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Preventing Road Rage, UK
Figures from the British Institute for Anger Management reveal that the UK already has the worst road rage figures of any European nation, with 80% of drivers saying they"ve been involved in an incident and 1 in 4 admitting to committing an act of road rage themselves. Men are three times more likely to commit an act of aggression than women and over 60% of drivers say they have been intimidated by aggressive tailgating.

Enzyme Involved In Inflammatory Bowel Disease Discovered At Penn State College Of Medicine
Researchers at Penn State College of Medicine, working with biochemists, geneticists and clinicians at the University of Bern, Switzerland and in the United Kingdom, have discovered an enzyme that has a key role in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The team, co-led by Judith Bond, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor and Chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State College of Medicine, and Daniel Lottaz, Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, could potentially lead to therapies to help the half-a-million Americans affected by ulcerative colitis and Crohn"s disease, collectively referred to as IBD.
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WHO, Wyeth Launch Trial In Africa To Test New River Blindness Drug
The WHO on Wednesday announced plans for a clinical trial to test a new drug that "could halve the treatment period for river blindness [or onchocerciasis], a disease that threatens 100 million people mostly in Africa," AFP/Dow Jones Newswires/CNN Money reports (7/1). "This is a devastating illness that has plagued 30 African countries for centuries, in particular the populations in the most remote areas "beyond the end of the road,"" Uche Amazigo, director of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), said (ANI/Thaindian.com, 7/1).
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Convent Focuses On Different Approach To End-Of-Life Care

A focus on end-of-life care emphasizes social and spiritual elements over aggressive medical intervention. The New York Times reports on the phenomenon by examining end-of-life care at an upstate New York convent: "A convent is a world apart, unduplicable. But the Sisters of St. Joseph, a congregation in this Rochester suburb, animate many factors that studies say contribute to successful aging and a gentle death - none of which require this special setting. These include a large social network, intellectual stimulation, continued engagement in life and spiritual beliefs, as well as health care guided by the less-is-more principles of palliative and hospice care - trends that are moving from the fringes to the mainstream." The Times notes: "For the elderly and infirm Roman Catholic sisters here, all of this takes place in a Mother House designed like a secular retirement community for a congregation that is literally dying off, like so many religious orders. On average, one sister dies each month, right here, not in the hospital, because few choose aggressive medical intervention at the end of life, although they are welcome to it if they want. ... Few sisters opt for major surgery, high-tech diagnostic tests or life-sustaining machinery. And nobody can remember the last time anyone died in a hospital." The paper notes the absence of anxiety and fear among the nuns as well as less pain, depression and use of narcotics to manage symptoms. The Times also contrasts the peaceful convent experience to hospitals" intensive-care units that can be impersonal and wastefully expensive. The nuns suffer from different ailments: none have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and few have diabetes. It notes: "Laura L. Carstensen, the director of the Center on Longevity at Stanford University, says the convent setting calms the tendency for public policy discussion about end-of-life treatment "to devolve into a debate about euthanasia or rationing health care based on age"" (Gross, 7/8). This information was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at kaiserhealthnews.org. © Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.


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