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Are Blood Transfusions Bad For Your Health?
The August issue of the journal Anesthesiology, contains a study on potential long-term adverse effects resulting from blood transfusion and reveals that moderate amounts of transfused blood in patients in patients undergoing cardiac surgery did not lead to long-term health problems or increased death rates for the majority of recipients.

Boston To Unveil New Teen Sex Awareness Program After Spike In STI Cases
Boston"s health agency on Tuesday is scheduled to launch a safer-sex campaign that reaches out to teenagers through Web sites such as Facebook and YouTube, the Boston Globe reports. The campaign was created in response to rising rates of sexually transmitted infections among young people in the city, according to the Globe. The $100,000 campaign originally was intended to address communicable diseases in general. However, experts noticed the increase in STI cases among teenagers and decided to spend all the funding on the campaign targeting STIs.The increase in chlamydia cases in particular demonstrates the "scope of the challenge," as 1,383 Boston youths between ages 15 and 19 were diagnosed with the STI in 2007, a 70% increase since 1999, the Globe reports. The overall rate of chlamydia in Boston is more than twice the national average, and chlamydia and gonorrhea are more common among adolescents than any other age group in Boston. According to the Globe, a city study released in early 2009 found that 56% of Boston public high school students have had sex, and 24% of the sexually active students said they have had more than six partners.For the campaign, "teenagers will do much of the talking" in a video that offers information on STIs, the Globe reports. The video will air on cable channels that are popular with teenagers, such as MTV, FX and BET. It shows teenagers in a classroom receiving information on safer sex, including details about condoms and STI screening. The video does not discuss sexual abstinence.The campaign also includes advertisements on mass transit and the radio, as well as a team of teenagers that will travel around Boston performing street theater addressing the risks associated with STIs. Through the social networking Web site Facebook, teenagers can post questions anonymously regarding sexual health that will be answered by a disease specialist. Videos related to the campaign also will be posted on YouTube.Margaux Joffe, multimedia coordinator at the Public Health Commission, said teenagers "told us, "We don"t want some 40-year-old woman telling us about sex and STIs."" Joffe added that it "makes sense" because a teenager "may not trust the advice of an adult as much as you would someone in your peer group." Mark Schuster, the chief of general pediatrics at Children"s Hospital Boston who was not involved in the design of the campaign, said that using a "multilevel approach" to address the issue is a "great strategy." He added that young people "can be interested and learn from" a sex education curriculum in school, but "they need it in other settings too."Specialists speculate that the rise in STIs may reflect teenagers" casual attitudes about sex and parents" shifting attention to other children"s health concerns, the Globe reports. Experts also have said that the increase in STIs could reflect increased screening efforts by physicians, who have been "pressed for many years to screen much more carefully kids at younger and younger ages," Stephen Boswell, president of Fenway Health, said. The Globe reports that teenagers do not view HIV/AIDS in the same way previous generations have because of advancements in treatment, so preventing the virus "no longer seems quite as important." Experts are concerned that the spread of other STIs could be a forewarning of a rise in HIV/AIDS cases among teenagers. Anita Barry, a top disease specialist at BPHC, said the gonorrhea and chlamydia cases are "our future HIV cases unless we intervene" (Smith, Boston Globe, 8/4).
News of the day
More Intensive Glucose Control In Type 2 Diabetes Reduces Heart Attacks And Heart Disease Events
A meta-analysis of five trials has shown that more intensive glucose control in type 2 diabetes leads to fewer heart attacks and heart disease events - but has no significant effect on stroke or mortality from all causes. The findings are reported in an Article in this week"s diabetes special issue of The Lancet, written by Dr Kausik Ray, University of Cambridge, UK, and colleagues.
Cardiovascular

Three Organizations Form Alliance To Address Global Malnutrition

"Three internationally known organizations based in St. Louis - the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, the Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis Children"s Hospital" - have entered into a partnership, known as the Global Harvest Alliance (GHA), which aims to "create inexpensive, nutritionally complete food to help the world"s hungry and undernourished," the AP/Google.com reports. Alliance researchers will focus on several of the most successful approaches used to combat malnutrition and attempt to further enrich foods already used to fight it. "In addition, the alliance aims to help testing and distribution of crops genetically modified to boost nutritional content. They hope to provide the crops cheaply to farmers to produce more nutritious foods," writes the AP/Google.com (Taylor, 7/29). Mark Manary, a professor of pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine and a member of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, will lead GHA, according to a Washington University in St. Louis release. Manary"s "peanut butter-based ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) for the treatment of severe acute malnutrition has consistently resulted in 90 percent recovery rates in research and operational projects," according to the release (7/27). According to KWMU, "Manary said malnutrition causes about half of all child deaths" (Wolf, 7/28) AP/Google.com reports that apart from addressing malnutrition, GHA will try to identify more sustainable solutions. "Prevention is always better than a cure," Manary said. Roger Beachy, president of Danforth, said, "This is not a magic bullet. It"s a part of the puzzle to helping people be healthier and have a better life." According to Larry Beach, a biotech scientist with USAID not directly involved with GHA, says there is some suspicion of biotechnology and "skepticism about providing more nutrition through food because that"s not the way it"s been done in the past." According to Beach, "[o]ne of the big problems in helping to make improvements in nutrition is the integration of what needs to be done," he said (7/29). This information was reprinted from globalhealth.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at globalhealth.kff.org. © Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.


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