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Blogs Comment On Birth Control Affordability, Abortion Waiting Periods, Patient Rights, Other Topics
The following summarizes women"s health-related blog entries.~ "One in Ten Women Worries About Her Ability To Keep Paying for Contraception," Cristina Page, Birth Control Watch: A Gallup poll released at a conference of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists showed the "alarming news" that women "say that using birth control is extremely important to them but, increasingly, they can"t afford it." The poll reveals that 6% of women using hormonal birth control said they stopped using it because they could not afford it, and 10% said they are worried that they might become unable to afford contraception. On average, women reported that reliable contraception is a "9" on a scale of importance, with the maximum being 10. In addition, those who said they have been greatly affected by the recession were more than twice as likely as others to report deciding to limit the size of their families -- 29% compared with 13%. Page writes, "While family planning in tough economic times is no doubt a reasonable path," the survey shows another "alarming finding: women are sacrificing their health when their pocketbooks are pinched." She writes that the "Obama administration could not have had better timing" in releasing its report on women and health care, which details, among other things, how women in their reproductive years pay higher insurance premiums than men. Page says the White House report and the Gallup poll show that the "cost disparity has a cascading effect" on women and that the "necessities they are forced to give up include contraception." According to Page, "Lucky for us, the Obama administration is approaching the health care crisis with the understanding that women and men might not have equal access to the care they need" and seeks to "view women"s health and rights as critical pieces of our nation"s recovery plan." She concludes, "Beginning to feel better already" (Page, Birth Control Watch, 5/14).~ ""Timeouts" For Grown Women," Lynn Harris, Salon"s Broadsheet: Currently, 24 states have laws requiring women to receive counseling and wait -- usually for 24 hours -- before undergoing an abortion, which basically "amounts to giving grown women a timeout," Harris writes. She cites a recent Guttmacher Institute analysis, which finds that abortion counseling and waiting periods have "next to no effect at all," except to "likely increase both the personal and the financial costs of obtaining an abortion, thereby preventing some women from accessing abortion services," according to the Guttmacher report. Harris continues that earlier research "unsurprisingly" confirms that women "have usually decided to go through with the procedure before they call to make their appointment." Therefore, "mandated, scripted in-person "counseling" is, at best, an exercise mainly in shame and burdensome logistics," Harris writes. She notes that these "restrictions are sold to lawmakers and voters wrapped in the sheep"s clothing of "informed consent."" However, such laws "are intended primarily to block abortion access," according to Lawrence Finer, co-author of the Guttmacher report. Harris concludes that "the most epic fail[ure] here of all" is "the amount of time and res and energy spent to establish, administer -- and circumvent -- these spurious, fatuous laws," which could "otherwise be spent, call me crazy, taking care of living, breathing women and children" (Harris, Salon"s Broadsheet, 5/13).~ "Patients" Rights Suddenly "Sacred" to Scared GOP," Lois Uttley, RH Reality Check: GOP strategist Frank Luntz has become the "newest defender of reproductive rights" by advising congressional Republicans "on how to defeat health reform this year by scaring voters about a "Washington takeover of health care,"" Uttley writes. Luntz, in a leaked GOP strategy memo on challenging the Democrats public health insurance plan option, is trying to "reinvent a group of politicians who have spent the last eight years standing for maximum government interference in Ameri
new payday loan lenders
Nicotine-Induced Sudden Infant Death Syndrome May Be Prevented By Simple Drug Treatment
A new study has identified a specific class of pharmaceutical drugs that could be effective in treating babies vulnerable to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), because their mothers smoked during pregnancy.
