Health & Science: Science News, Health News, Scientific Developments, Healthcare & Nutrition - The Washington Post

Bug-phobic dread the looming swarm of Brood II cicadas

Darryl Fears — Sun, 19 May 2013 00:12:06 GMT

The night started with one tiny click near the bedroom window.

Then came another, and another, until a great oak beside Lori Milani’s South Arlington apartment was alive with an almost deafening roar of cicadas.

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Increase in doctors’ pay for Medicaid services off to a slow start

Phil Galewitz — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:36:19 GMT

The Obama administration’s strategy of enticing more primary-care doctors to treat the poor by raising Medicaid reimbursement rates is off to a slow start.

Only a handful of states, including Maryland, have begun paying doctors at the higher rates, which average a 73 percent increase nationally. That’s because the administration did not issue the rules until November, and state officials say they haven’t had time to make changes and get the federal government to approve them.

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Psychiatry’s revamped DSM guidebook fuels debate

Lena H. Sun — Fri, 17 May 2013 04:01:00 GMT

For ADHD, the definition is being broadened, meaning the disorder could be diagnosed in more children. In the case of autism, the opposite is true.

The new criteria are among the changes that will be released with the publication this weekend of the long-awaited guidebook that psychiatrists and other mental health clinicians use to diagnose mental disorders. It’s the first major update in nearly 20 years. The 947-page tome by the American Psychiatric Association adds some new disorders, broadens criteria for existing ones and tightens them for other illnesses.

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Senate committee approves Obama’s nomination of Gina McCarthy to head EPA

Lenny Bernstein — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:31:00 GMT

President Obama’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency was quickly approved by a Senate committee Thursday when Republicans abandoned their boycott of a vote on the career environmental administrator, after what Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) described as “significant steps forward” on transparency issues important to the GOP.

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Oregon scientists get stem cells from cloned human embryos

David Brown — Thu, 16 May 2013 02:12:00 GMT

A team of researchers said Wednesday that it had produced embryonic stem cells — a possible source of disease-fighting spare parts — from a cloned human embryo.

Scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University accomplished in humans what has been done over the past 15 years in sheep, mice, cattle and several other species. The achievement is likely to, at least temporarily, reawaken worries about “reproductive cloning” — the production of one-parent duplicate humans.

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NASA’s Kepler space telescope malfunction may end hunt for planets

Joel Achenbach — Thu, 16 May 2013 00:45:00 GMT

The Kepler Space Telescope, the celebrated discoverer of worlds around distant stars, may have found its last planet. NASA announced Wednesday that the telescope, which to date has cost $600 million to build and operate, has lost the ability to point accurately.

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World’s fish have been moving to cooler waters for decades, study finds

Lenny Bernstein — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:00:00 GMT

Fish and other sea life have been moving toward Earth’s poles in search of cooler waters, part of a worldwide, decades-long migration documented for the first time by a study released Wednesday.

The research, published in the journal Nature, provides more evidence of a rapidly warming planet and has broad repercussions for fish harvests around the globe.

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Boston Marathon fund releases compensation formula for bombing victims

Lenny Bernstein — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:00:00 GMT

Everyone killed or injured in last month’s Boston Marathon bombings will receive some compensation from the $30 million in donations pledged for victims so far, according to a formula released Wednesday morning by the administrator of the One Fund Boston.

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Deal spares abortion doctor death penalty

Brady Dennisand Sandhya Somashekhar — Tue, 14 May 2013 23:40:40 GMT

A day after his conviction for the murders of three babies at his West Philadelphia clinic, abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell on Tuesday agreed not to appeal the verdict in exchange for being spared the death penalty.

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Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s space station music video is a first

Joel Achenbach — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:07:00 GMT

Houston, we have a superstar. He’s Chris Hadfield, who crawled out of a space capsule on the plains of Kazakhstan early Tuesday (late Monday Eastern time), dealing with gravity for the first time in five months and sudden global celebrity from singing a gone-viral made-in-space music video.

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After Jolie’s disclosure, cancer group urges caution

Lena H. Sun — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:21:06 GMT

Hours after actress Angelina Jolie revealed that she had a preventive double mastectomy to reduce her risk of breast cancer, the American Cancer Society issued a statement Tuesday urging women who might have genetic risk factors for breast cancer to proceed with caution before undergoing surgery.

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Abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell convicted of murder in deaths of three infants

Brady Dennis — Tue, 14 May 2013 01:11:00 GMT

PHILADELPHIA — After a two-month trial and 10 days of deliberation, a jury on Monday decided that Baby A, Baby C and Baby D lived a few fleeting moments outside their mothers’ wombs before their spinal cords were severed at Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic in West Philadelphia.

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About 40 percent of the diarrhea in young children is caused by four bugs, study finds

David Brown — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:26 GMT

Four intestinal bugs are responsible for nearly half of all cases of childhood diarrhea, which kills about 800,000 children around the world each year.

