Reuters: Health
(Reuters Health) - A study of soldiers trying to get into an elite army unit adds to evidence linking healthy diets to better physical performance.
For would-be elite soldiers, healthier diets may pay off
For would-be elite soldiers, healthier diets may pay off
Reuters: Health
(Reuters Health) - A study of soldiers trying to get into an elite army unit adds to evidence linking healthy diets to better physical performance.
Reuters: Health
(Reuters Health) - A study of soldiers trying to get into an elite army unit adds to evidence linking healthy diets to better physical performance.
Modernizing health infrastructure to improve experiences
As part of our National Health IT Week blog series, we are concentrating on modernizing health infrastructure, with a particularly focus on the impact to patient, clinician, and IT experiences. We will look at how the consistent and systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health-related data can be used to change how care is experienced, delivered, and managed.
To understand the role of health IT infrastructure, let’s take a look at one patient’s journey through the health system:
At the soccer field
Meet Morgan. Unfortunately, he got hurt. He took a bad fall while playing in a soccer game, and his parents are worried that he might have a concussion. It doesn’t seem like it’s an emergency, but his dad wants some expert advice on what they should do.
Morgan’s dad logs into his healthcare provider’s patient portal and messages with an AI chatbot that is connected to his healthcare provider’s virtual triage contact center. After a brief evaluation, the contact center agent recommends Morgan go to the nearest urgent care clinic for further evaluation. An open appointment is found and made for Morgan. To help make this as easy experience as possible, Morgan’s dad receives a text with directions from the field to the clinic.
See how Mercy is using the contact center to triage patients
At urgent care
Morgan has some tests done to assess his condition. Using collaboration technology, his doctors are able to get a tele-neuro consult using Webex Teams. Instead of having to go to multiple places to understand his condition, Morgan, his family, and his care team at the clinic can come up with a plan for Morgan.
See how vRad is using collaboration technology for live video diagnosis
The physician overseeing Morgan’s care communicates with the rest of the care team using a mobile application on her iPhone. This clinical communication and collaboration interaction is enhanced by the Cisco and Apple partnership.
See how Parkview Medical Center is using wireless technology to improve clinical communications
In the end, Morgan gets to go home and rest. After he has recovered, he is ready to get back on the field for the next game.
The IT operations experience
The care Morgan has received may seem simple, but what is happening behind the scenes can be complex. From managing the contact center, to deploying telehealth, to securing clinical communications, to making sure all these solutions stay connected at the clinic – depends on a strong IT infrastructure foundation. All your systems – Network Transport, Wireless Mobility, Collaboration, Security, Data Center — need to work together seamlessly to support the future of care.
These are the ways that your healthcare organization can deliver care to one person at a time… And to all your patients at once.
Digital transformation with Cisco
At Cisco, we have a unique perspective on digital transformation. We see an industry perspective across 10 different market segments. We wrote two books on digital disruption because we are at the center of it. And, we’ve created tools like HIMSS Analytics Infrastructure Adoption Model (INFRAM) – a maturity model that defines your technology needs based on a healthcare systems roadmap.
To learn more about how digital transformation is evolving the healthcare experience, take a virtual tour of a clinic.
Check back for the rest of our National Health IT Week blog series to learn more about IT strategies that can help:
Is Wine Really Healthier Than Beer?
Beginning in the 1980s, researchers noticed that the French—despite typically eating a diet with lots of foods containing saturated fat and cholesterol—had lower than expected rates of heart disease and early death. Some called this phenomenon the “French paradox,” and they went to work figuring out an explanation. Wine emerged as a prime candidate.
Moderate wine consumption is a component of traditional Mediterranean diets, which research associates with lower rates of disease and mortality. A 1992 study in The Lancet found evidence that drinking wine and other types of alcohol could prevent or reduce arterial blockages. Other research from around that time found that people who drank wine, as opposed to beer, enjoyed lower mortality risks. Later work zeroed in on a group of compounds found in grapes, called polyphenols—and in particular, resveratrol—as the likeliest source of wine’s ostensible health benefits. Red wine, more so than white, is packed with resveratrol. And the belief that red wine is healthier than other alcoholic beverages took root.
