Pomegranates, the loneliest fruit in the produce section, could be a man’s best friend.
Revered in legend and ignored by most shoppers, the fruit inhibited the growth of prostate cancer cells in a laboratory dish and slowed the growth of human prostate cancer cells injected into mice, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study published today
When it comes to public health problems in Wisconsin, Milwaukee is ground zero. It is the biggest city in the state with the largest and most diverse population, including a large number of poor bridled with serious health problems and, in the case of minorities, glaring disparities in health care.
These are reasons enough for Wisconsin to establish a school of public health in Milwaukee to address these problems firsthand while also training the army of public health workers who many experts believe will be needed more than ever in the future, if only as a means to control health care spending. The most logical place for such a school is at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
But it’s the University of Wisconsin-Madison, not UWM, that has taken steps to establish a school of public health integrated with its medical school, despite being located in a city touted often as affluent and among the healthiest in the country.
very year, approximately 100 UW-Madison students are admitted to emergency detoxification. So far this semester, 14 students have been so admitted to university hospitals-most of them 18- or 19-years old. Beginning this week, university policy will direct the Office of the Chancellor to formally notify parents and guardians when “their son or daughter has been involved in a gravely serious situation,” including detox. This action is both inconsistent and dangerous for underage students.
Resistance to drugs commonly used to treat influenza has skyrocketed in the last 10 years, according to the most comprehensive study to date. The findings mean that it’ll be even harder to stop the spread of the flu, putting the elderly and those with chronic illnesses at greater risk for complications, including death, from the virus. And it highlights concerns about controlling a flu pandemic, were one to strike.
Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene report that viral resistance to a class of drugs called adamantanes, which includes amantadine and rimantadine, increased from 0.4% in 1994 to 12.3% in 2004.
Take a cursory glance at the health news on any given day and you’ll start seeing reoccuring buzzwords pop up again and again. Antioxidants, in particular, are a popular choice. In my mind, a typical viewer would likely make note these findings: “Oh, coffee has antioxidants? Sweet! And blueberries, too? That’s friggin’ awesome!” The news item proceeds to replicate in their head like a virus. During their next trip to the grocery store, these consumers may be stricken by a need to pick up said products.
Total U.S. spending on medical research has doubled in the past decade to nearly $95 billion a year, though whether the money is being well spent needs much better scrutiny, a study has found.
Despite an uncomfortable pregnancy, Lynn Rueckert had no indications anything was amiss.
But when her baby appeared, she and her doctors immediately knew something was wrong. Kate Rueckert had severe scoliosis: Her spine was rotated 30 degrees to the right. Her thumbs were stubbornly folded across her palms. And her left middle finger pointed down toward her wrist.
Kate’s symptoms were caused by arthrogryposis, a term used to describe muscle and nerve disorders that cause restricted joint mobility at birth. And while Kate eventually was able to move her fingers – “I’d straighten them out during diaper changes,” Rueckert said – the girl’s spine didn’t improve.
That was until this month, when Kate Rueckert became the first patient in Wisconsin to receive a titanium rib called the VEPTR, short for Vertical Expandable Prosthetic Titanium Rib, a device that promises to straighten her spine, allowing the 2-year-old to eat, breathe and move with ease.
“This is the most exciting thing in scoliosis surgery,” said Kenneth Noonan, an associate professor of pediatrics and orthopedic surgery at the University of Wisconsin- Madison.
A study by the UW Comprehensive Cancer Center has found that nonsmoking bartenders in Madison who work in establishments where smoking is allowed are much more likely to experience five upper respiratory symptoms.
The study was undertaken in May and June, before the city’s smoking ban went into effect. A follow-up study is being conducted to find out possible effects of the ban.
“It was a random sample of bartenders,” said Dr. Patrick Remington, professor of public health at the University of Wisconsin Medical School and associate director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center. About 700 bartenders responded to the survey.
What do spinal cord injury patients want most?
Clive Svendsen, a University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell researcher, posed the deceptively simple question to a standing-room-only lunchtime crowd on Friday. They were there for the Stem Cell Journal Club, a weekly event that allows researchers from throughout the field to munch on pizza while gaining a broader understanding of the science.
