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Health Insurance Exchanges Gain Attention
Kaiser Health News reports on health insurance exchanges, a concept now being considered in the context of Congress"s health overhaul proposals. "The seemingly simple idea behind exchanges - one-stop shopping for insurance - masks the cornerstone role they may play in a national overhaul of the health system. President Obama supports the idea, and exchanges are included in most of the health care proposals now before Congress. Done right, proponents say, exchanges could transform how insurance is sold, giving individuals and small businesses improved purchasing power, increasing price competition among insurers and creating standardized benefits. Done poorly, analysts and critics say, exchanges could drive up insurance costs and encourage employers to drop coverage, unraveling the system that insures most working Americans. While it"s still unclear what Congress will do, Senate Democrats have looked closely at Massachusetts. Here"s how it works there: The state established its exchange, called the Health Connector, mainly for the benefit of individuals who aren"t insured by employers. They include the self-employed and the unemployed, two categories of people who traditionally have the most difficulty obtaining policies. Although not required to buy through the exchange, doing so gives them group-purchasing power. Lower-income people are eligible for state subsidies."
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Ohio Department Of Health Confirms First H1N1 Influenza Death
The Ohio Department of Health (ODH) announced that a Butler County male in his 40s, who was infected with H1N1 influenza, died June 29. This is the first Ohio death linked to the pandemic strain of influenza. The patient had underlying health problems that may have contributed to his death.
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Critical Marker Of Response To Gemcitabine In Pancreatic Cancer Identified By Jefferson Researchers
A protein related to aggressive cancers can actually improve the efficacy of gemcitabine at treating pancreatic cancer, according to a Priority Report in Cancer Research, published by researchers at Thomas Jefferson University.
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In Parkinson's Fly Model, Dementia Induced And Blocked

Parkinson"s disease is well-known for impairing movement and causing tremors, but many patients also develop other serious problems, including sleep disturbances and significant losses in cognitive function known as dementia. Now researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have modeled Parkinson"s-associated dementia for the first time. Scientists showed that a single night of sleep loss in genetically altered fruit flies caused long-lasting disruptions in the flies" cognitive abilities comparable to aspects of Parkinson"s-associated dementia. They then blocked this effect by feeding the flies large doses of the spice curcumin. "Clinical trials of curcumin to reduce risk of Parkinson"s disease are a future possibility, but for now we are using the flies to learn how curcumin works," says author James Galvin, M.D., a Washington University associate professor of neurology who treats patients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. "This should help us find other compounds that can mimic curcumin"s protective effects but are more specific." Galvin and senior author Paul Shaw, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology, published their results in the journal Sleep on Aug. 1. Galvin is an expert in cognitive impairments in human Parkinson"s disease; Shaw studies sleep and the brain in fruit flies. The researchers decided collaborate based in part on evidence that increased sleep loss in Parkinson"s patients can precede or coincide with increased severity in other Parkinsonian symptoms. More than 74 percent of Parkinson"s patients have trouble sleeping, and up to 80 percent of patients 65 and older who have Parkinson"s disease for seven years will develop dementia, according to Galvin. Shaw"s lab has linked sleep loss to changes in the dopaminergic system of the brain, the part of the brain that produces the neurotransmitter dopamine and is at the center of the damage caused by Parkinson"s. "In healthy flies, sleep deprivation decreases dopamine receptor production and causes temporary learning impairments that are fully restored after a two-hour nap," Shaw says. Shaw and Galvin studied fruit flies genetically modified to make a human protein called alpha-synuclein in their brains. Scientists don"t yet know what alpha-synuclein does, nor have they found a fly counterpart for it. But they have shown that it aggregates in the brains of Parkinson"s disease patients and believe the processes that cause the aggregations are harming dopamine-producing cells. Prior studies of fruit flies with human alpha-synuclein in their brains showed that the flies, like human Parkinson"s patients, also lose dopamine-producing neurons, have movement-related problems and develop alpha-synuclein aggregations. But scientists had yet to evaluate the flies for signs of dementia. Lead author Laurent Seugnet, Ph.D., research associate at L"Ecole Supç©rieure de Physique Chimie Industrielles in France, first tested the flies" learning ability using a procedure he helped develop in Shaw"s lab. For the test, Seugnet placed flies in a vial with two branches: one lighted branch containing quinine, a bitter-tasting substance flies prefer to avoid; and a darkened but quinine-free branch. After a few trials, normal flies learn to suppress their natural attraction to the light and fly into the darkened vial instead to avoid the quinine. Flies with alpha-synuclein in their brains could still learn when they were middle-aged, or about 16 to 20 days old. But when Seugnet deprived them of sleep for 12 hours, he found that their ability to remember was more severely impaired than that of young healthy flies that had also been sleep-deprived. "This was still true even 10 days later, so it seemed to be a lasting effect," says Seugnet. Galvin had earlier found that curcumin, a derivative of the spice turmeric, blocks alpha-synuclein aggregation in cell models of Parkinson"s disease. Based on this, Seugnet fed curcumin to a new batch of flies, repeated the tests and found middle-aged flies with alpha-synuclein retained their ability to learn as well as normal young flies. "Thanks to this model our labs have created, Dr. Galvin and I can not only quickly test potential new treatments for these symptoms of Parkinson"s, we can also move up our treatments in terms of the timeline along which the disorder develops," says Shaw. "That may give us a real chance to change the course of the disease." Seugnet L, Galvin JE, Suzuki Y, Gottschalk L, Shaw PJ. Persistent short-term memory defects following sleep deprivation in a Drosophila model of Parkinson disease. Sleep, Aug. 1, 2009 Michael C. Purdy Washington University School of Medicine


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