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Category: Health

UW study finds no link between Facebook use and depression

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Wisconsin State Journal

A study of UW-Madison students found no link between Facebook use and depression, calling into question a warning by a national doctor group last year that the popular social media site could cause depression. “We?re not really sure ?Facebook depression? is something parents or patients really need to be advised about yet,” said Lauren Jelenchick, a UW School of Medicine and Public Health researcher who led the study.

Facebook and depression not linked

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Wisconsin Radio Networks

There is no correlation between time spent on popular social networking sites and the probability of adolescent depression, according to a study of UW-Madison students, which debunks an earlier report on the subject. ?I think one of the take home messages from this really is the importance of evidence-based medicine, of really making sure that the guidelines that are out there for physicians and for health care providers is really strongly supported by empirical findings by data.?

Stage Presence: Music helps enrich the hospital environment : 77-square

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Wisconsin State Journal

People know me as: Ka Man ?Melody? Ng, doctoral student in piano performance and pedagogy at UW-Madison, studying with professors Jessica Johnson and Christopher Taylor. I?m also coordinator for the university?s Sound Health Community Program, a teaching assistant at the piano department, a continuing studies instructor, a piano teacher at the Piano Pioneers/Piano Lab Program, and president of the Music Teachers National Association UW-Madison Collegiate Chapter.

Doug Moe: For recent retiree, real work continues

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Wisconsin State Journal

At a dinner last week in Madison celebrating new developments at the University of Wisconsin Eye Research Institute, former Gov. Jim Doyle surveyed the room at the Maple Bluff Country Club and turned to his old friend David Walsh. ?This is what you?re going to do, isn?t it?? Guessing Walsh?s next move might be a popular parlor game for Wisconsin?s movers and shakers and the people who watch them, now that word is getting out that the longtime Foley & Lardner attorney is retiring from the firm.

Walsh is on the UW Hospital board and helped raise considerable sums for retina research at UW-Madison. He?s become involved outside Wisconsin, serving on the board of the Foundation Fighting Blindness, and one hard reality is there is always more to do. ?I?m retiring,? he said, ?because of these other obligations.?

Best seats in the house: Pediatric patients to view fireworks from UW rooftop

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Capital Times

Kids who are patients at American Family Children?s Hospital will get the best seats in the house to watch the Rhythm and Booms fireworks show Saturday night ? from the roof of a building at UW-Madison. More than 400 patients and family members have been invited to a rooftop party at the Pyle Center so they can watch the Midwest?s biggest fireworks display, shooting off at 9:30 p.m. Saturday night from Warner Park.

Mary Kay Baum?s latest and greatest cause

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Capital Times

Mary Kay Baum, former Madison School Board member, former mayoral candidate and steady campaigner across the decades for economic and social justice, always has a cause. And she always has something to teach us. Now, she?s teaching us new ways to think about and respond to Alzheimer?s.

Toxic algae found in Lake Mendota near Memorial Union

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Capital Times

Swimmers and shoreline users are being warned to be careful along the Lake Mendota shore after toxic algae was discovered in the water. Toxic blue-green algae blooms have been spotted on Lake Mendota near the Memorial Union and Hoofers, according to a news release from UW-Madison. The cyanobacteria in the algae blooms can cause very serious health risks, said Public Health Madison and Dane County. Warning signs have been posted in the shore area.

Campus Connection: Joint Big Ten/Ivy League project to study athletes’ head injuries

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Capital Times

Those within the Big Ten Conference and Ivy League are pooling their significant research and athletic resources in an effort to better understand head injuries. The two conferences ? which represent 20 institutions that are home to nearly 18,000 student-athletes ? announced last week a collaborative effort that?s designed to produce a broad set of data for researchers, athletic trainers and team doctors on the incidence and health impacts of concussions and other head trauma.

Dennis Helwig, UW-Madison?s assistant athletic director for sports medicine, notes that getting the various institutions to agree to a single protocol for the project will be the key to the initiative. ?If you can do that, instead of 20-some institutions gathering different data on concussions, you can now have all of them collecting the same information in the same way,? says Helwig, who has worked at UW-Madison since 1975.