Non-smoking bartenders in Madison at bars that allowed smoking suffer more respiratory symptoms than those who work at smoke-free establishments, says a UW-Madison study being released today, a day before the City Council is expected to discuss measures that could soften a contentious smoking ban that started July 1.
James Thomson, the pioneering stem cell scientist from UW-Madison, will give a lecture Monday at the Overture Center.
Thomson’s lecture, “The Latest on Stem Cells: The Promise and Challenge,” will begin at 7 p.m. at the center, 201 State St.
He was the first scientist to grow human embryonic stem cells, derived from fertilized human eggs, that can grow into any specialized cell.
Wisconsin’s emergency preparedness plans will be reviewed and updated so that they could be effective in case of a large-scale disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, Gov. Jim Doyle pledged Thursday.
Doyle told Adj. Gen. Al Wilkening, who heads the National Guard and advises the governor on homeland security, to thoroughly review the state’s plans and report back in three weeks.
“Some of the specific areas I’d like this report to address are: whether we have adequate evacuation plans in place for major cities, how we would evacuate nursing homes, hospitals, schools and our most vulnerable citizens,” Doyle said during a State Capitol press conference.
Madison-based Stratatech Corp. announced that it has been awarded another federal grant, this one worth $154,000 from the National Institute of Aging to continue development of its genetically engineered human skin substitutes to speed the healing of chronic skin ulcers such as bed sores.
….Stratatech’s products are based on a patented, unique source of pathogen-free human skin cells identified at UW-Madison as being able to multiply indefinitely.
Eight of 10 metropolitan areas across the nation with the highest physician prices are in Wisconsin and Madison ranks fourth, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
….Ralph Andreano, an emeritus professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said competition has little impact on health care costs because medical facilities have the same equipment and techniques.
“What usually is the case is that high cost means high quality. The state-of-the-art is costly. High-quality medicine is very costly and it’s difficult to contain it,” Andreano said.
Mentions Madison’s competitive health care market, and UW Hospital and Clinics.
The “tissue issue” has been resolved at the Dane County Coroner’s Office.
Coroner John Stanley told the County Board’s Public Protection and Judiciary Committee Monday night that area hospitals will continue to honor their arrangements of providing tissue and organ donations to any of three tissue banks operating in Wisconsin, and not be limited to a new company, American Tissue Services Foundation.
A government witness in a landmark lawsuit against the tobacco industry is criticizing the Justice Department for abandoning its demand that the companies pay $130 billion. Spending $5.2 billion a year on tobacco cessation programs for 25 years would profoundly improve the health of Americans, Dr. Michael Fiore said in an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, reprising some of his testimony from the tobacco trial in May.
Quoted: June Dahl, a pharmacology professor at the University of Wisconsin Medical School
Snubbed by venture capitalists on both coasts, fast-growing TomoTherapy — started by two University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers — now finds itself being wooed by Wall Street and health care centers around the world.
Helen Blackwell, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor, is being honored by a national magazine as a top innovator for her work with bacteria and infections.
Technology Review Magazine, a publication of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recognized Blackwell as one of its top 35 innovators under 35 years of age.
Maytee Aspuro’s mother was a Milwaukee high school teacher who, at age 59, began showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease. “She was starting to experience memory loss,” Aspuro recalled. “They were surprised she still was teaching. But she was a very intelligent woman, and she used her intelligence as a way of coping.” Eventually, the disease won out and at age 62 her mother, Acacia Aspuro, had to leave her teaching job at Washington High School. She died in 1993 at age 69. So when University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers asked Aspuro if she wanted to take part in a brain imaging study involving middle-aged people whose parents had Alzheimer’s, she did not hesitate.
Retired state employees will see an 11 percent reduction in the premium for the popular Medicare Plus $1 million insurance program for 2006, the Group Insurance Board decided Tuesday.
….The state employee health insurance program for active workers will see an 9.8 percent increase for single coverage and 9.9 percent for family coverage.
….Those increases won’t affect what employees will pay out of pocket for 2006.
Dr. Pat Remington, director of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, is quoted.
