronauts I talked to said they believe all these problems can be overcome with a little ingenuity.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\nAt some point on the mission to Mars the view of Earth will disappear, and it will be ‘just the blackness of space and stars outside the window.’\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>But there are some challenges that cannot be researched in advance. Take, for example, the psychological challenge of humanity’s longest expedition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The View Back Home \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marshburn said when astronauts have free time on the International Space Station, they tend to congregate in the cupola, a place that offers unparalleled views of Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a huge boost to look out the window at our planet while we orbit the space station,” he said. “To see it in all its glory and its beauty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This view is a big reason astronauts go into space in the first place. And at some point during that trip to Mars, it will disappear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the first time in our two million-plus years of existence, humans will lose that visual tether to the place we all come from. A period of time when, Marshburn said, the view will be “just the blackness of space and stars outside the window.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It will be thrilling, says Marshburn. It could also be deeply disconcerting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His advice to those lucky astronauts? Stay busy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/8SfyE9qsG8k\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Getting sick in space is no picnic. So scientists are sending bugs to the International Space Station, hoping to better predict some of the physical challenges that may befall astronauts when NASA eventually sends the first human mission to Mars.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15579\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Apollo-7-astronauts.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15579 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Apollo-7-astronauts.jpg\" alt=\"The Apollo 7 crew, from left to right: Command Module pilot, Donn F. Eisele, Commander, Walter M. Schirra Jr. and Lunar Module pilot, Walter Cunningham. (NASA)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In 1968, two members of the Apollo 7 crew developed head colds. Crankiness ensued. Crew members, from the left, are Command Module Pilot Donn Eisele, Commander Walter Schirra, Jr. and Lunar Module Pilot Walter Cunningham. (NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Scientists at NASA’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/home/#.UyzQ_oXDX_k\">Ames Research Center\u003c/a> in Mountain View are sending fruit flies (among other creatures) up to the International Space Station, hoping to better predict some of the physical challenges that may befall astronauts when, sometime after 2030, NASA sends up the first human mission to Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA has already learned some of these lessons the hard way. For instance: Having a head cold in space is no picnic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15581\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 288px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/9400_transform-288x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-15581 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/9400_transform-288x162.jpg\" alt=\"In the first live television transmission from space, astronauts Don Eisele and Walter Schirra Jr. deliver a message to viewers. (NASA)\" width=\"288\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the first live television transmission from space, astronauts Donn F. Eisele and Walter M. Schirra Jr. deliver a message to viewers. (NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The First Colds in Space\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1968, NASA needed some good press.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The year before had been a disaster. All three crew members of the Apollo 1 Mission had died in a cabin fire before the spaceship even launched.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If NASA was going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, it needed to win back public confidence in the program. And it would do so on live television during the Apollo 7 mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apollo 7 launched on October 11, 1968, with a plan to bring three astronauts safely into Earth’s orbit, and then back home again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the first time, Americans got to see what astronauts looked like floating around in zero gravity. On live television, they watched Command Module Pilot Donn Eisele, Commander Walter Schirra, Jr. and Lunar Module Pilot Walter Cunningham eat meals, bat a lens cap around the cabin and send radio reports to ground control.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Perhaps you’ve never considered the effect of zero gravity on snot?\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“Wally took one Actifed,” Cunningham reported. “He feels fine; he’s just got a little stuffy nose.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cunningham and Schirra indeed had head colds, and the stuffy noses turned out not to be such a “little” thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The astronauts had trouble sleeping. They worried about their eardrums rupturing. Their interactions with ground control became testy, particularly on the subject of whether or not they would wear helmets upon reentry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A New Policy: Quarantine\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So after Apollo 7, NASA set a new policy: Astronauts would now be quarantined before each launch to make sure they’re healthy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the quarantine isn’t a guarantee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA astronaut \u003ca href=\"http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/barratt-mr.html\">Mike Barratt\u003c/a> caught a cold during his six-month stay on the International Space Station in 2009. “It was probably the most miserable cold I’ve ever had,” he told me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15591\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 294px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-15591 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/International_Space_Station_after_undocking_of_STS-132-1024x652.jpg\" alt=\"The International Space Station. (NASA)\" width=\"294\" height=\"188\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The International Space Station. (NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Perhaps you’ve never considered the effect of zero gravity on snot? Barratt hadn’t either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Earth, Barratt said, “where you’d have a little gravity to help you drain things, all that was absent there. Everything kind of pools where it is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Barratt invented a zero-gravity nose-blowing technique, involving swinging his body in an arc as his hands clasped a metal handrail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That move created a sort of artificial gravity, Barratt said, propelling mucus out of his head.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You do what you gotta do,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Finding Work-Arounds in Zero Gravity \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humans evolved with gravity. Take it away and we start looking for work-arounds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of these are well known. For instance: in space, muscles atrophy, especially in the legs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“From the waist up, they look strong,” Barratt said, describing how this affects humans. “From the waist down they look more like Kermit the Frog.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So astronauts spend an enormous amount of time exercising—two or three hours a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the eyes. No one’s quite sure why, but over the course of a mission, some astronauts report problems with both nearsightedness and distance vision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/marshburn-th.html\">Tom Marshburn\u003c/a>, who has completed two missions to the International Space Station as a space surgeon, said he’s learned to bring multiple pairs of eyeglasses to suit his changing vision while in space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15584\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 285px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Drosophila_SingleFly.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-15584 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Drosophila_SingleFly.jpg\" alt=\"A single drosophila, or fruit fly. (Dominic Hart/NASA)\" width=\"285\" height=\"241\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A single drosophila, or fruit fly. (Dominic Hart/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s the only solution we have right now,” Marshburn said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mars Mission Brings Higher Stakes\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is minor stuff on the International Space Station, a mere two-day trip from Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But consider that by 2030, NASA wants to start sending people to Mars and back—a mission that could last five years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anticipating the ensuing physical problems of such a mission is the job of scientists like \u003ca href=\"http://women.nasa.gov/sharmila-bhattacharya-2/\">Sharmila Bhattacharya\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Battacharya is a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, where she runs a lab in the Space Biosciences Division.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her research focuses on fruit flies—Drosophila melanogaster—and is part of a major NASA effort to send bugs (including beetles, worms, bees and spiders) up to the International Space Station to see how space affects their biology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next week, Bhattacharya plans to travel to Florida to watch the lift-off for the first of 2014’s three scheduled fruit fly missions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15586\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 301px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/ACD14-0023-028-1024x982.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-15586 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/ACD14-0023-028-1024x982.jpg\" alt=\"Ames researchers Curran Reddy and Sharmila Bhattacharya are studying the effects of zero gravity on fruit flies' cardiovascular systems. (Dominic Hart/NASA)\" width=\"301\" height=\"288\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ames researchers Curran Reddy and Sharmila Bhattacharya are studying cardiovascular health on fruit flies in space.(Dominic Hart/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Since the demise of the NASA’s space shuttle program, the agency has relied on private contractors—specifically Tesla founder Elon Musk’s company SpaceX—to carry astronauts and science experiments to the International Space Station.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bhattacharya’s launch, \u003ca href=\"http://www.spacex.com/news/2014/03/11/upcoming-mission-falcon-9-and-dragon-launching-space-station\">scheduled for March 30 or April 2\u003c/a>, will be the first effort to see how zero gravity affects the structure and function of the drosophila’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/ames/research/space-biosciences/heart-flies-spacex-3/\">cardiovascular system\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Weaker Flies, Stronger Microbes\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bhattacharya says one of the most \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3019151/\">intriguing discoveries\u003c/a> so far has to do with the flies’ white blood cells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"size-medium wp-image-15586\">“There are changes in the distribution of blood cells,” says Bhattacharya. “And, of course, blood cells are critical to immune function.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the flies’ immune systems appear to become weaker in space, certain microbes—the kinds that might make a fruit fly sick—actually get stronger. Bhattacharya says it’s potentially a deadly combination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Couple increased virulence of a pathogen with the decremented immune system of the host,” she said, “and that could be a problem for long-term space flight.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Battacharya will test that theory in fruit flies on a mission next fall. She says she expects to have results by late 2015.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA astronauts I talked to said they believe all these problems can be overcome with a little ingenuity.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\nAt some point on the mission to Mars the view of Earth will disappear, and it will be ‘just the blackness of space and stars outside the window.’\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>But there are some challenges that cannot be researched in advance. Take, for example, the psychological challenge of humanity’s longest expedition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The View Back Home \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marshburn said when astronauts have free time on the International Space Station, they tend to congregate in the cupola, a place that offers unparalleled views of Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a huge boost to look out the window at our planet while we orbit the space station,” he said. “To see it in all its glory and its beauty.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This view is a big reason astronauts go into space in the first place. And at some point during that trip to Mars, it will disappear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the first time in our two million-plus years of existence, humans will lose that visual tether to the place we all come from. A period of time when, Marshburn said, the view will be “just the blackness of space and stars outside the window.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It will be thrilling, says Marshburn. It could also be deeply disconcerting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His advice to those lucky astronauts? Stay busy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Yes, It's A Headache. No, I Didn't Need That Brain Scan",
