News-Record.com

It's mosquito and tick season once again -- and with the rains we got in April, that actually means something. The Guilford County Department of Public Health has posted some helpful suggestions to deal with those problems, ranging from reducing their breeding areas to reducing your own chances of being bitten. Bug bites, in addition to hurting and/or itching, can spread disease, notably (from ticks) Rocky Mountain spotted fever, so this is something to take seriously.

It seems the American Red Cross and Johnson & Johnson have been involved in a lawsuit over licensing the red-cross logo. And it seems a judge has told both sides to get over themselves.

Via my colleague Diane Lamb in our news research department comes this article from NewScientist.com:

Blood pressure is not hard to measure, but the necessary equipment for clinically accurate measurements – a cuff, a pump, and stethoscope or electronics – is bulky and heavy.

However, researchers have recently found that a person's "pulse wave velocity" is closely linked to blood pressure. This is the rate at which the pulse pressure wave passes through the blood circulatory system.

Sensors sewn into the waistband of a person's underpants can measure the rate of this wave, consumer electronics company Philips has discovered, and could be used to calculate blood pressure for as long as the garment is worn.

Each sensor continually measures the electrical impedance of the tissue beneath it – a property that changes as the pulse wave passes by. A pair of such sensors can calculate the speed of the pulse wave by timing how long it takes to travel from one sensor to the other.

Once calibrated with a conventional blood-pressure reading, the electrodes can then give accurate blood-pressure readings, while the wearer enjoys the comfort of their own underpants.

Now, whether or not it's a good idea for your underpants to know your blood pressure is for you to decide. I'm trying to decide whether my blood pressure is any of their business.

Mothers' Day has just come and gone and Fathers Day is coming up. I'd be interested in talking to couples who have been struggling with infertility. If you're in that situation and would be willing to talk about it for a story, or if you know someone who is, please get in touch.

The company that makes an intensive-care monitoring system used by the four hospitals of Greensboro's Moses Cone Health System is reporting that patients in hospitals using that system are less likely to die than intensive-care patients elsewhere. (We wrote about Cone's use of the system back in August.)

The company compiled death rates at 156 hospitals that use its eICU system and compared those figures to the national average. During a two-year study period, It found that of 185,464 patients in intensive care at those hospitals, adjusting for the severity of the patients' conditions, 9.6 percent of patients died, compared with the national average of 13.5 percent. Figures for individual hospitals weren't available.

Keep in mind that this study was commissioned by the system's manufacturer and, so far as I can tell, hasn't been peer-reviewed. Still, if those numbers hold up, it's a good sign.

Massive judgments in medical-malpractice cases are soaring, leading to a shortage of physicians and creating a need for "tort reform" in which damages are capped. Right?

Not so much, says Maggie Mahar, referring to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Among its findings, Mahar says:

• Only about 2 percent of injured patients sue, even though such injuries may be resulting in up to 98,000 deaths annually.
• A very small fraction of doctors accounts for a great deal of malpractice medical payouts.

Mahar also refers to some other sources to suggest that if there's a crisis in medical-malpractice lawsuits, it's not what we think it is. She suggests that the medical malpractice "crisis" is being played up so it can be used as a sort of stalking horse for people who want to eliminate all personal-injury lawsuits.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has unveiled Hospital Compare, a Web site that lets people see how hospitals compare with one another, or with state and national numbers, in terms of treating certain conditions. I'm busy on some stories and don't have any time at the moment to play with it, but if you want to take a look and post your reactions in the comments, please feel free.

You've probably heard about cases of criminal suspects who have died after being tasered. Well, courtesy of WSJ.com's Health Blog, comes the story of a criminal suspect whose irregular heartbeat might -- might -- have been restored to normal when he was tasered. (Both medical professionals and the folks who make Tasers caution that there could have been other reasons his heartbeat returned to normal.)

University of Cincinnati researchers have found what they believe is the first direct association between lead exposure in children and criminal activity in young adults.

Exposure to lead, primarily from peeling lead-based paint in older homes, already has been linked to brain damage and learning disabilities. This study followed children born between 1979 and 1984 who had elevated levels of lead in their systems and found that the higher the level of lead, the more likely the person was to be arrested in young adulthood.

Results are published in the peer-reviewed PLoS [Public Library of Science] Journal.

Maggie Mahar at the Health Beat blog has posted the first part of a two-part review of the book "Health Care, Guaranteed" by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. (Here's a Borders link; BN.com and Amazon.com don't appear to have it up yet at the moment.)

I haven't read the book, so I offer Mahar's post to you for whatever you might find it to be worth.

UPDATE: Second part of the review is now up here.

Back in February, I wrote about how Moses Cone Hospital's physical rehabilitation unit was using a Wii video game system to help patients recover from the effects of such things as stroke and wreck injuries.

Now, I learn via news release that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which bills itself as the nation's largest philanthropy devoted to improving health and health care for Americans, is awarding more than $2 million in grants to a dozen research programs that are examining links between physically-active video games and health.

One of the programs is at the School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill. Here's what the release said about it:

Presence: Predicting Sensory and Control Effects of Console Video Games in Young Adults will investigate motivations to expend energy during video game play for people aged 18 to 35. The study will compare physiological measures of energy expenditure while people play traditional video games (those that involve pushing buttons on a standard game controller or on a Wii motion-sensing controller) versus active video games (those that require physical movement, using inputs such as a dance pad, balance board or guitar). It also will explore players’ sense of being present in the game and their intrinsic motivation to play, two factors that are known to increase the amount of time people will spend playing a game. This is the first time that research will identify impacts of these factors on players’ energy expenditure; study results may lead to recommendations for making traditional games more active and active games more compelling.

Similar to what the Cone folks are doing, the University of South Carolina Research Foundation will be looking at Wii and EyeToy as tools for helping people who have suffered strokes. Ten other programs nationwide also are getting funds.

And they say video games are a disaster for national fitness ....

UPDATE: More on the Wii and exercise here at Slate, with a hat tip to co-worker Gerald Witt.