Dear Editor: As an observer of the story regarding the attempted purchase of property by animal rights groups near the primate center, I find myself amazed by the University of Wisconsin’s response.
First of all, a number of people have questioned what goes on at the primate center. If the UW has nothing to hide regarding their practices at the primate center, why don’t they just say, “Fine, go ahead, buy the property and build. We have nothing to hide. We will even engage in dialogue with you. We will even offer to do presentations in your building and present our side of why our work is so valuable and the steps we take to ensure animal welfare.”
A tissue bank operating in Wisconsin offered coroners and medical examiners a free three- day trip to Las Vegas in April, and some charge that the outing appears to be an inducement for the referral of cadavers to the bank for the harvesting of donated tissue.
The offer raises questions about the operation of largely unregulated tissue banks in the state, especially their dealings with elected coroners and medical examiners who frequently refer the bodies of people who die outside of hospitals to the organizations for tissue donation.
Quoted: Craig Roberts, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It’s arguably the largest industry in town, employing nearly 20,000 people.
Some $500 million in new construction is currently in the works – including a $78 million UW Children’s Hospital, a $134 million Interdisciplinary Research Complex or “IRC” and the $174 million expansion at St. Marys Hospital.
Yet when it comes to talking about economic development strategies for the Madison area, not everyone thinks of the health care industry.
University Health Services is hoping most of the 5,900 UW- Madison freshmen expected here in a couple of weeks will already be immunized against meningococcal disease, a hope that springs from reports of a national and state shortage in a new vaccine for the disease.
“They are rationing it; the demand is outstripping the supply,” said Dr. Scott Spear, director of clinical services, of the new vaccine.
The University of Wisconsin, St. Mary�s and Meriter hospitals compete on some fronts and cooperate on many others. And all three have embarked recently on major building efforts that will dramatically boost research and patient care.
Name: Julie Gamradt
Age: 46
Job: Outreach program manager/augmentative and alternative communication specialist at the Communication Aids and Systems Clinic (CASC) and Communication Development Program (CDP) at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center.
I became interested in speech-language pathology (SLP), or what’s also called “communicative disorders,” during college when my roommate was enrolled in SLP classes. I got my first real job as an SLP in a small school district in northern Minnesota. The principal of my school informed me that most of the children who would be on my caseload had severe disabilities and limited functional speaking skills. Oddly enough, in my training as an SLP, the issue of helping people who couldn’t communicate using speech barely came up – of course, this was over 25 years ago, and it’s different now. In a panic, I went to the library and found one book on adaptations for people who were “nonspeaking.”
While a potential scientific breakthrough released on the eve of a landmark vote in the Senate holds great promise, scientists warn that even if the new stem cell approach works, there are still significant hurdles to be overcome – obstacles likely to take years, if not decades, to resolve.
…while dozens of pundits and politicians paid tribute to Gaylord Nelson following his death on July 3 at age 89 and lauded him for his sterling environmental record, most made passing or no reference to the issue to which the father of Earth Day devoted the last decade of his life: overpopulation. It is, Nelson had maintained, not only a critical issue for the future of mankind, but the most compelling issue of them all.
(Dr. Dennis Maki, head of infectious diseases at the UW-Madison Medical School, is quoted in this first installment of a two-part series by Rob Zaleski.)
Scientists for the first time have turned ordinary skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells – without having to use human eggs or make new human embryos in the process, as has previously been required, a Harvard research team announced Sunday.
The proposed redevelopment of the Villager Mall on South Park Street is taking shape with 283,000 square feet of mixed-use space planned for nine buildings on the nine-acre site.
A plan presented to the community Thursday night included proposed uses for a small grocery, a new public library, 39 owner-occupied housing units, a restaurant and other retail and commercial space as well as new accommodations for all of the social service agencies now housed in the Harambee Health and Family Center and the Dane County Department of Human Services. Also sketched in were buildings for educational programs and a business incubator and outdoor public areas.