"title": "Yes, It's A Headache. No, I Didn't Need That Brain Scan",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18177\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/stk116189rke-e1395165944260.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18177\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/stk116189rke-640x425.jpg\" alt=\"Headaches are almost never caused by a tumor, say neurologists. (Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"425\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Headaches are almost never caused by a tumor, say neurologists. (Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Over at NPR, the Shots blog reports that Americans get $1 billion (yes, with a \"B\") worth of brain scans every year -- because they have a headache. That's according to research at the University of Michigan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Headaches are one of the most common reasons people go to the doctor -- up to a quarter of all doctor visits, says Shots.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Sending a billion dollars \"down the drain.\" Annually.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Presumably people are getting the scans because they're worried that headache is a sign of something much more scary -- say a brain tumor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's just one problem. Most headaches are just that -- a headache.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From the \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/18/291044766/yes-its-a-headache-no-you-dont-need-a-brain-scan\" target=\"_blank\">Shots post\u003c/a>:\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>(S)ince headaches are almost never caused by a tumor or other serious brain problem, that $1 billion is money down the drain, according to Dr. Brian Callaghan, the assistant professor of neurology who led the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's such a big number,\" Callaghan told Shots. \"It's just an incredible number of MRIs and CTs that people get.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From 2007 to 2010, people visited the doctor 51 million times for headache-related problems, according to a national database of outpatient visits. And 12 percent of the time, the doctors sent their patients for a brain scan. Those numbers are on the rise, the analysis found, even though \u003ca href=\"http://www.choosingwisely.org/doctor-patient-lists/imaging-tests-for-headaches/\" target=\"_blank\">guidelines \u003c/a>urge doctors to shun the scans. The \u003ca href=\"https://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1835347\" target=\"_blank\">results \u003c/a>were published Monday in \u003cem>JAMA Internal Medicine\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>I'm guilty of sending part of that billion down the drain. A few years ago, I was driving on the highway with my two children in the back seat. I glanced down, then back at the road, and suddenly was seeing double. I managed to pull over but was very shaken. I didn't know if I was having a stroke. But over a few minutes, the symptoms subsided. I won't drag you through everything I did next, but in short, I got home safely and made an appointment with the doctor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She listened to my story, then pointed out that this episode was likely a version of the migraines I get. Migraines are often preceded by an aura, a visual effect that can include \u003ca href=\"http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/migraine-with-aura/basics/definition/con-20030404\" target=\"_blank\">flashing lights or blind spots\u003c/a>, according to the Mayo Clinic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I was freaked out. She referred me to an ophthalmologist with whom I had a long conversation about getting an MRI. He said he wouldn't do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I did it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was lucky -- not because the MRI came back normal (which I'm sure you expected by now) but also because it didn't turn up any false positives as can happen, often, with MRIs. If the MRI turns up something suspicious, it can \"prompt a cascade of tests and invasive procedures,\" Shots says, over things that will never cause any harm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that's not as bad as a CT scan -- in that case, you're exposing your brain to needless radiation. Personally, I like my brain not irradiated, if at all possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patients like me certainly bear some responsibility, but doctors are guilty as well, says Callaghan. Ordering a scan both gets the patient out the door quickly and it does make the patient feel like someone is taking care of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, there are times you should worry. Again, from Shots:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>When should we worry? If a \u003ca href=\"http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/headache.html\" target=\"_blank\">severe headache\u003c/a> strikes suddenly, the neurologists say. People also should seek medical help for \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/18/291044766/Different%20from%20other%20headaches%20you've%20had%20in%20the%20past,%20especially%20if%20you're%2050%20or%20older.%20Brought%20on%20by%20exertion.%20Accompanied%20by%20fever,%20seizure,%20vomiting,%20a%20loss%20of%20coordination,%20or%20a%20change%20in%20vision,%20speech,%20or%20alertness.\" target=\"_blank\">headaches \u003c/a>that are markedly different than ones in the past, are brought on by exertion, or come with fever, vomiting, loss of coordination, or a change in vision, speech or alertness.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>In retrospect, my doctor was taking care of me by pointing out the correct problem: the migraine. In the weeks after that first episode, I had a few more episodes of double vision. It turns out if I stopped what I was doing, closed my eyes and took some deep breaths, my vision returned to normal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's a lot cheaper and easier than an MRI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"JxVXk0bjis5QvOXUSNT42V5dBltPTkye\"]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18177\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/stk116189rke-e1395165944260.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18177\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/stk116189rke-640x425.jpg\" alt=\"Headaches are almost never caused by a tumor, say neurologists. (Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"425\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Headaches are almost never caused by a tumor, say neurologists. (Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Over at NPR, the Shots blog reports that Americans get $1 billion (yes, with a \"B\") worth of brain scans every year -- because they have a headache. That's according to research at the University of Michigan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Headaches are one of the most common reasons people go to the doctor -- up to a quarter of all doctor visits, says Shots.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Sending a billion dollars \"down the drain.\" Annually.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Presumably people are getting the scans because they're worried that headache is a sign of something much more scary -- say a brain tumor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's just one problem. Most headaches are just that -- a headache.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From the \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/18/291044766/yes-its-a-headache-no-you-dont-need-a-brain-scan\" target=\"_blank\">Shots post\u003c/a>:\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>(S)ince headaches are almost never caused by a tumor or other serious brain problem, that $1 billion is money down the drain, according to Dr. Brian Callaghan, the assistant professor of neurology who led the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's such a big number,\" Callaghan told Shots. \"It's just an incredible number of MRIs and CTs that people get.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From 2007 to 2010, people visited the doctor 51 million times for headache-related problems, according to a national database of outpatient visits. And 12 percent of the time, the doctors sent their patients for a brain scan. Those numbers are on the rise, the analysis found, even though \u003ca href=\"http://www.choosingwisely.org/doctor-patient-lists/imaging-tests-for-headaches/\" target=\"_blank\">guidelines \u003c/a>urge doctors to shun the scans. The \u003ca href=\"https://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1835347\" target=\"_blank\">results \u003c/a>were published Monday in \u003cem>JAMA Internal Medicine\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>I'm guilty of sending part of that billion down the drain. A few years ago, I was driving on the highway with my two children in the back seat. I glanced down, then back at the road, and suddenly was seeing double. I managed to pull over but was very shaken. I didn't know if I was having a stroke. But over a few minutes, the symptoms subsided. I won't drag you through everything I did next, but in short, I got home safely and made an appointment with the doctor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She listened to my story, then pointed out that this episode was likely a version of the migraines I get. Migraines are often preceded by an aura, a visual effect that can include \u003ca href=\"http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/migraine-with-aura/basics/definition/con-20030404\" target=\"_blank\">flashing lights or blind spots\u003c/a>, according to the Mayo Clinic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I was freaked out. She referred me to an ophthalmologist with whom I had a long conversation about getting an MRI. He said he wouldn't do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I did it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was lucky -- not because the MRI came back normal (which I'm sure you expected by now) but also because it didn't turn up any false positives as can happen, often, with MRIs. If the MRI turns up something suspicious, it can \"prompt a cascade of tests and invasive procedures,\" Shots says, over things that will never cause any harm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that's not as bad as a CT scan -- in that case, you're exposing your brain to needless radiation. Personally, I like my brain not irradiated, if at all possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patients like me certainly bear some responsibility, but doctors are guilty as well, says Callaghan. Ordering a scan both gets the patient out the door quickly and it does make the patient feel like someone is taking care of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, there are times you should worry. Again, from Shots:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>When should we worry? If a \u003ca href=\"http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/headache.html\" target=\"_blank\">severe headache\u003c/a> strikes suddenly, the neurologists say. People also should seek medical help for \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/18/291044766/Different%20from%20other%20headaches%20you've%20had%20in%20the%20past,%20especially%20if%20you're%2050%20or%20older.%20Brought%20on%20by%20exertion.%20Accompanied%20by%20fever,%20seizure,%20vomiting,%20a%20loss%20of%20coordination,%20or%20a%20change%20in%20vision,%20speech,%20or%20alertness.\" target=\"_blank\">headaches \u003c/a>that are markedly different than ones in the past, are brought on by exertion, or come with fever, vomiting, loss of coordination, or a change in vision, speech or alertness.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>In retrospect, my doctor was taking care of me by pointing out the correct problem: the migraine. In the weeks after that first episode, I had a few more episodes of double vision. It turns out if I stopped what I was doing, closed my eyes and took some deep breaths, my vision returned to normal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's a lot cheaper and easier than an MRI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"JxVXk0bjis5QvOXUSNT42V5dBltPTkye\"]\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "How Damaged is Your DNA? A New Startup Wants to Know",
