Tag Archives: social

Social service barriers delay care among women with abnormal cancer screening

The study, which appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, was led by Sarah Primeau, MSW, research assistant in the department of general internal medicine at BUSM. Previous studies on healthcare barriers have shown that training individuals from the community, known as patient navigators, to provide emotional and logistical support to patients is an effective way to care for patients in a culturally sensitive way. However, these studies have not addressed whether patient navigators are also effective in addressing social service barriers such as financial problems, employment issues, health insurance, housing constraints and adult and child care. "Social barriers are more complex than other obstacles to healthcare such as transportation or language and will likely require interventions that healthcare providers and patient navigators aren’t traditionally trained to provide," said Primeau…

Patients report not being told of risk of overdiagnosis in cancer screenings

Cancer screenings can find treatable disease at an earlier stage but they can also detect cancers that will never progress to cause symptoms. Detection of these early, slow-growing cancers can lead to unnecessary surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, the authors write in the study background. Researchers conducted an online survey of 317 U.S. …

Recommended treatment for bone metastases not widely used

“Palliative radiotherapy, comprising l or more fractions (i.e., treatments) of daily radiation, is the mainstay of treatment for painful bone metastases. In 2005, a U.S.-based randomized trial demonstrated no difference in pain relief between single- and multiple-fraction radiotherapy for uncomplicated bone metastases, confirming results from international trials,” according to background information in the article appearing in the October 9 issue of JAMA…

Battling defiant leukemia cells

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is an aggressive cancer of the blood that is often treated with a drug called Imatinib (a.k.a. Gleevec). Although Gleevec is highly effective, some cancer cells can develop resistance to the drug. The mechanism that drives this resistance is not completely understood, but there is evidence that cancerous stem-like cells are particularly resistant and help to perpetuate disease. …

Cancer survivors in rural areas forgo health care because of cost

Data analysis showed cancer survivors in rural areas who were aged 65 or older were 66 percent more likely to forgo medical care and 54 percent more likely to forgo dental care because of cost, compared with their urban counterparts. "This is the first population-based study to examine whether cancer survivors in rural and urban areas are equally likely to forgo health care as a result of concerns about cost," said Nynikka Palmer, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Social Sciences and Health Policy at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. "We found a disparity among older survivors, for whom health insurance coverage through Medicare is almost universal, while no disparity was found for younger survivors after controlling for various factors. This suggests that health insurance coverage alone may not ensure equal access to health care…

Finasteride: Long-term survival of participants in prostate cancer prevention trial detailed

New findings reported in NEJM on August 15, 2013, based on follow-up of trial participants for up to 18 years, showed that survival of the men on finasteride was equivalent to men who did not take the drug and the reduction in risk of prostate cancer persists. Among nearly 19,000 eligible men who underwent randomization, prostate cancer was diagnosed in 10.5 percent of those in the finasteride group and 14.9 percent of those in the placebo group, a 30 percent reduction in risk…

Tumor suppressor is needed for stem cells to mature into neurons

The recently published study shows that when stem cells approach the final phase of their specialisation as neurons, CHD5 begins to be expressed at high levels. CHD5 can reshape the chromatin, in which DNA is packed around proteins, and in so doing either facilitate or obstruct the expression of genes. …