China, Poland, Kenya, Australia and India have studied Ireland’s rapid bust-to-boom economic turnaround in search of inspiration to bolster their own competitiveness. Now it’s Milwaukee’s turn to learn from the Celtic Tiger. “We want to look at how their universities are structured, how they connect to the private sector,” said Carlos Santiago, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Santiago, who envisions UWM as a catalyst that can bolster the city’s transition to a knowledge-driven economy, is scheduled to meet Irish President Mary McAleese this weekend when she becomes Ireland’s first head of state to visit Milwaukee.
A little more than a year and a half removed from a life-saving, double-lung transplant, Trey Schwab is turning his focus full-time to helping ensure others might someday receive that same chance.
Schwab will leave his job as special assistant for Marquette University’s men’s basketball program on Sept. 2 in order to become outreach coordinator for organ procurement at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison.
What’s billed as the world’s largest public art exhibit will help promote the state’s dairy industry next year.
“CowParade Wisconsin 2006” – a collection of life-size, painted, fiberglass cow statues – will kick off Cows on the Concourse in Madison on June 3, 2006, and continue through Oct. 13, 2006. The cows will travel to events across the state, including the World Dairy Expo.
….After the promotion concludes, about 50 cows will be auctioned off with the proceeds going to UW Children’s Hospital and other local nonprofit organizations.
The nation’s 37,000 chain stores had almost 6,000 open pharmacist jobs in January, the latest data available, says the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS). While the pharmacist shortage isn’t as severe as it was several years ago, jobs are expected to be plentiful for years.
Interviewed: Lisa Peck, child life specialist at UW Hospital in the emergency room.
More than 80 white-coated doctors, clinicians and nurses gathered Tuesday to implore Madison to keep its smoking ban, while across town, a feisty crowd of 550 demanded its repeal as cigarette smoke wafted through the air.
The two events are only the latest in the intensifying debate since the smoking ban went into effect July 1.
Quoted: Matthew Wolff, chief of cardiovascular medicine at UW Hospital.
Medical College of Wisconsin researchers deceived a Sun Prairie couple into participating in a cystic fibrosis research study and then lied to them about their baby’s health, the family’s attorney said Monday in Dane County Circuit Court. Among those on the witness list are two investigators on the project: Norman Fost, a University of Wisconsin-Madison bioethicist, and Philip Farrell, dean of the UW Medical School.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher is serving a two-year suspension from experimenting with animals after at least three monkeys died during or soon after her experiments, the university confirmed.
A monkey died in a research chair while a technician took an unapproved lunch break, Eric Sandgren, chairman of the All-Campus Animal Care and Use Committee, confirmed on Monday.
The deaths were part of an unusual number of complications from Ei Terasawa’s animal experiments several years ago, Sandgren said. The university reported the deaths to the federal government, but did not make a public statement at the time.
A system built by the UW-Madison Division of Information Technology (DoIT) played a key role in winning $1.6 million in federal research funding for Wisconsin health agencies.
The National Science Foundation recently awarded a three-year Goal Oriented Privacy Preservation grant that promotes research on data mining strategies that preserve privacy.
The past 25 years have been difficult for Wisconsin taverns, but so far there is no hard evidence to show that the smoking ban in Madison is making matters worse, a UW Medical School researcher says.
“A valid study is never done through self reports,” researcher David Ahrens said Friday, referring to early claims by dozens of bar owners that business has been down by 20 percent or more since July 1, when smoking was forced outside.
He said that this kind of data is “highly unreliable,” and in the coming months he’d look at a sample of sales tax receipts submitted to the state Department of Revenue to gauge what’s happening to the city’s taverns and restaurant bars.
Nothing Meg Gaines endured had prepared her for this moment. Not the six rounds of chemotherapy for ovarian cancer that had metastasized to her liver. Not the doctor who told her, after Ms. Gaines was prepped for surgery, that he could not operate: a last-minute scan revealed too many tumors. “Go home and think about the quality, not the quantity, of your days,” he said.
Not the innumerable specialists whom Ms. Gaines, then 39 and the mother of two toddlers, had already mowed through in her terrified but unswerving effort to save her own life. Not the Internet research and clinical trial reports, all citing the grimmest of statistics. Not the fierce, frantic journey she made, leaving home in Wisconsin to visit cancer centers in Texas and California.