"headTitle": "How Damaged is Your DNA? A New Startup Wants to Know | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15216\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Costes_ScienceTheater_v4_slide4_640x360.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15216\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15216\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Costes_ScienceTheater_v4_slide4_640x360.jpg\" alt=\"Summary of the factors that cause DNA damage and the associated diseases. (Courtesy of Sylvain Costes)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Summary of the factors that cause DNA damage and the associated diseases. (Courtesy of Sylvain Costes)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>DNA stores the genetic information in each living cell, so its integrity and stability is essential to life. But it’s constantly being damaged by environmental factors like exposure to ionizing radiation, ultraviolet light and toxins. And DNA replication is also prone to error during normal cell division, so your body is busy constantly repairing damaged DNA. However, sometimes this normal DNA repair process fails, causing damage and genetic mutations to accumulate which leads to serious health problems like cancer, immunological disorders and neurological disorders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If your annual checkup included a simple blood test to determine how much DNA damage you have in your body, you may be able to optimize your long-term health by taking action to minimize DNA damage due to your diet, exercise and environment. A startup company called \u003ca title=\"Exogen Biotechnology\" href=\"http://exogenbio.com/\">Exogen Biotechnology\u003c/a> wants to provide the public with a way to monitor their DNA health, so they can act to reduce damage. Exogen has developed technology that can rapidly quantify a type of DNA damage called double-strand breaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“DNA double-strand breaks are when the two strands of the DNA are cut, so they can move apart,” explained \u003ca title=\"Sylvain Costes website at LBNL\" href=\"http://www.lbl.gov/lsd/People_&_Organization/Scientific_Staff_Directory/Costes_Lab.html\">Sylvain Costes\u003c/a>, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and co-founder of Exogen. “This is linked to mutation and chromosome rearrangement, so it’s a big deal – it’s the dangerous type of DNA damage. That’s what we look at.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exogen’s DNA damage measurement is based on technology developed over 15 years ago called immunocytochemistry – a technique that uses a primary antibody that recognizes the protein that is repairing the DNA break, along with a secondary fluorescent antibody that binds to the primary antibody. This creates bright spots in the microscope image where there are double-strand DNA breaks, so scientists can take a picture and count the breaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15221\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 304px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/TrackYourDNA_sm.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15221\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15221\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/TrackYourDNA_sm.jpg\" alt=\"Three-step procedure that Exogen uses to track DNA damage:blood collection kit, immunocytochemistry, and DNA breaks quantification. The final image shows a cell without (cell 10) and with (cell 11) a DNA double-strand break. (Courtesy of Sylvain Costes)\" width=\"304\" height=\"179\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The three-step procedure that Exogen uses to track DNA damage: blood collection kit, immunocytochemistry, and DNA breaks quantification. The final image shows a cell without (cell 10) and with (cell 11) a DNA double-strand break. (Courtesy of Sylvain Costes)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Exogen is moving this technique out of the laboratory to make it publicly available. They have significantly improved the technology so that it’s feasible to rapidly test small blood samples for the level of DNA double-strand breaks. A customer collects tiny blood samples using an in-home kit, combines the blood samples with a fixative solution to preserve them, logs on to the Exogen website to register the samples and complete a questionnaire, then mails them to Exogen for analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exogen tested their new technology in two pilot studies with a total of 97 people. They observed a significant increase in the level of DNA damage with age, where 70-year-olds had double the number of DNA double-strand breaks compared to 20-year-olds. The four people who had suffered from cancer also had a higher level of DNA damage compared to others in their age group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we did the first pilot study, we saw the excitement of the people,” said Costes. “They realized that this is something totally new; something we know in the research field, but that’s never been given to the people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inspired by the initial pilot studies, Exogen wants to build a large database of DNA damage levels for research purposes so they can better understand the meaning of an elevated level of DNA damage and how certain factors affect DNA health. Of course, their data collection process and database are secure, encrypted and fully HIPAA compliant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to get the necessary blood samples, they are currently running a \u003ca title=\"Exogen crowdfunding campaign \" href=\"http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/exogen-bio-how-damaged-is-your-dna\">crowdfunding campaign\u003c/a> on Indiegogo. People that donate $99 receive a kit to safely collect three blood samples at home, and then they receive a report on their current level of DNA damage. Exogen is calling the campaign a “citizen science project” since volunteers also fill out questionnaires about their medical history and lifestyle. They’ve already collected $76,000 and the crowdfunding campaign runs through March 26. They plan to spend the money on a microscope and liquid handler, which will allow them to fully automate their system so they can analyze up to 400 blood samples per day.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘In contrast to genetic testing, we feel like this test can bring hope because you have a way to act.’\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Currently, Exogen can’t interpret the results or give people advice about how to lower their DNA damage, because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hasn’t approved them as a diagnostic test. The goal of the crowdfunding campaign is to collect blood samples from 1000 people so they can go to the FDA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Once we have FDA approval, we can start counseling,” said Costes. “Primary care doctors can start engaging and testing it further with their patients, because we’ll provide a guideline to help them understand what it means.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Costes stressed that their test is very different from genetic testing provided by companies like \u003ca title=\"23andme website\" href=\"https://www.23andme.com/\">23andme\u003c/a>. Exogen isn’t looking at the genetic makeup. Instead, they are looking at a physiological response, so they compare it to a cholesterol test.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To me this is identical to cholesterol,” clarified Costes. “Your genetics places you in a certain range, but your lifestyle can change where you are within that range. In contrast to genetic testing, we feel like this test can bring hope because you have a way to act.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of their applications is to determine how DNA damage is affected by lifestyle factors like diet. Exogen plans to study a group of people for a long time to better understand how DNA damage correlates with specific diseases and with health improvements due to people’s actions. They want to evaluate whether people can improve their DNA health by changing their lifestyle or environment, instead of their fate being driven entirely by genetics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, none of the applications can happen until Exogen collects data from a larger number of people. “We need your help to make it happen,” Costes concludes. “We can’t do it alone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Update: This article was modified to disclose Sylvain Costes’ affiliation with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "If your annual checkup included a simple blood test to determine how much DNA damage you have in your body, you may be able to optimize your long-term health by taking action to minimize DNA damage due to your diet, exercise and environment. A startup company called Exogen Biotechnology wants to provide the public with a way to monitor their DNA health.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15216\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Costes_ScienceTheater_v4_slide4_640x360.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15216\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15216\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Costes_ScienceTheater_v4_slide4_640x360.jpg\" alt=\"Summary of the factors that cause DNA damage and the associated diseases. (Courtesy of Sylvain Costes)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Summary of the factors that cause DNA damage and the associated diseases. (Courtesy of Sylvain Costes)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>DNA stores the genetic information in each living cell, so its integrity and stability is essential to life. But it’s constantly being damaged by environmental factors like exposure to ionizing radiation, ultraviolet light and toxins. And DNA replication is also prone to error during normal cell division, so your body is busy constantly repairing damaged DNA. However, sometimes this normal DNA repair process fails, causing damage and genetic mutations to accumulate which leads to serious health problems like cancer, immunological disorders and neurological disorders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If your annual checkup included a simple blood test to determine how much DNA damage you have in your body, you may be able to optimize your long-term health by taking action to minimize DNA damage due to your diet, exercise and environment. A startup company called \u003ca title=\"Exogen Biotechnology\" href=\"http://exogenbio.com/\">Exogen Biotechnology\u003c/a> wants to provide the public with a way to monitor their DNA health, so they can act to reduce damage. Exogen has developed technology that can rapidly quantify a type of DNA damage called double-strand breaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“DNA double-strand breaks are when the two strands of the DNA are cut, so they can move apart,” explained \u003ca title=\"Sylvain Costes website at LBNL\" href=\"http://www.lbl.gov/lsd/People_&_Organization/Scientific_Staff_Directory/Costes_Lab.html\">Sylvain Costes\u003c/a>, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and co-founder of Exogen. “This is linked to mutation and chromosome rearrangement, so it’s a big deal – it’s the dangerous type of DNA damage. That’s what we look at.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exogen’s DNA damage measurement is based on technology developed over 15 years ago called immunocytochemistry – a technique that uses a primary antibody that recognizes the protein that is repairing the DNA break, along with a secondary fluorescent antibody that binds to the primary antibody. This creates bright spots in the microscope image where there are double-strand DNA breaks, so scientists can take a picture and count the breaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15221\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 304px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/TrackYourDNA_sm.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15221\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15221\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/TrackYourDNA_sm.jpg\" alt=\"Three-step procedure that Exogen uses to track DNA damage:blood collection kit, immunocytochemistry, and DNA breaks quantification. The final image shows a cell without (cell 10) and with (cell 11) a DNA double-strand break. (Courtesy of Sylvain Costes)\" width=\"304\" height=\"179\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The three-step procedure that Exogen uses to track DNA damage: blood collection kit, immunocytochemistry, and DNA breaks quantification. The final image shows a cell without (cell 10) and with (cell 11) a DNA double-strand break. (Courtesy of Sylvain Costes)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Exogen is moving this technique out of the laboratory to make it publicly available. They have significantly improved the technology so that it’s feasible to rapidly test small blood samples for the level of DNA double-strand breaks. A customer collects tiny blood samples using an in-home kit, combines the blood samples with a fixative solution to preserve them, logs on to the Exogen website to register the samples and complete a questionnaire, then mails them to Exogen for analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exogen tested their new technology in two pilot studies with a total of 97 people. They observed a significant increase in the level of DNA damage with age, where 70-year-olds had double the number of DNA double-strand breaks compared to 20-year-olds. The four people who had suffered from cancer also had a higher level of DNA damage compared to others in their age group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we did the first pilot study, we saw the excitement of the people,” said Costes. “They realized that this is something totally new; something we know in the research field, but that’s never been given to the people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inspired by the initial pilot studies, Exogen wants to build a large database of DNA damage levels for research purposes so they can better understand the meaning of an elevated level of DNA damage and how certain factors affect DNA health. Of course, their data collection process and database are secure, encrypted and fully HIPAA compliant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to get the necessary blood samples, they are currently running a \u003ca title=\"Exogen crowdfunding campaign \" href=\"http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/exogen-bio-how-damaged-is-your-dna\">crowdfunding campaign\u003c/a> on Indiegogo. People that donate $99 receive a kit to safely collect three blood samples at home, and then they receive a report on their current level of DNA damage. Exogen is calling the campaign a “citizen science project” since volunteers also fill out questionnaires about their medical history and lifestyle. They’ve already collected $76,000 and the crowdfunding campaign runs through March 26. They plan to spend the money on a microscope and liquid handler, which will allow them to fully automate their system so they can analyze up to 400 blood samples per day.