UW study responsible for much of what scientists now know about sleep

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Wisconsin State Journal

Sleep apnea ? repeated pauses in breathing during sleep ? is much more common than previously thought. The condition increases the risk of high blood pressure, depression, heart disease, cancer and death. Losing weight and exercising can offset it. People who sleep too little or too much, regardless of whether they have sleep apnea, are more likely to be overweight. Those and other findings about sleep are common knowledge among scientists today thanks to Don Chisholm, Mary Ellen Havel-Lang, Paul Minkus and more than 1,540 other participants in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study.

UW doctor helping build hospital in Ecuador

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Nearly 17 years after the birth of Andean Health and Development, the organization is expanding to train Ecuadorean physicians and work toward opening a hospital in Santo Domingo, Ecuador, just west of the capital, Quito.

The Milwaukee native behind the nonprofit organization, physician David Gaus, along with the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, started a hospital in 2000 in Pedro Vicente Maldonado, a small rural district in the Pichincha province.

Dr. Jonathan L. Temte: Don’t underestimate whooping cough’s threat

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

Thanks to the Wisconsin State Journal for Monday?s excellent article on pertussis. The resurgence of whooping cough may be due to a change in our childhood pertussis vaccine 15 years ago. In 1997, the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended a safer vaccine for prevention of pertussis. This emphasis on safety came at the expense of a shorter period of protection following vaccination.

American Family Children’s Hospital climbs in U.S. news national rankings

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Wisconsin State Journal

Madison?s American Family Children?s Hospital announced Tuesday it has jumped up the U.S. News & World Report?s rankings of children?s hospitals. The children?s hospital, which is part of the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, was ranked in the top 50 children?s hospitals nationally for seven specialties of medicine and surgery, and the top 30 in five categories.

Narcotics use for chronic pain soars among seniors

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Since 2007, top-selling opioids dispensed to people 60 years and older have increased 32%, according to a Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today analysis of prescription data from IMS Health, a health care information company. That?s double the growth for prescriptions dispensed in the 40-to-59 age group. A brief mention of UW-Madison is included in previous coverage of the issue.

Sleep apnea linked to higher risk for cancer

Posted on
Globe and Mail (Canada)

People with sleep apnea, a common disorder that causes snoring, fatigue and dangerous pauses in breathing at night, have a higher risk of cancer, two new studies have found, marking the first time that apnea has been linked to cancer in humans.

Sleep Apnea Linked to Higher Cancer Death Risk

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HealthDay News

Sleep apnea has already been linked to a host of adverse health problems, such as high blood pressure and heart disease. Now, new research suggests that in people who already have cancer, the sleep disorder may raise their risk of dying from cancer.

Sleep Apnea Tied to Increased Cancer Risk

Posted on
New York Times

Two new studies have found that people with sleep apnea, a common disorder that causes snoring, fatigue and dangerous pauses in breathing at night, have a higher risk of cancer. The new research marks the first time that sleep apnea has been linked to cancer in humans.

Campus Connection: UW study links sleep apnea to higher mortality from cancer

Posted on
Capital Times

It appears one can add an increased risk of dying from cancer to the growing list of significant health problems associated with sleep apnea.A longitudinal study led by researchers at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health suggests that those with severe sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), or sleep apnea, are nearly five times more likely to die of cancer than those without the disorder.

UW grad bikes from Madison to St. Louis in dad’s honor

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WKOW-TV 27

MADISON (WKOW) — As many seniors get ready to walk the stage this weekend, one graduating senior from UW-Madison is preparing for the longest bike ride of his life. To raise awareness for Parkinson?s disease, Donald Malchow is biking from St. Mary?s Hospital in Madison to St. Mary?s Health Center in St. Louis, Missouri.

Campus Connection: Morgridge Institute lands $20.6 million project award

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Capital Times

The Morgridge Institute for Research located on the UW-Madison campus has landed a $20.6 million cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Energy?s National Nuclear Security Administration, the university announced in a news release. The funds will be used by the Morgridge Institute and local partner SHINE Medical Technologies to help support the development of a new process and manufacturing plant for molybdenum-99, a medical isotope used by thousands of patients daily in this country.

Finals are stressful, seek out dogs to make it through

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Daily Cardinal

With finals week fast approaching, many UW-Madison students will experience stress associated with the pressure to perform well on exams, an unfortunate reality considering the fact that everyone is extremely burnt out from school around this time. Therefore, university students should acknowledge the importance of stress relief options during finals week. I believe that one particular idea, allowing students to interact with dogs as a means to curtail stress levels, is an excellent idea.

