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Health Care Ads Leave Washington, Follow Lawmakers Home During Break
Roll Call reports that "several major industry stakeholders" will be "noticeably absent from the advertising airwaves over the July Fourth recess. Though they will continue to keep in touch with Members through meetings and grass roots, AARP, the American Medical Association, America"s Health Insurance Plans, the Federation of American Hospitals and AdvaMed all say they are sitting out this recess when it comes to advertising campaigns." Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and White House aides have "warned that any groups that run ads attacking reform efforts before the bills have been crafted would lose their seats at the bargaining table," but the "advocacy ad floodgates" may "open shortly." Until then, "groups are working in a lower-profile way to get their messages across to Members," such as planning in-district meetings with Members and activating grassroots networks.
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Closely Supervised Foster Care Linked With Reduced Pregnancy Rates For Delinquent Teens, Study Says
Teenage girls with a history of delinquency who were placed in individualized foster care programs were less likely than their peers to become pregnant, according to a study in the June issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, HealthDay/Forbes reports. Teen girls in foster care have an elevated risk for pregnancy, according to HealthDay/Forbes. For example, an earlier survey of teens in three states found that nearly half of girls in the foster care system reported a pregnancy by age 19, according to David Kerr, an assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University and lead author of the new study.For the study, researchers followed 166 girls ages 13 to 17 with court orders to receive treatment for criminal behavior in either specialized foster care or a group-care facility. The specialized programs, known as Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care, were created in the 1980s. Under the programs, foster parents who are trained in behavioral management provide one-on-one care to severely delinquent youths, and the parents receive consultation, support and crisis intervention services from program supervisors. One of the most important aspects of the program is that, unlike group care, the teens are isolated from other troubled youths. There are 51 such programs in the U.S.After two years, 26% of the girls in MTFC became pregnant, compared with almost 47% of those in group care, according to the study. The MTFC group also showed lower levels of criminal activity and arrests, and increased school engagement. Kerr said, "One of the most interesting aspects of this research is that the MTFC program was created to reduce crime, not pregnancy." He added, "It specifically targeted changing the girl"s environment: her home, her peers and her school experience. The focus was on giving her lots of supervision, support for responsible behavior, and consistent, non-harsh consequences for negative behavior" (HealthDay/Forbes, 6/17).
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New Avatar Technology Combines Advances In Artificial Intelligence And Computer Image Rendering
Have you ever wished you could be in two places at once? Perhaps you"ve had the desire to create a copy of yourself that could stand in for you at a meeting, freeing you up to work on more pressing matters. Thanks to a research project called LifeLike, that fantasy might be a little closer to reality.
Mental Health

Anti-Inflammatory Drugs May Defeat A Treatment-Resistant Type Of Cancer

Effective drugs for treating a chemotherapy-resistant form of lymphoma might already be on the market according to a study that has pieced together a chemical pathway involved in the disease. By following the trail of several molecular flags that mark this type of cancer, a team from the University of California, San Diego, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and the University of Copenhagen Hospital have discovered that anti-inflammatory drugs used to treat arthritis will shrink lymphoma tumors in mice. Their report, published in the July issue of the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, also strengthens evidence for a link between inflammation and cancer. "If this shows promise with early clinical experiments, the treatment would be immediately available," said Michael David, a professor of biology who leads the group at UC San Diego. The research focused on a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. In some patients with the disease, chemotherapy works well. In a recent study of 40 patients more than 75 percent of patients with one form of this type of lymphoma survived five years or longer. But that study also identified a group of patients whose cancer proved difficult to treat. Their tumors failed to respond to chemotherapy, and only 16 percent of patients with this form of lymphoma survived more than five years after they were diagnosed. Several molecular flags mark this treatment-resistant lymphoma, but the links between them were unknown until now. The new paper reports that tumor cells isolated from these patients have depressed levels of a protein called SHIP1, which was known to suppress tumors. In fact, patients with the lowest levels of SHIP1 are the least likely to survive. The resistant type of lymphoma cells also have elevated levels of miR-155, a specific example of a type of genetic material called microRNA, the team found. They demonstrated that miR-155 suppresses SHIP1 by sticking to the template for the protein, preventing its manufacture. This raised the possibility that these patients might respond favorably to a treatment that interrupted that pathway. "It makes sense to block that loop," said Irene Pedersen, a research scientist in the Division of Biological Sciences at UC San Diego and lead author of the paper. The final clue came from earlier reports that an inflammatory molecule called TNFí± could boost levels of miR-155. Additional laboratory work confirmed the observation for this type of lymphoma cell. "Our study strengthens the scientific link between inflammation and tumor progression," David said. "The prevailing thought is that you need two mutations to get cancer. But it might take just one mutation plus inflammation." The anti-inflammatory drugs etanercept and infliximab, which are currently used to treat arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, work by suppressing TNFí±, suggesting a new way to curb the malignancy of this type of lymphoma. The team tested the idea in mice that had been injected with aggressive lymphoma cells and found that nascent tumors shrank in six days. "It"s a promising result of this whole translational path," said Pedersen, whose initial training was in cancers of the blood. "To get somewhere we had to study the mouse models and the molecular profiles. I hope it will be beneficial to patients." Patients with lymphoma that has not responded to chemotherapy and who are ineligible for a bone-marrow transplant will be the first to receive the new treatment. The team in Copenhagen has begun recruiting patients for an initial clinical study. Grants from the National Cancer Institute and the Novo Nordisk Foundation supported this research program. Michael David University of California - San Diego


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