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘In contrast to genetic testing, we feel like this test can bring hope because you have a way to act.’\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Currently, Exogen can’t interpret the results or give people advice about how to lower their DNA damage, because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hasn’t approved them as a diagnostic test. The goal of the crowdfunding campaign is to collect blood samples from 1000 people so they can go to the FDA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Once we have FDA approval, we can start counseling,” said Costes. “Primary care doctors can start engaging and testing it further with their patients, because we’ll provide a guideline to help them understand what it means.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Costes stressed that their test is very different from genetic testing provided by companies like \u003ca title=\"23andme website\" href=\"https://www.23andme.com/\">23andme\u003c/a>. Exogen isn’t looking at the genetic makeup. Instead, they are looking at a physiological response, so they compare it to a cholesterol test.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To me this is identical to cholesterol,” clarified Costes. “Your genetics places you in a certain range, but your lifestyle can change where you are within that range. In contrast to genetic testing, we feel like this test can bring hope because you have a way to act.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of their applications is to determine how DNA damage is affected by lifestyle factors like diet. Exogen plans to study a group of people for a long time to better understand how DNA damage correlates with specific diseases and with health improvements due to people’s actions. They want to evaluate whether people can improve their DNA health by changing their lifestyle or environment, instead of their fate being driven entirely by genetics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, none of the applications can happen until Exogen collects data from a larger number of people. “We need your help to make it happen,” Costes concludes. “We can’t do it alone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Use of ADHD Drugs Increasing Fastest Among Young Women",
"title": "Use of ADHD Drugs Increasing Fastest Among Young Women",
"headTitle": "State of Health | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18141\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/177861835-e1394820572797.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18141\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/177861835-640x494.jpg\" alt=\"Women ages 19 to 25 have higher rates of ADHD medication use than girls ages 12 to 18. (Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"494\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Women ages 19 to 25 have higher rates of ADHD medication use than girls ages 12 to 18. (Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Nancy Shute\u003c/strong>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/14/289821414/young-women-increasingly-turn-to-adhd-drugs\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Use of ADHD drugs continues to rise in the United States, but the group whose use is increasing the most may come as a surprise: young women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An \u003ca href=\"http://lab.express-scripts.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ADHD_March2014_ExpressScripts.pdf\">analysis\u003c/a> of prescriptions filled from 2008 to 2012 through Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit management company, found that use of ADHD medications rose 35.5 percent overall. The company's database includes 15 million people with private insurance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18147\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 259px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/Screen-Shot-2014-03-14-at-11.20.07-AM.png\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-18147\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/Screen-Shot-2014-03-14-at-11.20.07-AM-300x347.png\" alt=\"Children and young adults on ADHD medications by gender. (Express Scripts)\" width=\"259\" height=\"300\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Children and young adults on ADHD medications by gender. (Express Scripts)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The medications, largely stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall, are still most commonly prescribed to boys ages 12 to 18. In 2012 7.8 percent of boys ages 4 to 18 were taking an ADHD medication -- that's more than twice the rate of girls (3.5 percent). But in young adulthood, ages 19 to 25, men's use plummets, while young women's rate increases. From ages 26 to 64, use of ADHD medications by women exceeds that of men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To find out more about what's going on, we talked with \u003ca href=\"http://lab.express-scripts.com/author/david-muzina/\">Dr. David Muzina\u003c/a>, a psychiatrist who is the vice president and national practice leader for neuroscience at Express Scripts. This is an edited version of our conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others have \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/11/22/246771526/more-children-are-being-medicated-for-adhd-than-before\">reported\u003c/a> increases in use of ADHD medications in children, but this increase in adults seems huge. What's happening there?\u003c!--more-->\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ADHD is no longer just a childhood condition. Many of the children and adolescents who were diagnosed 10 years ago are now adults, and we know that about 1 in 3 kids carry ADHD with them into adulthood. I think that's one reason why the numbers in adults are going up. And there's been progressively more attention on ADHD in the public sphere. More adults recognize the symptoms: \"Oh, I'm not concentrating, I'm not focusing. Maybe I have ADHD.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there's overdiagnosis, overtreatment and perhaps misuse. Frankly, many prescribers mistake a patient's objective reporting of symptoms like being forgetful for ADHD. Are there life stressors, is there a medical condition, is there depression or anxiety that explains this better?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You're seeing a drop-off in young men using ADHD drugs after age 18. Why?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Men are less likely to go to the doctor, and take the meds, and fill the meds. We're thinking about the 18-, 19-year-old who's going off to college. They're going to the doctor only once or twice a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>But then why this big spike among women the same age, with 4 percent of young women taking ADHD meds in 2012?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's been known for a long, long time that if girls have ADHD they are more likely to have the inattention form, not the hyperactive, aggressive, disruptive form. Perhaps that difference in how ADHD can look is why the diagnosis is missed in girls. They may be quietly suffering and having trouble in school, but they're not disruptive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They move on into life, where those inattentive symptoms may reveal themselves as academic and social pressures compound. Now it's becoming more of an issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And lastly, we know that women in the United States are increasingly juggling more and more and more. Women still tend to have the majority of the responsibilities at home, particularly when families start up. That elevation of pressure and stress can either produce symptoms like ADHD, or that additional stress can express the underlying ADHD that previously had not been diagnosed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stimulant drugs like Ritalin are pretty well-known for improving energy and concentration, even if you don't have ADHD. Could that be a factor here?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There may be an element here of medication being prescribed off-label to help with that, as well as the desire to suppress appetite and lose weight. It's totally not approved for that. But it's popularized and perhaps glorified to some extent in popular media, including women's magazines. I've seen references to using these medications for weight loss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is this the tip of the iceberg?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think we're into the iceberg. We forecast that use of ADHD medications will be 25 percent higher in five years. That's the main reason why Express Scripts decided to do this deeper analysis, to see what's driving the trend. If we see patterns from prescriptions that are coming in, we can intervene if someone shouldn't be on this medication or if we suspect fraud. We're beginning to put our brains around tightening those monitoring systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"7WRNz7KKp9AwOEcEZQA5VRzGtVm5qH8j\"]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18141\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/177861835-e1394820572797.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18141\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/177861835-640x494.jpg\" alt=\"Women ages 19 to 25 have higher rates of ADHD medication use than girls ages 12 to 18. (Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"494\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Women ages 19 to 25 have higher rates of ADHD medication use than girls ages 12 to 18. (Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Nancy Shute\u003c/strong>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/14/289821414/young-women-increasingly-turn-to-adhd-drugs\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Use of ADHD drugs continues to rise in the United States, but the group whose use is increasing the most may come as a surprise: young women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An \u003ca href=\"http://lab.express-scripts.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ADHD_March2014_ExpressScripts.pdf\">analysis\u003c/a> of prescriptions filled from 2008 to 2012 through Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit management company, found that use of ADHD medications rose 35.5 percent overall. The company's database includes 15 million people with private insurance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18147\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 259px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/Screen-Shot-2014-03-14-at-11.20.07-AM.png\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-18147\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/Screen-Shot-2014-03-14-at-11.20.07-AM-300x347.png\" alt=\"Children and young adults on ADHD medications by gender. (Express Scripts)\" width=\"259\" height=\"300\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Children and young adults on ADHD medications by gender. (Express Scripts)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The medications, largely stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall, are still most commonly prescribed to boys ages 12 to 18. In 2012 7.8 percent of boys ages 4 to 18 were taking an ADHD medication -- that's more than twice the rate of girls (3.5 percent). But in young adulthood, ages 19 to 25, men's use plummets, while young women's rate increases. From ages 26 to 64, use of ADHD medications by women exceeds that of men.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To find out more about what's going on, we talked with \u003ca href=\"http://lab.express-scripts.com/author/david-muzina/\">Dr. David Muzina\u003c/a>, a psychiatrist who is the vice president and national practice leader for neuroscience at Express Scripts. This is an edited version of our conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others have \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/11/22/246771526/more-children-are-being-medicated-for-adhd-than-before\">reported\u003c/a> increases in use of ADHD medications in children, but this increase in adults seems huge. What's happening there?\u003c!--more-->\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ADHD is no longer just a childhood condition. Many of the children and adolescents who were diagnosed 10 years ago are now adults, and we know that about 1 in 3 kids carry ADHD with them into adulthood. I think that's one reason why the numbers in adults are going up. And there's been progressively more attention on ADHD in the public sphere. More adults recognize the symptoms: \"Oh, I'm not concentrating, I'm not focusing. Maybe I have ADHD.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there's overdiagnosis, overtreatment and perhaps misuse. Frankly, many prescribers mistake a patient's objective reporting of symptoms like being forgetful for ADHD. Are there life stressors, is there a medical condition, is there depression or anxiety that explains this better?