Media monitor
Baby food with curry? How about spicing up a toddler's dinner with some nice ancho chili peppers? The conventional wisdom is that such fare shouldn't be on infants' menus and that children need to start solid foods with rice cereal, plain noodles and applesauce. But such advice is now being called into question.
"There's a bunch of mythology out there about this," said David Bergman, MD, associate professor of pediatrics, in a recent Associated Press article. "There's not much evidence to support any particular way of doing things." The article cites experts saying that children over 6 months can handle most anything, though it cautions parents to be aware of allergies and choking hazards.
The article showed up in numerous media outlets, including ABCNews.com, MSNBC.com, CNN.com and Newsweek. Bergen was also interviewed on segments that aired on KCBS-TV (Los Angeles), KMAX-TV (Sacramento) and KTRK-TV (Houston). http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/parenting/10/10/baby.food.myths.ap/index.html
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One more reason for runners to feel righteous. A recent Stanford study of 866 people found that those who exercised regularly had 25 percent less joint and muscle pain as they aged compared with those who were less active.
"The most important point is that we should be physically active, ideally on a daily basis," Bonnie Bruce, PhD, senior research scientist in the Center for Clinical Immunology at Stanford and the study's lead author, was quoted as saying in an Oct. 4 story in the Washington Post. "This may mean short bouts of walking, using stairs instead of elevators or participating in running, cycling or swimming."
Bruce was also featured in a Sept. 28 Reuters article on the study.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/30/AR2005093002118.html?sub=AR (registration required) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050928/hl_nm/exercise_adults_dc* * *
Beware of scientists creating their own version of the "Tower of Babel," warned the San Francisco Business Times. "Researchers develop their own computational tools to analyze data gathered in labs and clinics," the Oct. 7 article noted, "but they are often not able to communicate with programs developed by other researchers, in part because they may use different terms to describe the same phenomena."
The newspaper reported that the National Institutes of Health has taken a step toward addressing this dilemma: It has awarded $18.8 million to the medical school to develop a National Center for Biomedical Ontology in conjunction with several other collaborating institutions.
Mark Musen, MD, professor of medicine and the new center's head, offered an example of why such a center was needed: "I may be working on a particular gene, and you might be working on a particular gene, and we would never know we are working on the same gene. We would never know the results of my experiment are important to interpreting the results of your experiments because we are calling things by different names. . . . We know it's really hard to make sense of all of that data. Now the emphasis is on how can we use technology to help us make sense of all of this stuff and help us compare one set of experiments to another." http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2005/10/10/story6.html?hbx=e_sw
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Personal digital assistants are supposed to be de rigueur for medical students, not to mention doctors and nurses, but many are resisting the benefits of this increasingly popular gadget. In a Sept. 30 United Press International story, Graham Walker, a third-year medical student, said that most medical students don't use them—although they are prevalent on the medical school campus—but that he anticipates they may change their ways to a degree once they begin their hospital rotations. "We're told in our pre-clinical years that we almost 'have' to have one, but my experience has been very different now that I'm working in the hospital." Walker said. "Residents definitely use their PDAs more than students, but I'd say the entire staff—from nurses to students to residents to attendings (physicians)—prefers to just find a free computer and find their information there. There's always enough computers around to do this." http://news.monstersandcritics.com/health/article_1051692.php/PDAs_prevalent_in_medicine
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The California agency established to fund stem cell research "is about to lay the ground work for the largest biomedical venture since the Human Genome Project," according to an Oct. 11 article in the New York Times.
There are many possible directions that the agency can follow, the story reports, noting that it's been a subject of discussion among scientists in California and beyond. The story cites Michael Clarke, who recently joined the medical school faculty, on potential benefits of stem cell research for cancer treatment.
"He and others argue that most cancers arise in stem cells or their immediate progeny, not in the body's mature cells," the story says. "One reason is that many mature cells live too short a time to develop the string of mutations required to make a cell cancerous. If errant stem cells are the source of most cancers, the anticancer drugs chosen for their ability to shrink tumors may be hitting the wrong target." Clarke is quoted as saying, "This suggests people are destined to relapse unless we get the stem cells." Making embryonic stem lines from cancer patients could help identify and focus on cancer stem cells.
The story also mentions Robert Negrin, professor of medicine, in a discussion of the benefits of stem cells in bone marrow transplants. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/11/health/policy/11cali.html (registration required)
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