Diabetes driving up health care costs, study finds

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SANTA CRUZ >> One in four people hospitalized in Santa Cruz County has diabetes, and one in three in California, driving up health care costs, according to a study released Thursday by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research recommending prevention efforts.

The study, based on 2011 data from the Office of Statewide Health and Planning Development, reports 3,900 hospitalizations that year of people with diabetes in Santa Cruz County, 6,700 in Monterey County and 729,000 for California.

With a hospital stay costing $2,200 more for a patient with diabetes, a disease that can be prevented by adopting a healthier diet and daily exercise, the study calculates the extra cost at $8.5 million in Santa Cruz County, $14.7 million Monterey County and $1.6 billion statewide.

Diabetes is more common among Latinos than other ethnic groups.

Among the complications from Type 2 diabetes, the preventable type that represents 95 percent of all cases, are heart attacks, high blood pressure, fungal infections, nerve damage and cataracts.

One of the most expensive complications is limb amputation.

The authors of the UCLA study cite a growing body of research that shows sugary beverages are "uniquely harmful" because the liquid sugar is absorbed in as little as 30 minutes, leading to a spike in blood sugar the body is not equipped to handle.

A 2010 meta-analysis reviewing eight studies involving 310,000 participants found drinking a soft drink a day increased the risk of developing diabetes by 26 percent.

To stem the increase in diabetes, the UCLA researchers offer 18 recommendations for families, health providers, city and county officials and state lawmakers.

Among them are: Drink water instead of soda and sugary drinks; remove sugary drinks from health care facilities; provide diabetes screening; provide safe places to be physically active; provide free drinking water in parks and public places; require warning labels on sugary drinks and establish a tax on sugary drinks using the revenue for diabetes prevention efforts.

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Diabetes driving up health care costs, study finds

How to run the U.S. health care system like a business

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By Jonathan Bush, president and CEO of Athenahealth

FORTUNE Reports that corporations are looking to dump high-cost employees off their private health care plans and onto Obamacare reminds us yet again just how costly American health care is.

To understand why, take a look at one of the glittering monuments to both the greatness and dysfunction of America's health care industry: The Proton Beam Accelerator, a high-tech machine that sends a beam of ionized protons into cancerous tumors, while limiting damage to surrounding tissue. It's ideal for treating certain brain tumors and delicate work close to the spinal columns of babies; the machine is massive, costing hospitals about $100 million. Medicare reimburses about $32,000 for this therapy.

The trouble is that if you spend so much on a machine, you certainly don't want it sitting idle especially if you can bill tens of thousands of dollars for each therapy. As a result,a number of hospitals have widened its mission to include the treatment of prostate cancer. And now prostate cases account in some hospitals for 70% of the massive machine's work load.

MORE: Does the AstraZeneca-Pfizer deal make scientific sense?

It just so happens that there's another procedure for prostate cancer. It's called Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), and it costs a little more than half as much. Studies have shown that it is just as effective. Nevertheless, a lot of patients and their doctors opt for the proton beam, and it's easy to understand why. If you're dealing with surgery in a highly sensitive area of your body, wouldn't you choose the Rolls Royce, the beam that can needle into the spinal column of an infant?

Well, if price is no object sure!

And that's the heart of the problem in health care, a $2.7 billion industry that was wildly wasteful and dysfunctional long before Obamacare, and remains to this day stubbornly impervious to reform. All too often, price is no object. For insured patients, the price often isn't even a part of the decision making process. It's usually shrouded in mystery. Only weeks later, when patients' finally see the hideous numbers, do they shudder and pray that the insurer will make them disappear.

This is a market--using the term very loosely--in which the more expensive option wins out, in great part, because it's more expensive! We consumers depend on this service for our lives, but we have little choice in the matter and often don't see the money being spent. And that's why rising spending on health care threatens to devour America's economy.

How do we change this? My answer is to enlist a new force for change: The public. The key is to give people more choices, along with an economic stake in the reform. For example, what if Medicare offered a prostate patient a share of the savings say $10,000 if he switched from the proton beam to the cheaper IMRT? I'm betting that a lot of people would take that deal. It would save taxpayer money while creating a bloc of citizens who benefit from reform. Curious where would the $10K come from?

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How to run the U.S. health care system like a business

Genetic tracking identifies cancer stem cells in human patients

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The gene mutations driving cancer have been tracked for the first time in patients back to a distinct set of cells at the root of cancer -- cancer stem cells.