That’s the main finding of a three-year project designed to give researchers and public health officials a clearer picture of a condition responsible for about 10 percent of deaths of children under age 5.

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Firefighting capacity for wildfires curbed by funding cuts, officials say

Darryl Fears — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:44:28 GMT

The government is facing the possibility of yet another historic wildfire season with significantly fewer funds to pay for firefighters, equipment, fire prevention and recovery as a result of budget cuts from the sequester, officials announced Monday.

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Bodily waste from animals and humans can help solve the energy crisis, author says

Maggie Fazeli Fard — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:07:28 GMT

Bodily waste is widely considered a topic not to be discussed in polite company; it’s something to be flushed and forgotten. But a new book argues that waste, in all its human and animal forms, is worth getting to know intimately.

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Sucking on your child’s pacifier might guard them from allergies, a study says

Linda Searing — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:03:25 GMT

THE QUESTION Very young children exposed to bacteria through such experiences as playing in the dirt or living on a farm have been shown to be less likely to develop allergies. Might the method that parents use to clean an infant’s pacifier also make a child less susceptible to allergens?

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Misdiagnosis and medical miscommunication have human costs

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:51:59 GMT

Re: Your article on misdiagnosis, “Missing the Mark” [May 7]:

I have been disabled 10 years from a failure to diagnose and from misdiagnosis. My experience has been that one doctor will find something in another doctor’s specialty and refer the patient. That doctor finds something in another’s specialty and tosses the patient there. Everyone is looking for some lab test to do the diagnosing for them.

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Cockroaches are gross, but not all need to be squished

brian palmer — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:47:07 GMT

I detest household bugs. Abhor them. There isn’t a word strong enough to describe how I feel about bugs in my home.

That hatred provokes guilt, because I fancy myself an environmentalist. As such, I’m supposed to feel a kinship with all creatures. We’re connected in a circle of life, a colorful tapestry, a delicate web of interdependence. But I can’t help it: My love of animals doesn’t extend to cockroaches, bedbugs and their ilk. So I’m on a mission to prove that, in the vast family of 8.7 million species on Earth, there are a few that we could do without.

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Nervous, stressed? An app aims to put help in the palm of your hand.

Maggie Fazeli Fard — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:55:04 GMT

Anxiety disorders can be debilitating. For people who don’t seek professional help, a new iPhone app offers guidance in the palm of their hands.

AnxietyCoach, developed by two clinical psychologists and the Mayo Clinic, allows people to track their worries; based on a user’s responses, the app suggests therapeutic exercises.

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Eggs, even with their cholesterol, are a good source of protein for most people

Consumers Union of United States — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:50:00 GMT

Economical and easy to prepare in many ways, eggs appear to be perfect little protein packages. But the advice on eating them seems to change frequently, especially concerning whether their cholesterol content is safe for people with cardiovascular disease. So what’s a health-
conscious consumer supposed to do?

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Side effects of prescription drugs can be reported and studied on Web sites

Christie Aschwanden — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:46:42 GMT

A few years ago, I developed a painful infection. My doctor prescribed an antibiotic and a second drug to alleviate the agonizing, burning sensation. Despite the medicine, my misery increased. After a desperate call to my doctor, I deduced that my worsening symptoms were the result of the second medication, not the infection.

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Health law lets young people stay on a parent’s plan or buy their own insurance

Michelle Andrews — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:44:46 GMT

More than
3 million young people have gained health insurance since the Affordable Care Act became law three years ago, allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26.

Starting next year, young adults will have more options for health insurance. But despite the expanded choices, some may continue to face problems commonly associated with their age group: coverage for mental health issues, substance abuse and maternity care.

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To help solve challenging cardiac problems, doctors at Children’s press ‘print’

Adrienne LaFrance — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:39:00 GMT

It may sound like something out of science fiction, but doctors at Children’s National Medical Center are making hearts. Not actual hearts, but three-
dimensional synthetic models churned out by what looks like an ordinary printer.

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With breast cancer discovered at age 26, a young woman confronts her mortality

Kathryn Petrides — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:33:00 GMT

It was on the weekend of my 25th birthday that my boyfriend alerted me to a lump in my left breast. At first dismissive of his concern, I eventually promised to see my gynecologist. I was due for my annual exam anyway.

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Hospitals promote screenings that experts say many people do not need

Julie Appleby — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:27:31 GMT

Hospitals hoping to attract patients and build goodwill are teaming up with medical-screening companies to promote tests they say might prevent deadly strokes or heart disease.

What their promotions don’t say is that an influential government panel recommends against many of the tests for people without symptoms or risk factors. The panel says such screenings find too few problems to outweigh the drawbacks, which include false positive results and unnecessary follow-up procedures and surgery. Other medical experts warn that the tests could needlessly raise health-care spending.

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