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You're seeing a drop-off in young men using ADHD drugs after age 18. Why?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Men are less likely to go to the doctor, and take the meds, and fill the meds. We're thinking about the 18-, 19-year-old who's going off to college. They're going to the doctor only once or twice a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>But then why this big spike among women the same age, with 4 percent of young women taking ADHD meds in 2012?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's been known for a long, long time that if girls have ADHD they are more likely to have the inattention form, not the hyperactive, aggressive, disruptive form. Perhaps that difference in how ADHD can look is why the diagnosis is missed in girls. They may be quietly suffering and having trouble in school, but they're not disruptive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They move on into life, where those inattentive symptoms may reveal themselves as academic and social pressures compound. Now it's becoming more of an issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And lastly, we know that women in the United States are increasingly juggling more and more and more. Women still tend to have the majority of the responsibilities at home, particularly when families start up. That elevation of pressure and stress can either produce symptoms like ADHD, or that additional stress can express the underlying ADHD that previously had not been diagnosed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stimulant drugs like Ritalin are pretty well-known for improving energy and concentration, even if you don't have ADHD. Could that be a factor here?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There may be an element here of medication being prescribed off-label to help with that, as well as the desire to suppress appetite and lose weight. It's totally not approved for that. But it's popularized and perhaps glorified to some extent in popular media, including women's magazines. I've seen references to using these medications for weight loss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is this the tip of the iceberg?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think we're into the iceberg. We forecast that use of ADHD medications will be 25 percent higher in five years. That's the main reason why Express Scripts decided to do this deeper analysis, to see what's driving the trend. If we see patterns from prescriptions that are coming in, we can intervene if someone shouldn't be on this medication or if we suspect fraud. We're beginning to put our brains around tightening those monitoring systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"7WRNz7KKp9AwOEcEZQA5VRzGtVm5qH8j\"]\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "California Takes Aim at Toxic Nap Mats, Paint Strippers",
"headTitle": "California Takes Aim at Toxic Nap Mats, Paint Strippers | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15320\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 727px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/LucyNapMat2.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15320\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15320\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/LucyNapMat2.jpg\" alt=\"Many children's products, including nap mats, contain flame retardant chemicals known to cause cancer. (Center for Environmental Health)\" width=\"727\" height=\"409\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Many children’s products, including nap mats, contain flame retardant chemicals known to cause cancer. (Center for Environmental Health)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In a process lengthier than many had hoped, California is moving toward removing toxic products from the market, one by one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, officials announced the first three \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/SCP/index.cfm\">proposed targets\u003c/a>: nap mats used by small children in schools, spray polyurethane foam used as insulation and a commonly available paint stripper that has been implicated in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6107a2.htm\">deaths of 13 workers\u003c/a> who were refinishing bathtubs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The decision on which items to target isn’t yet final. Staff at the state Department of Toxic Substances Control will spend another year “making sure we have selected the right products,” said the Department’s deputy director Meredith Williams. Regulations would begin in mid-2015.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ridding Nap Mats of Cancer-Causing Chemicals\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/SCP/Foam_Padded_Sleeping.cfm\">Nap mats\u003c/a> were selected because they often contain a chemical flame retardant called TDCPP, or chlorinated Tris, which is \u003ca href=\"http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/prop65_list/files/P65single013114.pdf\">known to cause cancer\u003c/a> and may also \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854790/\">interfere \u003c/a>with a child’s endocrine system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chlorinated Tris was \u003ca href=\"http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/News-Releases/1977/CPSC-Bans-TRIS-Treated-Childrens-Garments/\">removed \u003c/a>from children’s pajamas in the 1970s, over concerns about its health effects, but both it and its chemical cousin, brominated Tris, continue to turn up in children’s products such as nursing pillows and infant sleep positioners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In November, Governor Jerry Brown \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/11/21/its-official-toxic-flame-retardants-no-longer-required-in-furniture/\">issued new rules\u003c/a> that are likely to eliminate chemical flame retardants from sofas and other upholstered furniture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But despite multiple regulatory actions, “children are still being exposed,” Williams said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new rules would require that manufacturers of nap mats, crib mattresses and sleep positioners, among other products, first disclose whether their products contain Tris, then undergo a lengthy “alternatives assessment” to determine whether the chemical can be excluded without affecting the usefulness of the product.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other chemicals may be harder to remove.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the case with the second product regulators would like to change: a spray polyurethane foam containing a chemical called \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/SCP/Spray_Polyurethane_Foam.cfm\">diisocyanate\u003c/a>, which can cause asthma and skin irritation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Safe Alternatives Not Always Available\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alternatives to spray insulation are available, said Williams. “But for the quick-and-dirty spray applications, we’re unaware of any alternatives, so this will be a challenge for manufacturers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The third product category includes paint thinners and other products containing \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/SCP/Paint_Stripper.cfm\">methylene chloride\u003c/a>, a common solvent that converts to carbon monoxide in the body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 2000 and 2011, according to a \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6107a2.htm\">CDC report\u003c/a>, 13 people died while refinishing bathtubs using products containing methylene chloride stripping agents.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">The soonest consumers might see an outright ban: mid-2016.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Both the paint thinner and spray insulation are sold with warning labels, required in California under the state’s \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/who-profits-from-proposition-65-part-one/\">Prop 65\u003c/a>. But the products are still widely available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams says regulators want to encourage both consumers and manufacturers to ask whether the chemical is necessary, and to look into alternatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the manufacturer doesn’t remove the chemical, state officials could take a number of regulatory options, including an outright ban on products containing it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The soonest consumers might see an outright ban on a hazardous product would be mid-2016, said Karl Palmer, chief of the Toxics in Products Branch of the DTSC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Industry: Rules May Not Be “Legally Defensible”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today’s announcement comes after six years of stop-and-start deliberations over how to implement the California Green Chemistry Initiative, which voters passed in 2008.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the gears turned in California, federal legislators have been debating an overhaul of the 38-year-old Toxic Substance Control Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California decided not to wait,” Williams said. “We’re moving now, we’re naming these products, and we’re excited about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the press conference on Thursday, state officials expressed concern that weaker federal rules could preempt California’s fledgling program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another worry is that chemical manufacturers will sue the state, adding yet another delay to an already lengthy process.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘California decided not to wait. We’re moving and we’re excited about it.’\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Such lawsuits, said Janet Nudelman, director of program and policy at the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group, are “a tool that the chemical industry pulls out frequently.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The American Chemistry Council hinted at such a possibility, expressing “concern” that the safer products program might not be legally defensible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, says the Breast Cancer Fund’s Nudelman, “I am cautiously optimistic that the state will be able to withstand the lawsuits and go forward with this important program.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A written \u003ca href=\"http://www.americanchemistry.com/Media/PressReleasesTranscripts/ACC-news-releases/ACC-Comments-on-Release-of-California-Draft-Priority-Products-List-as-Part-of-New-State-Regulation.html\">statement \u003c/a>from the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical manufacturers, expressed “disappointment” over a process it considers redundant with federal regulation.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15320\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 727px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/LucyNapMat2.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15320\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15320\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/LucyNapMat2.jpg\" alt=\"Many children's products, including nap mats, contain flame retardant chemicals known to cause cancer. (Center for Environmental Health)\" width=\"727\" height=\"409\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Many children’s products, including nap mats, contain flame retardant chemicals known to cause cancer. (Center for Environmental Health)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In a process lengthier than many had hoped, California is moving toward removing toxic products from the market, one by one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, officials announced the first three \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/SCP/index.cfm\">proposed targets\u003c/a>: nap mats used by small children in schools, spray polyurethane foam used as insulation and a commonly available paint stripper that has been implicated in the \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6107a2.htm\">deaths of 13 workers\u003c/a> who were refinishing bathtubs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The decision on which items to target isn’t yet final. Staff at the state Department of Toxic Substances Control will spend another year “making sure we have selected the right products,” said the Department’s deputy director Meredith Williams. Regulations would begin in mid-2015.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ridding Nap Mats of Cancer-Causing Chemicals\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/SCP/Foam_Padded_Sleeping.cfm\">Nap mats\u003c/a> were selected because they often contain a chemical flame retardant called TDCPP, or chlorinated Tris, which is \u003ca href=\"http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/prop65_list/files/P65single013114.pdf\">known to cause cancer\u003c/a> and may also \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854790/\">interfere \u003c/a>with a child’s endocrine system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chlorinated Tris was \u003ca href=\"http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/News-Releases/1977/CPSC-Bans-TRIS-Treated-Childrens-Garments/\">removed \u003c/a>from children’s pajamas in the 1970s, over concerns about its health effects, but both it and its chemical cousin, brominated Tris, continue to turn up in children’s products such as nursing pillows and infant sleep positioners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In November, Governor Jerry Brown \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/11/21/its-official-toxic-flame-retardants-no-longer-required-in-furniture/\">issued new rules\u003c/a> that are likely to eliminate chemical flame retardants from sofas and other upholstered furniture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But despite multiple regulatory actions, “children are still being exposed,” Williams said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new rules would require that manufacturers of nap mats, crib mattresses and sleep positioners, among other products, first disclose whether their products contain Tris, then undergo a lengthy “alternatives assessment” to determine whether the chemical can be excluded without affecting the usefulness of the product.