The international research team, led by scientists at the University of Oxford and the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, studied a group of patients with myelodysplastic syndromes -- a malignant blood condition which frequently develops into acute myeloid leukaemia.

The researchers say their findings, reported in the journal Cancer Cell, offer conclusive evidence for the existence of cancer stem cells.

The concept of cancer stem cells has been a compelling but controversial idea for many years. It suggests that at the root of any cancer there is a small subset of cancer cells that are solely responsible for driving the growth and evolution of a patient's cancer. These cancer stem cells replenish themselves and produce the other types of cancer cells, as normal stem cells produce other normal tissues.

The concept is important, because it suggests that only by developing treatments that get rid of the cancer stem cells will you be able to eradicate the cancer. Likewise, if you could selectively eliminate these cancer stem cells, the other remaining cancer cells would not be able to sustain the cancer.

'It's like having dandelions in your lawn. You can pull out as many as you want, but if you don't get the roots they'll come back,' explains first author Dr Petter Woll of the MRC Weatherall Institute for Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford.

The researchers, led by Professor Sten Eirik W Jacobsen at the MRC Molecular Haematology Unit and the Weatherall Institute for Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford, investigated malignant cells in the bone marrow of patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and followed them over time.

Using genetic tools to establish in which cells cancer-driving mutations originated and then propagated into other cancer cells, they demonstrated that a distinct and rare subset of MDS cells showed all the hallmarks of cancer stem cells, and that no other malignant MDS cells were able to propagate the tumour.

The MDS stem cells were rare, sat at the top of a hierarchy of MDS cells, could sustain themselves, replenish the other MDS cells, and were the origin of all stable DNA changes and mutations that drove the progression of the disease.

'This is conclusive evidence for the existence of cancer stem cells in myelodysplastic syndromes,' says Dr Woll. 'We have identified a subset of cancer cells, shown that these rare cells are invariably the cells in which the cancer originates, and also are the only cancer-propagating cells in the patients. It is a vitally important step because it suggests that if you want to cure patients, you would need to target and remove these cells at the root of the cancer -- but that would be sufficient, that would do it.'

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Genetic tracking identifies cancer stem cells in human patients

1. Introduction – Gender Equations In FreeThought (Malayalam) By Rukshana Mahamood – Video

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1. Introduction - Gender Equations In FreeThought (Malayalam) By Rukshana Mahamood
A feminist student #39;s take on the gender roles and representation of genders across realms of thought. Rukshana Mahamood is an undergraduate student of Genetic Engineering in Chennai. Aspiring...

By: Kerala Freethinkers Forum Official

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1. Introduction - Gender Equations In FreeThought (Malayalam) By Rukshana Mahamood - Video

Gender Equations In FreeThought (Malayalam – FULL) By Rukshana Mahamood – Video

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Gender Equations In FreeThought (Malayalam - FULL) By Rukshana Mahamood
A feminist student #39;s take on the gender roles and representation of genders across realms of thought. Rukshana Mahamood is an undergraduate student of Genetic Engineering in Chennai. Aspiring...

By: Kerala Freethinkers Forum Official

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Gender Equations In FreeThought (Malayalam - FULL) By Rukshana Mahamood - Video

2. Dissecting Genders- by Religion, Society and Science (Malayalam) By Rukshana Mahamood – Video

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2. Dissecting Genders- by Religion, Society and Science (Malayalam) By Rukshana Mahamood
A feminist student #39;s take on the gender roles and representation of genders across realms of thought. Rukshana Mahamood is an undergraduate student of Genetic Engineering in Chennai. Aspiring...

By: Kerala Freethinkers Forum Official

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2. Dissecting Genders- by Religion, Society and Science (Malayalam) By Rukshana Mahamood - Video

Researchers model how migration of DNA molecules is affected by charge, salt species, and salt concentration

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17 hours ago Credit: eugenesergeev / Fotolia.com

Only two mechanisms can move molecules in a fluid. They can follow a temperature gradient or an electrical potential. LMU physicists have modeled how migration of DNA molecules is affected by their charge, the salt species, and salt concentration present in the solution.

Thermophoresis is the migration of molecules in a temperature gradient, migration in an electrical field is termed electrophoresis. Each molecular species reacts to these forces in accordance with its physical characteristics, which determine the velocity and direction of its movement. Some congregate where it is warmer, others prefer the cold; some are drawn to the positive, others move toward the negative pole of a field gradient.

