Adenovirus Picture Clarified by New Technique

As if the cold wasn't mysterious enough, we now have multiple infections caused by the strange, many-faceted virus called adenoviruses--related to the looming potential epidemic "bird flu." A new technique is helping to clear up some of the secrets of the adenovirus. The technique is genotyping, which involves "sequencing of highly variable sections of the adenovirus hexon gene to identify the adenovirus strain," is dramatically faster (2 days) than the blood work--which took weeks--that was previously the only way to know what you were dealing with. As these viruses can be dangerous and are extremely contagious, speedy diagnosis is of paramount importance.

Where did these viruses come from? Reptiles, dogs, and birds/chickens are known to carry them. It's the jump to the human organism that's so worrisome. The problem with these viruses is that early symptoms mimic those of a dozen other common illnesses like colds and flu that involve the respiratory system, eyes, nose, throat, even stomach (diarrhea is common in some varieties). And kids can have them with mild symptoms. So doctors who are not aware might be inclined to dismiss a worried parent's complaint.

Substance Abuse Screening gets new weapon--and a new trend in public health appears

Most people who practice an undesirable habit to one degree or another will fudge when they talk to their doctors about things like how much they exercise, whether they use recreational drugs, how much alchohol they drink, and so on. Now physicians can use some new CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) codes to to indicate they've given a patient a more formally structured substance abuse screening service instead of just telling the patient to stop doing it.

The idea is during a regular visit, your doctor can administer a fairly rigorous combination of electronic, verbal and written questionnaires and conduct a brief intervention. A White House deputy director says "'Screening and brief interventions can keep patients healthier, improve physicians' performance measures, and reduce hospital and healthcare costs. ...screening and brief intervention is the most transformative substance abuse tool for medicine in decades.' "

A solid prediction: this is going to change how insurance companies investigate and pay for things that might easily have been caused by the patient's own practice of a bad habit. Here are some sobering statistics on motor vehicle accidents and injuries connected with drug/alchohol use. Like smoking, as alcohol and drug abuse become more public, users will begin to be socially censured.

Nitric oxide makes stored blood flow better--Hematology/Oncology, Hematology

More impressive stuff from our favorite stuff, nitric oxide. Research shows that red blood cells lose a massive amount of nitric oxide in the the first 3 hours of being stored outside the body. By day 21 the blood is virtually empty of this vital substance. Experiments with dogs are showing that adding it back in greatly improves levels of S-nitrohemoglobin (which carries nitric oxide in blood) and dramatically increases blood flow in hypoxic (oxygen-starved) tissue. The hope is that treating banked blood with nitric oxide may greatly reduce the dangers of transfusion--reducing or eliminating occurrences of heart attack and even death. Read the whole thing Hematology/Oncology, Hematology from MedPage Today

Shoulders

Having been studying the "Frozen Shoulder Workbook" recently in search of a solution for recurring pain in my mouse-hand shoulder, this item caught my eye today. Seems researchers found that, while Pitching Changes Little Leaguer's Shoulders and some of it results in long-lasting protective changes, too much is a bad thing. Some kids are playing lots of games all year round and are getting into painful situations. Better to vary the sports a kid plays, they say--and even just quit sports for a while and go be a kid (which is not to suggest spending endless hours on video games--which has its own set of perils).

The answers always seem to head in the direction of "moderation in all things." Not very exciting, of course, but fairly reliable.