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Survey: Illinois Seniors Delay Buying Prescription Drugs
Some seniors in Illinois are delaying buying prescription drugs because of the cost, according to the AARP. United Press International reports: "Twenty-one percent of AARP members surveyed in Illinois report not filling or delaying filling prescriptions due to cost, a survey indicated. Nearly one in five said they had to cut back on food and utilities to afford needed medications, the AARP survey of Illinois residents 50 and over indicated. The survey found 63 percent are concerned about affordability of their prescription drugs. Eighteen percent reported they took less than the prescribed amount to make the medicine last longer. The survey found women and Hispanics say they tend to be harder hit than the general 50-plus population by high drug costs. In the past year, prices for brand-name prescription drugs increased an average of 8.7 percent, while generic drug prices decreased by nearly 11 percent, Merri Dee, president for AARP in Illinois, said. Prices of specialty prescription drugs, used to treat conditions that tend to affect older populations such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis, increased by 9.3 percent" (7/13).
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Supreme Court Rules Pensions Need Not Include Maternity Leave Taken Prior To Pregnancy Discrimination Act
The Supreme Court on Monday in a 7-2 decision ruled that employers are not required to award women credit toward pension benefits for maternity leave taken before Congress passed the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which states that pregnancy should be treated like other temporary disabilities, the New York Times reports. The majority opinion stated that the 1978 law, which made pregnancy-related discrimination a form of sex discrimination, was not retroactive; therefore, employers were not required to adjust the pension calculations for these women. The case decided Monday -- AT&T v. Hulteen -- involved four women who had taken maternity leaves before 1978, when it was legal for employers to treat pregnancy leave differently from other types of disability leave. In the majority opinion, Justice David Souter wrote that the women are not entitled to full credit for their pregnancy leaves and will therefore receive smaller pensions, the Times reports. Souter was joined in the majority by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer dissented. Souter"s ruling was based in great part on a 1976 Supreme Court ruling, General Electric v. Gilbert, which found that policies treating pregnancy leave worse than other types of disability leaves did not amount to sex discrimination (Liptak, New York Times, 5/19). Congress swiftly overruled Gilbert by passing the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle, 5/19). Ginsburg in the dissent wrote that the court had "erred egregiously" in Gilbert, which she said advanced the "strange notion that a benefits classification excluding" pregnant women is not based on sex "because other women are among the favored class ("non-pregnant persons")." Ginsburg said that in passing the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Congress did not intend to continue reducing women"s compensation, including pension benefits, "attributable to their placement on pregnancy leave," adding that the women involved in the case will receive smaller pensions than their colleagues for the rest of their lives (New York Times, 5/19). "[A]ttitudes about pregnancy and childbirth ... have sustained pervasive, often law-sanctioned, restrictions on a woman"s place among paid workers and active citizens," Ginsburg said (Biskupic, USA Today, 5/19).ImpactJudith Kurtz, a plaintiffs" attorney in the case, said the ruling will affect thousands of women across the country, nearly all of them in the telecommunications industry. Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, said that the decision is "a painful and serious blow to America"s working women and the families who rely on their retirement benefits" (San Francisco Chronicle, 5/19). Ness said that the decision "forces women to pay a high price today because their employers discriminated yesterday" (Holland, AP/Google.com, 5/18). She added, "In the current economic climate, women and their families cannot afford to see their retirement benefits kept lower by discriminatory workplace policies that should have been remedied decades ago" (Mears, CNN.com, 5/18). Some women"s rights advocates said the ruling is comparable to the pay discrimination decision against Lilly Ledbetter in 2007. Marcia Greenberger of the National Women"s Law Center said the decision was "an all-too-timely reminder of the importance of having on the Supreme Court justices who understand the real-world impact of the law" (Savage, Los Angeles Times, 5/19).
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Study Demonstrated Once-Daily Vyvanse(R) CII Provided Significant Improvement Of ADHD Symptoms For Children At 13 Hours After Administration
Shire plc announced that a study published online in the peer-reviewed journal Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health found once-daily Vyvanse® (lisdexamfetamine dimesylate) CII significantly reduced the symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children aged 6 to 12 from the first time point measured (1.5 hours) up to the last time point assessed (13 hours) after administration. In this pediatric analog classroom study, treatment with Vyvanse was associated with significant improvement in behavior and attention in children at each time point measured, with improvement at 13 hours after administration.
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Study Finds Link Between Parental Stress, Air Pollution, And Children's Risk For Developing Asthma

Children with stressed out parents may be more susceptible to developing asthma associated with environmental triggers such as high levels of traffic-related pollution and tobacco smoke, according to a new study led by researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC). According to the study that appears this week in the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the risk of asthma associated with traffic-related pollution was significantly higher for children of parents reporting high levels of stress. Stress, as well as low parental education, was also associated with larger effects of exposure to tobacco smoke during pregnancy. "We found that it was children exposed to the combination of air pollution and life in a stressful environment who were at highest risk of developing asthma," says principal investigator Rob McConnell, M.D., professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and Deputy Director of the Children"s Environmental Health Center at USC. Asthma is the most common chronic childhood illness in developed countries and has been linked to environmental factors. The study drew upon data from the USC Children"s Health Study, a longitudinal study of respiratory health among children in 13 southern California communities. Researchers followed 2,497 children with no history of respiratory problems over three years, tracking whether they developed asthma starting in kindergarten or first grade. They also measured parental stress and parental education as an indicator of socioeconomic status using a questionnaire, and collected information on exposure to traffic-related pollution and whether the children had been exposed to tobacco smoke in utero. The results showed that parental stress alone did not increase the risk that children would develop asthma. However, when children had a combination of parents with stressful lives and also lived near high levels of traffic-related pollution, their risk of asthma increased compared with children only exposed to pollution. "Air pollution can promote inflammatory responses in the airways of the lung, which is a central feature of asthma," McConnell says. "Stress may also have pro-inflammatory effects and this may help explain why the two exposures together were important." Children whose parents perceived their lives as unpredictable, uncontrollable, or overwhelming were susceptible to the effects of pollution, the authors noted. Stress associated with poverty may help explain why asthma rates are often higher in lower socioeconomic status communities. "Childhood asthma is a complex disease that probably has many contributing causes," McConnell says. "Further study of effects of exposure to air pollution in combination with stressful environments associated with poverty and other social factors could contribute to our understanding of why the disease develops." The study was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Cancer Institute, the Hastings Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. K. Shankardass, Rob McConnell, M. Jerrett, J. Milam, J. Richardson, and K. Berhane. "Parental stress increases the effect of traffic-related air pollution on childhood asthma incidence." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. University of Southern California Health Sciences


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