Word: chronics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Steadily, the line between diseases of the rich (heart disease, diabetes, lung cancer) and those of the poor (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria) has blurred. As citizens of developing nations get fatter and take up tobacco-smoking - habits of the developed world - they are also under increasing threat from the same chronic noncommunicable diseases (CNCD) that ail the wealthy...
...change the course of that fate, a coalition of major health agencies from Australia, Canada, China, Britain and the U.S., which together control 80% of the world's public health-research funding, announced today the formation of the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD). "Our focus is on reducing the burden of chronic diseases in developing countries," says Leszek Borysiewicz, the chief executive of the U.K. Medical Research Council. "It's critically important to make these interventions now." (Read how health workers are helping fight killer diseases in the developing world...
Past studies have also established a link between chronic sleep disruption and suicide. Sleep complaints, which include nightmares, insomnia and other sleep disturbances, are listed in the current Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's inventory of suicide-prevention warning signs. Yet what distinguishes Bernert's research is that when nightmares and insomnia were evaluated separately, nightmares were independently predictive of suicidal behavior. "It may be that nightmares present a unique risk for suicidal symptoms, which may have to do with the way we process emotion within dreams," Bernert says...
...Chronic illnesses like depression, diabetes and hypertension don't magically disappear during pregnancy. And as women delay childbearing, more moms-to-be are struggling with cancer. So it's hardly surprising that two-thirds of women take up to five drugs over the course of their pregnancy and labor. Yet only a dozen prescription drugs are approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during pregnancy, and they're all pregnancy-related: drugs for inducing labor, for example, or epidural anesthesia. Which means patients with many common conditions face an excruciating dilemma: decline medication whose effects...
...among care providers. Also important will be electronic record-keeping that saves time and avoids errors, and comparative-effectiveness research that gives doctors and patients a better sense of which treatments work best. And a reformed health-care system would put more emphasis on preventive care and managing such chronic conditions as asthma, heart disease and diabetes that now account for 75 cents out of every medical dollar spent. All these things would force a cultural and economic revolution on the health industry - and the patients who depend...