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other chemicals may be harder to remove.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the case with the second product regulators would like to change: a spray polyurethane foam containing a chemical called \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/SCP/Spray_Polyurethane_Foam.cfm\">diisocyanate\u003c/a>, which can cause asthma and skin irritation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Safe Alternatives Not Always Available\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alternatives to spray insulation are available, said Williams. “But for the quick-and-dirty spray applications, we’re unaware of any alternatives, so this will be a challenge for manufacturers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The third product category includes paint thinners and other products containing \u003ca href=\"https://dtsc.ca.gov/SCP/Paint_Stripper.cfm\">methylene chloride\u003c/a>, a common solvent that converts to carbon monoxide in the body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 2000 and 2011, according to a \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6107a2.htm\">CDC report\u003c/a>, 13 people died while refinishing bathtubs using products containing methylene chloride stripping agents.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">The soonest consumers might see an outright ban: mid-2016.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Both the paint thinner and spray insulation are sold with warning labels, required in California under the state’s \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/who-profits-from-proposition-65-part-one/\">Prop 65\u003c/a>. But the products are still widely available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams says regulators want to encourage both consumers and manufacturers to ask whether the chemical is necessary, and to look into alternatives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the manufacturer doesn’t remove the chemical, state officials could take a number of regulatory options, including an outright ban on products containing it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The soonest consumers might see an outright ban on a hazardous product would be mid-2016, said Karl Palmer, chief of the Toxics in Products Branch of the DTSC.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Industry: Rules May Not Be “Legally Defensible”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today’s announcement comes after six years of stop-and-start deliberations over how to implement the California Green Chemistry Initiative, which voters passed in 2008.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the gears turned in California, federal legislators have been debating an overhaul of the 38-year-old Toxic Substance Control Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“California decided not to wait,” Williams said. “We’re moving now, we’re naming these products, and we’re excited about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the press conference on Thursday, state officials expressed concern that weaker federal rules could preempt California’s fledgling program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another worry is that chemical manufacturers will sue the state, adding yet another delay to an already lengthy process.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘California decided not to wait. We’re moving and we’re excited about it.’\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Such lawsuits, said Janet Nudelman, director of program and policy at the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group, are “a tool that the chemical industry pulls out frequently.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The American Chemistry Council hinted at such a possibility, expressing “concern” that the safer products program might not be legally defensible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, says the Breast Cancer Fund’s Nudelman, “I am cautiously optimistic that the state will be able to withstand the lawsuits and go forward with this important program.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A written \u003ca href=\"http://www.americanchemistry.com/Media/PressReleasesTranscripts/ACC-news-releases/ACC-Comments-on-Release-of-California-Draft-Priority-Products-List-as-Part-of-New-State-Regulation.html\">statement \u003c/a>from the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical manufacturers, expressed “disappointment” over a process it considers redundant with federal regulation.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Study: Estrogen Therapy May Help Some Older Women at Risk for Alzheimer's Disease",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18086\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/2380867-e1394646803472.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18086\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/2380867-640x341.jpg\" alt=\"Estrogen replacement patches. (Ian Waldie/Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"341\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Estrogen replacement patches. (Ian Waldie/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Postmenopausal women have heard just about everything when it comes to hormone therapy. In the 1990s, doctors routinely recommended it, believing that it helped women avoid heart attacks, thinning bones and other problems of aging. Then along came the Women's Health Initiative study, which first found hormone therapy (HT) created more risks than benefits -- \u003ca href=\"http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1745676\" target=\"_blank\">then found that over time \u003c/a>some of those risks subsided, at least somewhat.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"It's a very provocative finding, without a doubt.\" \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>But one main criticism of the Women's Health Initiative study was that women were recruited to start on hormone therapy long after they had gone through menopause. The women were ages 65 or older.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, \u003ca href=\"http://www.menopause.org/for-women/menopauseflashes/news-you-can-use-about-hormone-therapy\" target=\"_blank\">many doctors believe\u003c/a> that HT started at the time of menopause -- or soon after -- can help women with hot flashes, vaginal dryness and other symptoms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now a small study at Stanford has looked at another area of interest with HT -- the possible effects of estrogen on the brain. Conflicting evidence has indicated that HT can help women fight dementia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this study, instead of starting women on hormones, as the Women's Health Initiative study did, the Stanford researchers recruited women already taking them and then randomized them into two groups -- some would continue taking hormones, some would stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"They start women on hormones, and we stopped women on hormones. Biologically it's a very different phenomenon,\" said Dr. Natalie Rasgon, director of the Stanford Center for Neuroscience in Women's Health, lead author of the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rasgon and her team also recruited significantly younger women, ages 50-65. The researchers measured metabolic activity in specific brain regions associated with memory and executive function, using sophisticated PET scans. Rasgon said that studies have shown that these areas can show a decline before a person would notice symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>One Type of Estrogen Helps, Another Doesn't\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They found that women taking a type of synthetic estrogen called estradiol saw that their brain function was better preserved. But here's the rub: Another kind of estrogen, conjugated equine estrogen, often known by the brand name Premarin, did not confer the same benefit. The study found that women who took Premarin saw a decline in the key brain regions studied. Results were published in \u003ca href=\"http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0089095\">Plos One.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many women who take hormone therapy take both synthetic estrogen and progesterone, in part because estrogen therapy alone increases a woman's risk of uterine cancer. In women in the study who took both hormones, the synthetic progesterone wiped out any benefits provided by estradiol and increased the brain decline seen in women taking Premarin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's a very provocative finding, without a doubt,\" Rasgon said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Estradiol is a \"synthetic molecule which exactly mimics the estrogen produced by the ovary,\" Rasgon said. Pfizer, which manufactures Premarin,\u003ca href=\"http://labeling.pfizer.com/showlabeling.aspx?id=131\" target=\"_blank\"> describes it\u003c/a> as \"a mixture of conjugated estrogens obtained exclusively from natural sources.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before you rush out to take estradiol to help ward off Alzheimer's disease, Rasgon was careful to issue clear caveats. First, this is a small study, just 45 women, \"and it's a very specific population,\" she said. \"It's a population that is at risk for Azheimer's disease.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to be included in the study, women were required to be at increased risk for dementia, as indicated by having a first-degree relative with Alzheimer's disease, or that they were known to carry a specific variant of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers/publication/alzheimers-disease-genetics-fact-sheet\" target=\"_blank\">ApoE gene\u003c/a>, which is associated with increased risk of Alzheimer's. Women who had a personal history of major depression were also eligible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the PET scans, researchers were looking only at changes in metabolic activity in the brain -- a marker for brain preservation -- and not at direct cognition among the women. \"Metabolic changes in these brain regions presage overt symptoms of cognitive decline, sometimes by decades,\" Rasgon said. \"We're finding significant changes in women who are still cognitively intact.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is a wonderful study,\" said Dr. David Rubinow, former head of the division of behavioral endocrinology at the National Institute of Mental Health and now at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He was not involved in the study. \"Dr. Rasgon was able to demonstrate that there were marked differences between conjugated equine estrogen and estradiol, and both of those observations had been suggested but were untested.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rubinow said that more study is needed. \"Is this a study that suggests that we need to redouble our efforts to determine the effects of estradiol administered during perimenopause on cognitive function? The answer is yes.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lack of Randomization Raises Questions\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. Rita Redberg, director of Women's Cardiovascular Services at UC San Francisco, was more skeptical. While changes in metabolic activity in the brain are a marker for disease, \"a marker is a long way from dementia,\" she noted. While people who now have Alzheimer's disease may well have started off with these changes years ago, it's likely that many people will experience these metabolic changes but never go on to develop dementia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Redberg also was concerned that women came into the study already taking hormones. The study required that women already be taking them for at least one year, so this means the women were not randomly assigned estradiol or Premarin. \"There were likely differences among women who chose to take estradiol and women who chose to take (Premarin), so it wasn't randomized.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Women can slow or prevent memory loss by eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise, Redberg said. Also, estrogen therapy increases a woman's risk for breast cancer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rasgon agreed that diet and exercise can help people reduce their risk of dementia, but she also stressed that women should assess risks and benefits of hormone therapy individually. \"Those risks and benefits have to be accounted for now for the type of hormone preparation they are taking and presence or absence of progestin,\" she said. \"Not every women taking progestin may need it. … Those factors were not part of the equation in the past and now they should be -- at least for those who are at risk for Alzheimer's disease.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"48k9vaFKqfQgzEla6UEXSIUUWAXWPjmR\"]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_18086\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/2380867-e1394646803472.