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Here is an interesting article written by Janet Raloff about the expenses and overlooked complications of Diabetes. You can read the excerpt here and the full article at Science News.

Almost one-in-four hospital dollars go to treat people with the metabolic disorder.

Although an estimated 7.8 percent of Americans have been diagnosed with diabetes, patients with this metabolic disease rack up 23 percent of hospital costs nationwide, a new federal analysis finds. Their collective hospital bill in 2008, the most recent year for which data were available: almost $83 billion.

The average hospital stay for someone with diabetes averages roughly a day longer (5.3 days) than in someone free of the disease. And that stay costs about $10,940 — or roughly $2,200 more than the average for people without the disease, according to Taressa Fraze and her colleagues at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Her group has synopsized its findings in an August statistical brief issued by their agency, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Only about one in 14 hospital stays identified diabetes as the primary cause for a patient’s admission. Many people were instead hospitalized for conditions that could — and probably were — fostered by diabetes, such as impaired circulation or heart disease. Or patients may have landed in the hospital with conditions (such as poor wound healing) that had been exacerbated by their disorder.

Indeed, Fraze’s group observes, circulatory disorders — congestive heart failure, hardening of the arteries, heart attacks, nonspecific chest pain and abnormal pacing of heart beats — constitute five of the top 10 reasons for people with diabetes to be hospitalized.

The new analysis finds that people with diabetes also tend to have an average of 2.6 additional and potentially complicating illnesses — twice the number typically seen in people without the disorder. Chief among these additional conditions is high blood pressure, followed by fluid and electrolyte disorders, chronic pulmonary disease, anemia, kidney failure and obesity.

Rates of hospitalization for diabetics differs by income bracket, with the most well-heeled patients being admitted at a rate of 1,762 per 100,000 — a little more than half the rate typical of the poorest diabetics. Hospitalization rates also vary by region, with the highest prevalence in the South and Northeast, and lowest in the West.

Everyone pays the cost of these hospitalizations through tax dollars (for Medicare, which covered 60 percent of diabetics’ hospitalizations in 2008) and higher premiums for private insurance. So it behooves all of us to help fight the development of this disease within our own households (through exercise, weight management and healthy diets) and to encourage it in older at-risk family and friends.

And if someone we know is diagnosed with the disease, we must remind them to remain vigilant so that they can catch complications early. I have an otherwise robust diabetic family member who ignored a tiny toe infection, last year, and ended up hospitalized on and off for the better part of 6 months with IV-antibiotics and near-daily wound treatment.

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This is a great article I found written by Gina Kolata. It talks about a new way to predict Alzheimer’s, through one’s spinal fluid. This is exciting research! You can read the excerpt here, and the full article at The New York Times.

Spinal-Fluid Test Is Found to Predict Alzheimer’s

Researchers report that a spinal fluid test can be 100 percent accurate in identifying patients with significant memory loss who are on their way to developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Although there has been increasing evidence of the value of this and other tests in finding signs of Alzheimer’s, the study, which will appear Tuesday in the Archives of Neurology, shows how accurate they can be. The new result is one of a number of remarkable recent findings about Alzheimer’s.

After decades when nothing much seemed to be happening, when this progressive brain disease seemed untreatable and when its diagnosis could be confirmed only at autopsy, the field has suddenly woken up.

Alzheimer’s, medical experts now agree, starts a decade or more before people have symptoms. And by the time there are symptoms, it may be too late to save the brain. So the hope is to find good ways to identify people who are getting the disease, and use those people as subjects in studies to see how long it takes for symptoms to occur and in studies of drugs that may slow or stop the disease.

Researchers are finding simple and accurate ways to detect Alzheimer’s long before there are definite symptoms. In addition to spinal fluid tests they also have new PET scans of the brain that show the telltale amyloid plaques that are a unique feature of the disease. And they are testing hundreds of new drugs that, they hope, might change the course of the relentless brain cell death that robs people of their memories and abilities to think and reason.

“This is what everyone is looking for, the bull’s-eye of perfect predictive accuracy,” Dr. Steven DeKosky, dean of the University of Virginia medical school, who is not connected to the new research, said about the spinal tap study.

Dr. John Morris, a professor of neurology at Washington University, said the new study “establishes that there is a signature of Alzheimer’s and that it means something. It is very powerful.”

