"One of the realities of aging, and illnesses that are more common with age, is that our abilities change," said Dr. Hillary Lum of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora. "Activities that we've done our entire lives, such as driving, managing our own finances, and owning and using a gun, can also be affected," Lum told Reuters Health by email.
"We predict that FUT2 is one of numerous genes with variants that make one prone to middle ear infections, and our goal is to eventually identify as many genes and variants as possible in various populations so we can predict who is at risk for infection and requires more careful management," Dr. Regie Santos-Cortez of the University of Colorado School of Medicine told Reuters Health by email. For the study, online October 25 in The American Journal of Human Genetics, Dr. Santos-Cortez and colleagues obtained DNA samples from 609 multi-ethnic families and simplex cases with otitis media. Those with known genetic, craniofacial, and immunodeficiency syndromes were excluded.
Lab tests of the supplements found they all contained thyroid hormone and most had at least one steroid hormone. “Patients should be aware that any supplement that is sold as ‘natural,’ ‘organic,’ ‘herbal,’ ‘plant-based,’ may not be safe,” said lead author Dr. Halis Kaan Akturk of the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes at the University of Colorado.
“Burnout syndrome in nurses is associated with decreased patient satisfaction, reduced quality of care, medication errors, higher rates of healthcare related infections and higher mortality rates,” said Meredith Mealer, a researcher at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Denver VA Medical Center who wasn’t involved in the study.
“It’s easier to avoid the conversation, which is rarely a brief one,” said Dr. Cari Levy, a professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. “Our systems are not designed to allow for meaningful conversations that may take some time.” Levy, a palliative-care physician who routinely discusses end-of-life questions with her patients, believes that confronting death can be empowering.
Dr. David Kuwayama, a vascular surgeon and professor at the University of Colorado Denver in Aurora who was not involved with the study, said it “clearly illustrates the inherent biases that all of us in academic medicine . . . share when it comes to devaluing research from outside of the U.S. and Europe.” “If a journal publishes a groundbreaking paper from a low-income country, but we in the Western world are unwilling to value it, then we are depriving both ourselves and our patients of valuable, maybe even life-saving, medical knowledge,” he said in an email.
Dr. Robert Eckel, professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver and former president of the American Heart Association, told Reuters Health that when he prescribes PCSK9 inhibitors, he often hears back from an insurance company with an approval within half an hour. “I know the indications of the drug, how to assess its risk and when I need to push hard,” he said. “I often also explain to my patients upfront that I’m the prescribing physician and not in a position to discuss copays.”
Parents can help children get more sleep by enforcing a regular sleep schedule even on weekends and holidays, creating a calming bedtime routine, and removing electronics from the bedroom, said Stacey Simon, a pediatric sleep psychologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora.