He had a two-year tenure on the University of Wisconsin faculty. While there, he was chief of thoracic surgery at the Veterans Administration hospital.
Interviewed: Dr. Joan Schiller, an oncologist at the University of Wisconsin
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society has awarded a $3.4 million grant to University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers to study the disease.
The researchers, led by Professor Ian Duncan of the School of Veterinary Medicine, will attempt to develop new ways to repair and protect the nervous system in patients with multiple sclerosis. The research will include the use of human stem cells.
The group is developing cell transplant techniques, which might someday be used to repair nervous system fibers.
A legislator has lashed out at University of Wisconsin-Madison officials for not immediately dismissing several professors who have been convicted of crimes and keeping two of them on the payroll while they serve time behind bars.
Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, said Tuesday that once university employees are convicted of a crime, they should be dismissed immediately and given no pay.
A regulatory agency has warned that a group of Wisconsin county coroners may be putting UW Hospital out of compliance with federal organ and tissue donation rules.
The UW Hospital Organ Procurement Organization is required by law to sign a contract with a single tissue bank; the UW Hospital OPO has signed a contract with the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation.
Biotech startup Excorp Medical Inc., which recently moved to Minneapolis, now might move on to Madison, a possible setback to Minnesota’s efforts to build the sector. Excorp, which is developing a bioartificial liver system, is pursuing a “competitive” proposal from Wisconsin to establish production facilities in that state. It could wind up putting its headquarters and other administrative facilities there as well. Locating production and administrative functions in Wisconsin would give Excorp access to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is one of the nation’s top transplant centers
A University of Wisconsin Medical School professor was sentenced to eight years in prison and 10 years of supervision Friday for sexually assaulting three young girls over the past 10 years.
Dane County Circuit Judge Diane Nicks ordered the sentence for Roberto B. Coronado, 52, a professor of physiology on the UW campus since 1989. Referring to the crimes, she observed, “to say they are serious almost understates what happened.”
Coronado was charged and entered no contest pleas to assaulting two girls over a period of years and with assaulting a third girl on one occasion.
Two animal rights groups are wrestling with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s real estate buyer to purchase a property wedged between two primate research facilities.
The university has offered to buy the property for $1 million, outbidding the activists by $325,000. But the animal rights groups say they have a contract allowing them to buy it first.
The groups, Alliance for Animals and the Primate Freedom Project, want to create a museum at 26 Charter St. The groups say the museum would detail the suffering of animals who serve as research subjects.
I’ll start with a warning.
The surgeon general says smoking causes cancer.
And another warning: Ira Sharenow and the rest of the anti-smoking crowd don’t want you to read one more negative word about Madison’s no- smoking ordinance.
“Your paper,” Sharenow writes, “has turned into a tool for smoking interests.”
Our crime is talking to Madison tavern owners about how their business has plunged since the smoking ban started July 1. We’ve been taken to task by UW-Madison cancer folks, and by the mayor’s spokesman George Twigg, who called our coverage “one-sided.”
Dr. Christina Iyama, an associate professor of pediatrics at UW-Madison, said she is angered that the Fitchburg center purports to help children with autism and other developmental disabilities.
“There is no reason to think that a supplemental dose of oxygen would fix autism,” she said. “It’s not even theoretically useful.”
“You can’t go around recommending things to other people on no scientific basis,” she said. “To prey upon people who aren’t able to cure their children is an outrage.”
Dr. Carl Stafstrom, chief of pediatric neurology at UW Hospital in Madison, said people should be very skeptical of hyperbaric therapy as a treatment for neurological disorders.
Quoted: David Olive of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School
None of the options sounded pleasant, but 65-year-old Richard Brodhagen of Marshfield knew that time was not on his side.
Doctors had diagnosed prostate cancer, which physicians had caught in its intermediate stages. Brodhagen was weighing whether to have his prostate removed or to have radiation treatments, or whether any other options would result in fewer side effects.
One night, he was watching TV.
A new UW research complex is one step closer to completion.
Monday, members of the UW medical community, along with Governor Jim Doyle, broke ground for the school’s interdisciplinary research complex.
