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A.
Certain Ethnic Groups Benefit from Earlier Screening
for Colorectal Cancer
Narrator:
This is Science Today. Currently, early detection
screenings for colorectal cancer are recommended
for everyone at age fifty and above. But a new study
has found for certain racial and ethnic groups,
the recommended age should be lower. Dr. Charles
Theuer of the University of California, Irvine,
led the study.
Theuer:
We looked at race in terms of black, Asian,
white and Latino and we found that blacks are at
highest risk of colorectal cancer and for that reason,
they benefit most from a screening program that
starts even before age fifty.
Narrator:
In their study - the first of its kind to look into
the cost-effectiveness of screenings in certain
groups, the age that proved most effective for African-Americans
was forty-two.
Theuer:
Regardless
of race, everyone needs to be screened starting
at age fifty. And that's really an important point
because a recent study showed that less than ten
percent of our population is being screened in accordance
with current American Cancer Society guidelines.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
A Link Between High Cholesterol and Osteoporosis
Narrator:
This is Science Today. High cholesterol has always
been associated with heart disease, but UCLA researchers
have discovered unhealthy eating and high cholesterol
may also contribute to the development of osteoporosis.
Farhad Parhami, the lead author of this study, explains.
Parhami: In comparative studies
that we were doing, looking at the effects of cholesterol
and cholesterol oxidized products, we found that it
seems that these agents inhibit the ability of osteoblasts,
which are the cells that normally make bone, to function
properly.
Narrator: The researchers noticed people
with cardiovascular disease also seemed to be at greater
risk of developing osteoporosis.
Parhami:
Nobody has
ever made a link between the two diseases suggesting
there may be a common factor and maybe if we find
ways to combat cardiovascular disease in a better
way, maybe we can actually use those same means to
combat osteoporosis.
Narrator:
For
Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.The
Intriguing Web that Spiders Weave
Narrator:
This is Science Today. At this very moment, there's
probably a spider somewhere in your home spinning
its web. And according to researchers at the University
of California, Riverside, some species have been using
the same spider silk proteins for at least 125 million
years. Dr. Cheryl Hayashi, a professor of biology,
says another spider silk protein they've genetically
sequenced, dates back about 250 million years.
Hayashi:
That's a really long period of time. I mean,
we're going back to the Mesozoic, when dinosaurs are
walking around. And so this is a long time for these
sequences to be conserved. And to us, that argues
that these regions of the sequence are probably very
important for the functioning of spider silks.
Narrator:
Hayashi says there's lots of interest in creating
synthetic spider silks.
Hayashi:
Spider silk is very strong and very tough. It
actually surpasses a lot of the common man-made materials.
It's stronger than high tensile steel and has a toughness
that is greater than Kevlar. So there's a lot of interest
in being able to mass produce spider silk.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D.
Understanding Managed Care Plans
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A health care watchdog organization
recently found that although nearly half the nation's
premature deaths were linked to such preventable causes
as unhealthy diet, lack of exercise or substance abuse,
few managed care plans routinely offer services to
change these behaviors. Kathryn Phillips, a health
services researcher at the University of California,
San Francisco, says managed care plans historically
haven't offered these services.
Phillips:
Often because they don't see the results - the members
changed plans before the plan can reap the benefits
of a behavior change and it's sometimes much more
difficult to provide that type of in-depth preventive
service than it is to provide a simple screening procedure.
Narrator:
Phillips cautions against thinking of managed care
as one monolithic type of health plan.
Phillips:
These days, most plans have some type of managed care
feature, so we need to learn to think more specifically
about what the characteristics of specific plans are.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
What Doctors Need to Know about Pain
Narrator:
This is Science Today. There are over two million
deaths a year in the United States and more than half
of these deaths occurs in hospitals. Steve Pantilat,
a hospitalist at the University of California, San
Francisco, says up to forty percent of people, regardless
of the illness they had at the time of death, suffered
moderate to severe pain.
Pantilat:
These are people who are hospitalized. They're
being cared for in an intensive care unit, so they
had plenty of access to medical care and yet, they
had moderate to severe pain at the end of life.
Narrator:
A previous study found one of the reasons for this
was the doctors' inability to adequately assess pain.
In his own research, Pantilat, found doctors who simply
believed their patients were in pain, were better
at controlling it.
Pantilat:
What I say to doctors when I teach about this is believe
the patient. We have no way to measure whether someone
is in pain. There's no machine. There's no blood test
to tell whether or not a person is in pain. And in
particular, people who have chronic pain, those people
don't even look like they're in pain. And yet, what
we know is that we're not very good at telling and
we have to believe the patient.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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