But beer may have gotten a bad rap. A 2006 study of grocery store purchases in Denmark found that people who bought wine also tended to buy more fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods than people who bought beer. This study led to expert speculation that the average wine drinker may eat healthier than the average beer drinker. If true, that could explain away many of the health advantages associated with wine.
More recent research that controlled for diet and other lifestyle variables concluded that drinking moderate amounts of beer—usually defined as one per day for women and two for men—offers the same heart-health benefits as a like amount of wine.
Meanwhile, studies have found that cheese and some other sources of saturated fat and cholesterol may not actually raise a person’s risk for heart disease and premature death. That undercuts the “French paradox” phenomenon that propelled wine to health stardom in the first place.
Demosthenes Panagiotakos is a professor in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at Greece’s Harokopio University, and has studied the long-term effects of wine and beer on heart health. His research suggests wine and beer are more or less equal when it comes to lowering a person’s heart disease risks. “Red wine has been the most studied alcoholic beverage,” he says. “Yet recent epidemiological studies and clinical trials reveal similar relationships for beer.”
Some of the most recent evidence finds that some types of beer may be even healthier than red wine. A 2016 study in the Journal of Wine Economics analyzed the shopping habits and health outcomes of more than 30,000 Americans. After controlling for diet quality, stress, and other variables, the study found the incidence of heart disease and type 2 diabetes was lower among moderate drinkers who bought craft beer instead of other types of alcohol. “This effect was slightly bigger than for red wine,” says Michael McCullough, a professor of agribusiness at California Polytechnic State University, and one of the authors of the study. Meanwhile, the consumption of “macro” beer—the term applied to non-craft beers such as Budweiser—was associated with much smaller heart and diabetes risk reductions.
McCullough says craft beer is often unpasteurized and unfiltered, and so contains more plant compounds, yeasts, bacteria, vitamins, minerals and other potentially healthful constituents than macro brews. But he says the research comparing the health effects of various types of alcohol is incomplete. He’s in the midst of wrapping up a study in which early findings suggest people who drink macro beer—so long as it’s not “light” beer—seem to be just as healthy as craft-beer drinkers. “It’s possible that people who drink light macro beer drink more of it because it’s lower in calories,” he says. And heavy drinking is associated with higher rates of heart, liver, and brain disease.
The idea that any alcoholic beverage should be considered “healthy” is controversial; some recent studies—notably, a 2018 paper in The Lancet—concluded that no amount of alcohol is safe. But not all experts agreed with the conclusions of that study, and much of the research to date, including McCullough’s, has found that low or moderate alcohol consumption is associated with better health outcomes.
While it’s still possible that one type of alcohol will turn out to be healthier than another, it’s too early to crown a champ. For those who prefer beer to wine, there’s no reason to dump your beloved suds.
U.S. agents search Clio Laboratories in fraud probe, says official
U.S. agents search Clio Laboratories in fraud probe, says official
Reuters: Health
U.S. federal agents executed a warrant to search the Clio Laboratories in Lawrenceville, Ga. on Friday, a government official said, as part of a nationwide crackdown into genetic testing fraud against federal health insurance programs. 
Reuters: Health
U.S. federal agents executed a warrant to search the Clio Laboratories in Lawrenceville, Ga. on Friday, a government official said, as part of a nationwide crackdown into genetic testing fraud against federal health insurance programs.
He Lost His Arms, His Legs and His Nose to a Rare Infection. Are His Pit Bull Ellie’s Licks to Blame?
(WEST BEND, Wis.) — It’s hard to regard Ellie as a menace.
When Greg Manteufel is frustrated or feeling down, she sits by him. At night, she sleeps under his covers. At dinner, she’s there next to him, knowing he’ll throw something her way. She belies the stereotype of the vicious pit bull.
“We love her like she’s our daughter,” he said of the dog.
And yet, Ellie may be the reason Manteufel, 49, nearly died.
Gravely ill, he lost parts of his arms and legs, as well as the skin of his nose and part of his upper lip. The cause was capnocytophaga (cap-noh-seye-TOE’-fah-gah), a germ from Ellie’s mouth or from another dog he encountered.
Capnocytophaga is commonly found in the saliva of cats and dogs and almost never leads to people getting sick, unless the person has a compromised immune system. But Manteufel was perfectly healthy. In fact, he doesn’t think he’d ever used his health insurance before he fell ill.