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-18086\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2014/03/2380867-640x341.jpg\" alt=\"Estrogen replacement patches. (Ian Waldie/Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"341\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Estrogen replacement patches. (Ian Waldie/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Postmenopausal women have heard just about everything when it comes to hormone therapy. In the 1990s, doctors routinely recommended it, believing that it helped women avoid heart attacks, thinning bones and other problems of aging. Then along came the Women's Health Initiative study, which first found hormone therapy (HT) created more risks than benefits -- \u003ca href=\"http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1745676\" target=\"_blank\">then found that over time \u003c/a>some of those risks subsided, at least somewhat.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"It's a very provocative finding, without a doubt.\" \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>But one main criticism of the Women's Health Initiative study was that women were recruited to start on hormone therapy long after they had gone through menopause. The women were ages 65 or older.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, \u003ca href=\"http://www.menopause.org/for-women/menopauseflashes/news-you-can-use-about-hormone-therapy\" target=\"_blank\">many doctors believe\u003c/a> that HT started at the time of menopause -- or soon after -- can help women with hot flashes, vaginal dryness and other symptoms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now a small study at Stanford has looked at another area of interest with HT -- the possible effects of estrogen on the brain. Conflicting evidence has indicated that HT can help women fight dementia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this study, instead of starting women on hormones, as the Women's Health Initiative study did, the Stanford researchers recruited women already taking them and then randomized them into two groups -- some would continue taking hormones, some would stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"They start women on hormones, and we stopped women on hormones. Biologically it's a very different phenomenon,\" said Dr. Natalie Rasgon, director of the Stanford Center for Neuroscience in Women's Health, lead author of the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rasgon and her team also recruited significantly younger women, ages 50-65. The researchers measured metabolic activity in specific brain regions associated with memory and executive function, using sophisticated PET scans. Rasgon said that studies have shown that these areas can show a decline before a person would notice symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>One Type of Estrogen Helps, Another Doesn't\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They found that women taking a type of synthetic estrogen called estradiol saw that their brain function was better preserved. But here's the rub: Another kind of estrogen, conjugated equine estrogen, often known by the brand name Premarin, did not confer the same benefit. The study found that women who took Premarin saw a decline in the key brain regions studied. Results were published in \u003ca href=\"http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0089095\">Plos One.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many women who take hormone therapy take both synthetic estrogen and progesterone, in part because estrogen therapy alone increases a woman's risk of uterine cancer. In women in the study who took both hormones, the synthetic progesterone wiped out any benefits provided by estradiol and increased the brain decline seen in women taking Premarin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's a very provocative finding, without a doubt,\" Rasgon said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Estradiol is a \"synthetic molecule which exactly mimics the estrogen produced by the ovary,\" Rasgon said. Pfizer, which manufactures Premarin,\u003ca href=\"http://labeling.pfizer.com/showlabeling.aspx?id=131\" target=\"_blank\"> describes it\u003c/a> as \"a mixture of conjugated estrogens obtained exclusively from natural sources.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before you rush out to take estradiol to help ward off Alzheimer's disease, Rasgon was careful to issue clear caveats. First, this is a small study, just 45 women, \"and it's a very specific population,\" she said. \"It's a population that is at risk for Azheimer's disease.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to be included in the study, women were required to be at increased risk for dementia, as indicated by having a first-degree relative with Alzheimer's disease, or that they were known to carry a specific variant of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers/publication/alzheimers-disease-genetics-fact-sheet\" target=\"_blank\">ApoE gene\u003c/a>, which is associated with increased risk of Alzheimer's. Women who had a personal history of major depression were also eligible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the PET scans, researchers were looking only at changes in metabolic activity in the brain -- a marker for brain preservation -- and not at direct cognition among the women. \"Metabolic changes in these brain regions presage overt symptoms of cognitive decline, sometimes by decades,\" Rasgon said. \"We're finding significant changes in women who are still cognitively intact.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is a wonderful study,\" said Dr. David Rubinow, former head of the division of behavioral endocrinology at the National Institute of Mental Health and now at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He was not involved in the study. \"Dr. Rasgon was able to demonstrate that there were marked differences between conjugated equine estrogen and estradiol, and both of those observations had been suggested but were untested.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rubinow said that more study is needed. \"Is this a study that suggests that we need to redouble our efforts to determine the effects of estradiol administered during perimenopause on cognitive function? The answer is yes.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lack of Randomization Raises Questions\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. Rita Redberg, director of Women's Cardiovascular Services at UC San Francisco, was more skeptical. While changes in metabolic activity in the brain are a marker for disease, \"a marker is a long way from dementia,\" she noted. While people who now have Alzheimer's disease may well have started off with these changes years ago, it's likely that many people will experience these metabolic changes but never go on to develop dementia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Redberg also was concerned that women came into the study already taking hormones. The study required that women already be taking them for at least one year, so this means the women were not randomly assigned estradiol or Premarin. \"There were likely differences among women who chose to take estradiol and women who chose to take (Premarin), so it wasn't randomized.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Women can slow or prevent memory loss by eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise, Redberg said. Also, estrogen therapy increases a woman's risk for breast cancer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rasgon agreed that diet and exercise can help people reduce their risk of dementia, but she also stressed that women should assess risks and benefits of hormone therapy individually. \"Those risks and benefits have to be accounted for now for the type of hormone preparation they are taking and presence or absence of progestin,\" she said. \"Not every women taking progestin may need it. … Those factors were not part of the equation in the past and now they should be -- at least for those who are at risk for Alzheimer's disease.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Erasing Traumatic Memories from DNA May One Day Help PTSD Sufferers",
"headTitle": "Erasing Traumatic Memories from DNA May One Day Help PTSD Sufferers | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15001\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/PTSDmarine.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15001\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15001\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/PTSDmarine.jpg\" alt=\"PTSD sufferers may one day be helped by clearing away chemical marks in the DNA of their brains that makes therapy less effective. (Wikimedia Commons) \" width=\"640\" height=\"374\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">PTSD sufferers may one day be helped by clearing away chemical marks in the DNA of their brains that makes therapy less effective. (\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USMC-100612-M-9234B-001.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Sometimes events like a battle during wartime or a sexual assault are so horrific that they seem to leave a hard-to-remove scar on the brains of some of the people who endure them. There are some therapies that can help but their effects often fade over time. These sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder (\u003ca href=\"http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/post-traumatic-stress-disorder\">PTSD\u003c/a>) end up reliving the experience over and over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results of a \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24439381\">new study\u003c/a> might give these people hope. The researchers found that giving mice suffering from PTSD a certain class of drugs along with therapy could cure the mice when therapy alone could not. These \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histone_deacetylase_inhibitor\">HDAC inhibitors\u003c/a> helped remove the scars so that therapy could really heal the brains of these mice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the term scar isn’t too far from reality. In PTSD, the scar is made up of chemical groups scattered around certain genes that end up there as a result of these experiences. These “\u003ca href=\"http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask403\">epigenetic\u003c/a>” marks make the brain resistant to the rewiring that therapy can provide. So it makes sense that removing them would make the brain more receptive to therapy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course a mouse is not a person but this is still a very promising line of research. Even if we don’t end up combining HDAC inhibitors with therapy in people, the study may still help us find key genes to target in other ways. Research like this may one day help find better treatments for the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/PTSD-overview/basics/how-common-is-ptsd.asp\">7-8% of people who will suffer\u003c/a> from this devastating disorder at some point in their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Mouse Experiment\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15006\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Labmouse300.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15006\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15006\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Labmouse300.jpg\" alt=\"Mice trained to fear a noise could be cured with therapy if they were given drugs that could prime their DNA for it. (Rama/Wikimedia Commons)\" width=\"300\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mice trained to fear a noise could be cured with therapy if they were given drugs that could prime their DNA for it. (Rama/\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lab_mouse_mg_3158.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The first step in the study was to create mice with PTSD. The researchers did this with a sort of cruel \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning\">Pavlovian \u003c/a>experiment—they shocked the feet of the mice and played a noise at the same time. After a while, the sound alone was enough to cause the mice to freeze. The sound could now trigger the traumatic memory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next step was to see if the most common treatment for PTSD, extinction therapy, could help these mice. In extinction therapy the patient relives the situation in a safe environment so they can learn that it can’t hurt them anymore. In the case of the mice, the researchers wanted to see if the mice stopped being scared of the noise if they heard it repeatedly without the shock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extinction therapy could cure these mice if it was done within one day of the trauma but not after a month. By then the memory had become hardwired into their tiny rodent brains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To undo this rewiring, the researchers gave the mice a class of drugs called HDAC inhibitors. The idea was that these drugs would prime the mouse’s brain to respond better to the therapy. And it did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mice that received both HDAC inhibitors and extinction therapy one month after the trauma were no longer afraid of the noise. These mice had overcome their PTSD and so no longer froze when they heard the noise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An important point is that neither treatment worked by itself. Mice given just the drugs or just extinction therapy after a month were still frightened by the noise. Both were needed for the cure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>HDAC inhibitors can prime a mouse’s DNA to rewiring through new experiences but they won’t rewire the brain themselves. They just make the therapy more likely to take.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How HDAC Inhibitors Work\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15016\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/HistoneAndDNA.