Senate Panel to Examine Painkiller Makers? Financial Ties

Posted on
New York Times

Two senior senators said on Tuesday that they had opened an investigation into financial ties between producers of prescription painkillers and pain experts, patient advocacy groups and organizations that set guidelines on how doctors use the drugs. The groups that were sent letters on Tuesday included the American Pain Foundation, a patient advocacy group, and the Pain and Policy Studies Group at the University of Wisconsin.

Man’s $1.3 million gift to help expand hospice training at Agrace

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Wisconsin State Journal

A Middleton man?s $1.3 million gift to Agrace HospiceCare in Fitchburg will help expand a training program for doctors specializing in hospice and palliative care. The endowment will help the one-year fellowship program expand from two doctors this year to four next year, said Dr. Bruce Agneberg, vice president of medical services at Agrace. The fellows train at UW Hospital, Madison’s Veterans Hospital and Agrace, learning how to manage symptoms and pain at the end of life, Agneberg said. Such fellowships soon will be required for board certification in hospice and palliative care.

Childhood Diabetes: Kids Face Lifetime of Illness

Posted on
ABCNEWS.com

In an editorial accompanying the study, Dr. David Allen of the University of Wisconsin in Madison said today?s children are “immersed from a young age in a sedentary, calorie-laden environment that may well have induced and now aggravates their type 2 diabetes? Indeed, this is the essential maddening conundrum of the epidemic of type 2 diabetes ? collective failure to adhere to a lifestyle healthy enough to prevent the disease.”

New director chosen for Public Health Madison and Dane County

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

Expanding home visits to pregnant women and helping neighborhoods improve safety are goals of Janel Heinrich, who on Wednesday was named director of Public Health Madison and Dane County. “We?re trying to assure that individuals and communities are healthy,” said Heinrich, interim director since June and director of community health since 2008.

Biz Beat: Making stem cells “available to the masses”

Posted on
Capital Times

When UW-Madison?s James Thomson in 1998 became the first scientist to grow human embryonic stem cells in a lab, it generated tremendous excitement about the medical possibilities. Thomson tried to downplay the breakthrough but talk spread about cures for Alzheimer?s or Parkinson?s disease, growing livers for cirrhosis suffers or producing healthy heart cells for cardiac patients. The miracle cures have been slow in coming, however.

State lab confirms salmonella in recalled tuna

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Wisconsin State Journal

Lab testing in Wisconsin has confirmed salmonella contamination in recalled yellowfin tuna and in a spicy tuna roll. The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene at UW-Madison found salmonella in samples that matched the DNA fingerprint of the outbreak.

UW-Madison School of Nursing project many years in the making

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Wisconsin State Journal

It is the little building project that could. For more than 10 years, the UW-Madison School of Nursing building has gone through a strange and twisting odyssey as politicians and officials flip-flopped about the fate of the project. It was placed at the top of priority lists, then taken off completely; it was slipped into a state budget in the middle of the night, then pulled out just as slyly. But finally, on Saturday, school officials and Gov. Scott Walker broke ground on the $52 million building.

Doug Moe: Brewers pitch in on baseball fan’s mission

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Wisconsin State Journal

It was during the 2006 Major League Baseball season, the summer after Ben Rouse?s freshman year at UW-Madison, that the Fort Atkinson native first wondered if it might be possible to attend all 162 games of a Milwaukee Brewers season. Rouse wants to attend every Brewers game this season, home and away, but it?s more than that. He thinks his story can help lift the profile of the Be the Match Foundation, which raises funds to provide marrow and umbilical cord blood transplants for patients with leukemia, lymphoma and other diseases.

Executive Q&A: Using data to improve health care

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Wisconsin State Journal

Hospitals and clinics have mass quantities of data about their patients now that electronic medical records have become relatively common. So why not use that information to figure out which patients may be at the highest risk for a serious illness ? and try to prevent it?That?s the idea behind Forward Health Group, a Madison company established in 2009.

Tech and Biotech: Imbed Biosciences gets SBIR grant for wound-healing coating

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Wisconsin State Journal

Imbed Biosciences has been working on an antibacterial coating that would prevent wounds from becoming infected as they heal, and a phase one Small Business Innovation Research grant will help push the project ahead, said Ankit Agarwal, president and chief executive officer. Imbed?s technology has been developed at the UW-Madison over the last four years by a group of chemists, veterinarians and surgeons. Agarwal, currently Imbed?s sole employee, said the grant will let him hire a second employee and contract with the UW for further studies.