The case is extremely rare and doctors at his hospital, Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin, had no explanation for why he got so sick. But over the last 10 years there have been at least five other healthy people who have had severe reactions to the germ. A team of researchers connected with Harvard Medical School has developed a theory on why — a gene change in all the victims.
And their finding means doctors can’t rule out the capnocytophaga bacteria could strike Manteufel and other victims again.
___
Greg Manteufel thought he was getting the flu in June of 2018. He had a fever, vomiting and diarrhea. But when he started getting confused, his family took him to the hospital.
Doctors did blood cultures and found capnocytophaga, which caused sepsis, a severe blood infection that led to his blood pressure dropping and many of his organs shutting down.
“Do what you have to, to keep me alive,” he told the doctors.
He had so much to live for — foremost, his wife of 16 years, Dawn, and 26-year-old son, Mike. He was just starting to get really good at his day job, painting houses. He cherished his Harley Davidson Electric Glide. He was in the middle of fixing up his ’66 El Camino. And of course there was Ellie, the pup.
And so he persisted, through more than 20 surgeries, including amputations of his left and right arms just below the elbow, and legs through the middle of the knee.
His wife and son stayed optimistic, because he was.
“Greg said he didn’t come this far to lay down and let this beat him,” Dawn Manteufel said.
He was out of the in-patient rehab unit in about two weeks, learning to move from his wheelchair to the bed, toilet and car. The usual stay is three to four weeks, said Dr. David Del Toro, medical director for the inpatient rehab unit at Froedtert.
Manteufel made similar quick advances using his arm prosthetics and leg prosthetics.
“He does not seem like any other patient I’ve met before,” Del Toro said. “He’s just, you know, full speed ahead.”
Meanwhile, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, connected to Harvard Medical School, as well as Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center had been investigating cases like his.
The team has done genetic testing on five otherwise healthy people who suffered capnocytophaga infections to see if they could find anything in common. They discovered all had a gene connected to the immune system that was working differently — a genetic variant.
“It was a really thrilling moment,” said Elizabeth Fieg, a genetic counselor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “The stakes are so high with these cases and the patients have gone through so much.”
They believe it makes those people more susceptible to developing severe medical problems from capnocytophaga. But they are also trying to determine if there are other risk factors.
Of the five in the study, three survived with amputations and two did not. Fieg hopes their research can determine why some did not survive.
She also hopes if their theory is confirmed, it will help diagnose cases faster, and perhaps save lives and limbs.
That’s why Greg Manteufel jumped at the chance to take part when he was approached in August.
Researchers need to gather more evidence, but hope to publish their study in the next year to 18 months.
___
Manteufel’s life now includes frequent occupational therapy appointments to perfect his use of arm prosthetics — the kind with metal moveable hooks at the end. He’s using a fork regularly and he’s now working on picking up the TV remote, opening doorknobs, cutting vegetables and doing the dishes.
He’s using shortened leg prosthetics, called stubbies, to get his body conditioned to eventually use to full-sized ones. Those are expected to arrive any day.
Plastic surgeons plan another surgery to perfect his nose. They’ve already moved skin from his forehead there. It looks oversized now, but it will eventually fit in with the rest of his face.
He plans to get his car revamped so he can drive with prosthetics. He wants to get a special pole so he can go fishing again. He is even considering going back to work painting.
He’s also become less quiet and a lot more outgoing. “Now everybody I see wants to hear something or talk to me. I tell them a 15-minute story about what happened. They probably want me to leave, you know,” he said, chuckling.
Ellie’s often by his side.
“She loves kids. She loves puppies. Other dogs,” Manteufel said.
As harmless as she seems, she may have capnocytophaga germ.
The results of Manteufel’s genetic tests are expected in three to four months. Fieg said people with the gene variant are at increased risk for recurrent capnocytophaga or other infections in the future.
While Manteufel doesn’t like the sound of that, he said Ellie’s accidentally scratched him since he’s been home and even licked his mouth. He’s been fine.
And even if he does have the gene variant, he said, it changes nothing.
“We didn’t even bother testing her,” said Manteufel. “We weren’t going to get rid of her if it was her that caused it anyway.”
“We just love her to death.”
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