A lot of work lies ahead, researchers say — making sure the tests are reliable if they are used in doctors’ offices, making sure the research findings hold up in real-life situations, getting doctors and patients comfortable with the notion of spinal taps, the method used to get spinal fluid. But they see a bright future.

Although the latest PET scans for Alzheimer’s are not commercially available, the spinal fluid tests are.

So the new results also give rise to a difficult question: Should doctors offer, or patients accept, commercially available spinal tap tests to find a disease that is yet untreatable? In the research studies, patients are often not told they may have the disease, but in practice in the real world, many may be told.

Some medical experts say it should be up to doctors and their patients. Others say doctors should refrain from using the spinal fluid test in their practices. They note that it is not reliable enough — results can vary by lab — and has been studied only in research settings where patients are carefully selected to have no other conditions, like strokes or depression, that could affect their memories.

“This is literally on the cutting edge of where the field is,” Dr. DeKosky said. “The field is moving fast. You can get a test that is approved by the F.D.A., and cutting edge doctors will use it.”

But, said Dr. John Trojanowski, a University of Pennsylvania researcher and senior author of the paper, given that people can get the test now, “How early do you want to label people?”

Some, like Dr. John Growdon, a neurology professor at Massachusetts General Hospital who wrote an editorial accompanying the paper, said that decision was up to doctors and their patients.

Sometimes patients with severe memory loss do not have the disease. Doctors might want to use the test in cases where they want to be sure of the diagnosis. And they might want to offer the test to people with milder symptoms who want to know whether they are developing the devastating brain disease.

One drawback, though, is that spinal fluid is obtained with a spinal tap, and that procedure, with its reputation for pain and headaches, makes most doctors and many patients nervous. The procedure involves putting a needle in the spinal space and withdrawing a small amount of fluid.

Seven Health Care Changes You Might Have Missed

By:  Mary Agnes Carey and Andrew Villegas

KHN Staff Writers

This is a great article that I found that lists the many changes in our health care system, and what you can expect. Please read this excerpt and continue reading the full article at http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2010/July/09/health-overhaul-changes.aspx.

You’ve probably heard that the new health overhaul law this year will provide an option for young adults to stay on their parents’ health plans and set up insurance pools for people with pre-existing medical conditions who can’t find insurance. But several lesser-known provisions also take effect in coming months that could have a lasting impact on the nation’s health care system.

These provisions include eliminating patients’ co-payments for certain preventive services such as mammograms, giving the government more power to review health insurers’ premium increases and allowing states to expand Medicaid coverage to low-income adults without children.

While these changes might not have gotten at lot of attention, they could help build support for the law in the run-up to the contentious mid-term elections. Here’s a quick look at some of the changes occurring this year:

Prevention For Less

What: Insurers won’t be able to charge co-payments or deductibles for certain preventive services such as breast cancer screenings every one to two years, cholesterol blood tests and some sexually transmitted disease screenings. Insurers will also have to cover recommended immunizations at no cost to patients. Some health care analysts have suggested that premiums may rise as a result of this and other new requirements, but administration officials say any increase in premiums would be miniscule.

When: The change takes effect Sept. 23, which means it applies to plan years that begin after that. For many plans, their new year begins after Jan. 1.

Status: The Department of Health and Human Services says regulations are on their way. Paul Bonta, associate executive director for policy and government affairs at the American College of Preventive Medicine, predicts manufacturers of vaccines and diagnostic tests will push for their products to be labeled preventive services in a bid to have them covered at no cost to consumers.

Knowing Which Treatments Work Best

What: A nonprofit research institute will examine various medical treatments — by looking at data and conducting its own studies — to determine which methods work best. This is often called “comparative effectiveness research.”

When: The comptroller general of the United States — who runs the Government Accountability Office — will appoint the 17 members of the institute’s board of governors, which will oversee the institute’s operations.

Status: Everything about this institute, from its board members to its findings about treatments, is likely to generate great interest and potential controversy. The law says the board’s findings can’t be interpreted as requiring how doctors practice medicine or what insurers cover. However, in the quest to control health care costs, employers, insurers and others may point to such data as rationales for changes in coverage and treatment patterns.

…continue reading here.

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