The research group led by Dieter Braun, Professor of Systems Biophysics at LMU and a member of the Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM), specializes in the investigation of the thermophoresis of biomolecules. Indeed, their work has given rise to a commercial spin-off, which has developed a rapid and economical analytical method for use in the pharmaceutical industry.

In their latest project, Braun and his colleagues have taken a closer look at how DNA molecules behave in temperature gradients set up within aqueous salt solutions, and constructed a theoretical model that allows them to account for this behavior from first principles. "We have combined several theories that have been proposed to describe why and how molecules move along a temperature gradient," explains Maren Reichl, who is first author on the new study. "Their electrical charge, the composition and concentrations of the salts in the solution, and the ambient temperature all play a role in how they move. We have measured the effects of these factors experimentally and compared them with our theoretical predictions."

Interplay of local and global fields

The experiments were carried out in a narrow glass capillary with a diameter of 50 micrometers, filled with a buffered salt solution containing specially designed DNA molecules. A temperature gradient is set up in the solution by heating it locally with a laser. Maren Reichl explains how the behavior of the DNA molecules is detected: "The DNA is labeled with a fluorescent dye, and we use a fluorescence microscope to follow how the DNA migrates away from the heated spot usually toward cooler regions. The level of fluorescence remaining in the heated spot tells us what fraction of the molecules migrates when we raise the temperature of the irradiated volume by 4 degrees, say. And we record the experiment on video, so we can also measure how fast the molecules move out."

The team found that two factors are primarily responsible for the movement of the molecules. The intrinsic negative charge on each DNA molecule is shielded locally by the positive ions (produced upon dissolution of the added salts) in its immediate vicinity. As a result, an electrical field is generated in the minuscule space between the charged DNA and the counterions surrounding it, which thus acts as a tiny capacitor. The second relevant factor is the global electric field that scales with the temperature gradient. This arises from the so-called Seebeck effect the tendency of ions in the solution to become concentrated in cooler or warmer regions of the liquid, with positive and negative ions moving in opposite directions. This charge separation generates a potential difference, which also influences the movement of the molecules by inducing electrophoresis.

Based on the interplay of local and global electric fields, one can precisely predict their overall effect on a given molecular species. For instance, DNA molecules tend migrate at slower rates in concentrated salt solutions, because the many free ions in the solution more effectively screen the charge on the DNA strands. DNA also moves more slowly in a sodium fluoride solution than in sodium chloride because the electric field associated with the former species more strongly retards the movement of the DNA molecules.

Professor Dieter Braun summarizes the wider significance of the work as follows: "We have, for the first time, convincingly demonstrated that the non-equilibrium phenomenon of thermophoresis can be predicted on the basis of local thermodynamic equilibria. In the next step, we plan to study how molecules compete for the coveted slots in the cold zone. And, of course, we will address the question of why uncharged molecules migrate at all."

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Researchers model how migration of DNA molecules is affected by charge, salt species, and salt concentration

fix google play store no connection error after deleting freedom app [part 2] (my video no: 4) – Video

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fix google play store no connection error after deleting freedom app [part 2] (my video no: 4)
in this video i m showing u "how to fix google play store no connection error after deleting freedom app" i have already 1 video about this topic(my first video) but i created 2nd video in...

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fix google play store no connection error after deleting freedom app [part 2] (my video no: 4) - Video

MQ-8 Firescout takes part in VBSS training with USS Freedom (LCS 1) – Video

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MQ-8 Firescout takes part in VBSS training with USS Freedom (LCS 1)
PACIFIC OCEAN (May 12, 2014) An MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned helicopter assigned to Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 35 takes off from the littoral combat ship USS Freedom (LCS 1) during...

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MQ-8 Firescout takes part in VBSS training with USS Freedom (LCS 1) - Video

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite – Online Quests — Part 19: Fire Storm – Video

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Monster Hunter Freedom Unite - Online Quests -- Part 19: Fire Storm
Please leave a Like - your support is appreciated! *** Monster Hunter Freedom Unite - Online Quests (via Ad-hoc Party), with commentary Part 19: Fire Storm Recorded April 30, 2014: 5* Quest:...

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Monster Hunter Freedom Unite - Online Quests -- Part 19: Fire Storm - Video