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15016\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15016\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/HistoneAndDNA.jpg\" alt=\"By making histones grip a little less tightly, HDAC inhibitors make PTSD therapy more effective. In this image, the DNA is wrapped around the histone. (Aubreybailey/Wikimedia Commons)\" width=\"300\" height=\"261\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">By making histones grip DNA a little less tightly, HDAC inhibitors make PTSD therapy more effective. In this image, the DNA is wrapped around the histone. (Aubreybailey/\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nucleosome_Complex_model.ogg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A memory can become fixed in the hippocampus through changes in how certain genes are used there. The event does not cause a change in the gene itself. Instead, different chemical groups are placed near the gene. These “\u003ca href=\"http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask403\">epigenetic\u003c/a>” changes then affect how well a cell can read that particular gene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The DNA that contains our genes is wrapped up around proteins called histones. Not only do these histones allow for 6 feet of DNA to be crammed into a nucleus that is only 10 microns across, but they can also affect how a gene works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If histones are locked down on certain parts of a gene, that gene is hard for the cell to read. Cells have a hard time prying these histones away and getting to the gene. These genes are used at a lower level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conversely, if a histone rests lightly on a gene, then that gene is more easily read. The cell can easily get to this DNA and so the gene is read at a higher level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cells can make histones bind more or less tightly by adding or removing acetyl groups from them. Since both the acetyl group and the DNA are negatively charged, extra acetyl groups means a histone and DNA are a bit less attracted to each other. These genes are easier to read and so are turned up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An HDAC inhibitor keeps the cell from removing acetyl groups from histones. The end result is that the DNA has more acetylated histones which means some genes are turned up. In these experiments, keeping histones acetylated primed the mouse brain to accept the extinction therapy.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A group of scientists has reported that they have been able to make current treatments for post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) better and longer lasting in mice. The hope is that these findings may one day pave the way for better treatments for the 7-8% of people who suffer from PTSD at some point in their lives.",
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"description": "A group of scientists has reported that they have been able to make current treatments for post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) better and longer lasting in mice. The hope is that these findings may one day pave the way for better treatments for the 7-8% of people who suffer from PTSD at some point in their lives.",
"title": "Erasing Traumatic Memories from DNA May One Day Help PTSD Sufferers | KQED",
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"headline": "Erasing Traumatic Memories from DNA May One Day Help PTSD Sufferers",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15001\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/PTSDmarine.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15001\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15001\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/PTSDmarine.jpg\" alt=\"PTSD sufferers may one day be helped by clearing away chemical marks in the DNA of their brains that makes therapy less effective. (Wikimedia Commons) \" width=\"640\" height=\"374\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">PTSD sufferers may one day be helped by clearing away chemical marks in the DNA of their brains that makes therapy less effective. (\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USMC-100612-M-9234B-001.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Sometimes events like a battle during wartime or a sexual assault are so horrific that they seem to leave a hard-to-remove scar on the brains of some of the people who endure them. There are some therapies that can help but their effects often fade over time. These sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder (\u003ca href=\"http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/post-traumatic-stress-disorder\">PTSD\u003c/a>) end up reliving the experience over and over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results of a \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24439381\">new study\u003c/a> might give these people hope. The researchers found that giving mice suffering from PTSD a certain class of drugs along with therapy could cure the mice when therapy alone could not. These \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histone_deacetylase_inhibitor\">HDAC inhibitors\u003c/a> helped remove the scars so that therapy could really heal the brains of these mice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the term scar isn’t too far from reality. In PTSD, the scar is made up of chemical groups scattered around certain genes that end up there as a result of these experiences. These “\u003ca href=\"http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask403\">epigenetic\u003c/a>” marks make the brain resistant to the rewiring that therapy can provide. So it makes sense that removing them would make the brain more receptive to therapy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course a mouse is not a person but this is still a very promising line of research. Even if we don’t end up combining HDAC inhibitors with therapy in people, the study may still help us find key genes to target in other ways. Research like this may one day help find better treatments for the \u003ca href=\"http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/PTSD-overview/basics/how-common-is-ptsd.asp\">7-8% of people who will suffer\u003c/a> from this devastating disorder at some point in their lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Mouse Experiment\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15006\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Labmouse300.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15006\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15006\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/Labmouse300.jpg\" alt=\"Mice trained to fear a noise could be cured with therapy if they were given drugs that could prime their DNA for it. (Rama/Wikimedia Commons)\" width=\"300\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mice trained to fear a noise could be cured with therapy if they were given drugs that could prime their DNA for it. (Rama/\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lab_mouse_mg_3158.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The first step in the study was to create mice with PTSD. The researchers did this with a sort of cruel \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning\">Pavlovian \u003c/a>experiment—they shocked the feet of the mice and played a noise at the same time. After a while, the sound alone was enough to cause the mice to freeze. The sound could now trigger the traumatic memory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next step was to see if the most common treatment for PTSD, extinction therapy, could help these mice. In extinction therapy the patient relives the situation in a safe environment so they can learn that it can’t hurt them anymore. In the case of the mice, the researchers wanted to see if the mice stopped being scared of the noise if they heard it repeatedly without the shock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extinction therapy could cure these mice if it was done within one day of the trauma but not after a month. By then the memory had become hardwired into their tiny rodent brains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To undo this rewiring, the researchers gave the mice a class of drugs called HDAC inhibitors. The idea was that these drugs would prime the mouse’s brain to respond better to the therapy. And it did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mice that received both HDAC inhibitors and extinction therapy one month after the trauma were no longer afraid of the noise. These mice had overcome their PTSD and so no longer froze when they heard the noise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An important point is that neither treatment worked by itself. Mice given just the drugs or just extinction therapy after a month were still frightened by the noise. Both were needed for the cure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>HDAC inhibitors can prime a mouse’s DNA to rewiring through new experiences but they won’t rewire the brain themselves. They just make the therapy more likely to take.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How HDAC Inhibitors Work\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_15016\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/HistoneAndDNA.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15016\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15016\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2014/03/HistoneAndDNA.jpg\" alt=\"By making histones grip a little less tightly, HDAC inhibitors make PTSD therapy more effective. In this image, the DNA is wrapped around the histone. (Aubreybailey/Wikimedia Commons)\" width=\"300\" height=\"261\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">By making histones grip DNA a little less tightly, HDAC inhibitors make PTSD therapy more effective. In this image, the DNA is wrapped around the histone. (Aubreybailey/\u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nucleosome_Complex_model.ogg\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A memory can become fixed in the hippocampus through changes in how certain genes are used there. The event does not cause a change in the gene itself. Instead, different chemical groups are placed near the gene. These “\u003ca href=\"http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask403\">epigenetic\u003c/a>” changes then affect how well a cell can read that particular gene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The DNA that contains our genes is wrapped up around proteins called histones. Not only do these histones allow for 6 feet of DNA to be crammed into a nucleus that is only 10 microns across, but they can also affect how a gene works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If histones are locked down on certain parts of a gene, that gene is hard for the cell to read. Cells have a hard time prying these histones away and getting to the gene. These genes are used at a lower level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conversely, if a histone rests lightly on a gene, then that gene is more easily read. The cell can easily get to this DNA and so the gene is read at a higher level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cells can make histones bind more or less tightly by adding or removing acetyl groups from them. Since both the acetyl group and the DNA are negatively charged, extra acetyl groups means a histone and DNA are a bit less attracted to each other. These genes are easier to read and so are turned up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An HDAC inhibitor keeps the cell from removing acetyl groups from histones. The end result is that the DNA has more acetylated histones which means some genes are turned up. In these experiments, keeping histones acetylated primed the mouse brain to accept the extinction therapy.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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},
"closealltabs": {
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"order": 1
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
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"order": 9
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
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"source": "NPR"
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"hyphenacion": {
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"order": 15
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"jerrybrown": {
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"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 18
},
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},
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"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
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"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
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"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
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},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
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"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
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"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
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},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
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"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
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"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
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"planet-money": {
"id": "planet-money",
"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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