News of the day
Medicare Analysis Finds Too Many Needless Deaths At Hospitals
A new Medicare analysis by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found a "double failure" at U.S. hospitals. Its release comes as the White House and Congress seek ways to reward quality over quantity of care in health care reform. USA Today reports that "Too many people die needlessly at U.S. hospitals, according to a sweeping new Medicare analysis showing wide variation in death rates between the best hospitals and the worst. The analysis examined death rates for heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia at more than 4,600 hospitals across the USA. At 5.9% of hospitals, patients with pneumonia died at rates significantly higher than the national average. With heart failure, 3.4% of hospitals had death rates higher than the average, and 1.2% of hospitals were higher when it came to heart attack. Researchers also found that the majority of U.S. hospitals operate the equivalent of revolving doors for their patients. One of every four heart failure patients and slightly less than one in five heart attack and pneumonia patients land back in the hospital within 30 days, data show."
Diagnostics

No Overall Difference In Sustained Viral Response In Most Widely Used Treatments For Hepatitis C

Findings from the largest study to date comparing the efficacy of competing treatments for chronic hepatitis C infection (HCV) show that the regimens are similar when it comes to safety and their ability to provoke long-term viral eradication, according to researchers at Duke University Medical Center. Still, subgroup analysis reveals provocative data suggesting some approaches might be better than others for women and minorities. The study findings may be helpful for the estimated 170 million people world-wide who have been diagnosed with hepatitis C as well as the physicians who treat them. Hepatitis C is a major health problem that can lead to liver disease and sometimes death. Recently, there has been considerable controversy over which treatment options are the most effective - and the makers of the various medications have a lot at stake. Analysts estimate the U.S. prescription market for hepatitis C to be approximately $3 billion annually. Treatments for hepatitis C are notoriously difficult, and sometimes the side effects are so debilitating that patients decide to stop therapy rather than endure the consequences. In addition, treatments are curative in less than half the people who receive them. Current guidelines recommend a combination of peginterferon with the antiviral ribavirin for 48 weeks, "but no one has really compared the therapies prospectively and adequately until now," says John McHutchison, M.D., Associate Director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute and the lead author of the study appearing online in the New England Journal of Medicine. Investigators at 118 sites randomly assigned 3070 patients with HCV genotype 1 to one of three treatment regimens. They compared a standard dose of peginterferon alfa-2b (Pegintron) with a low dose of peginterferon alfa-2b (Pegintron) combined with ribavarin, and a standard dose of peginterferon alfa-2a (Pegasys) also with ribavarin. Peginterferon alfa-2b is marketed by Schering-Plough as Pegintron. Peginterferon alfa-2a, is marketed as Pegasys by Roche. They found that no treatment proved superior in achieving a sustained viral response. Response rates were 39.8 percent, 38.0 percent and 40.9 percent, for the Pegintron standard dose, Pegintron low dose with ribavarin and Pegasys with ribavarin regimens, respectively. The study compared regimens, not the competing types of peginterferon directly. There was significant variation among relapse rates, with 23.5 percent, 20 percent and 31.5 percent of the patients relapsing in the Pegintron standard dose, Pegintron low dose with ribavarin and Pegasys with ribavarin regimen respectively. "Patients receiving the peginterferon alfa-2a (Pegasys) treatment were significantly more likely to relapse, but at this point, we do not know why," says McHutchison. Researchers also noted that similar numbers of participants in each arm of the trial suffered similar incidences of serious side effects (percentages ranged from 9.3 percent in the low dose Pegintron group to 11.7 percent in the Pegasys group) and that patients in the low dose Pegintron group were significantly less likely to drop out of treatment because of any side effects. McHutchison says they were surprised to find no significant difference in response between the standard and low dose arms of the Pegintron arms of the study. He says a dose reduction of Pegintron that may be required to manage side effects will not negatively influence response and that the finding does not automatically translate into a recommendation of the initial lower dose approach for everyone. "When we evaluated subgroup analyses, we found other interesting findings. For example, it appears that women do significantly better if they receive the standard dose, rather than the low dose of peginterferon alfa-2b (Pegintron). African Americans also tended to do better with the standard dose peginterferon alfa-2b (Pegintron) therapy, although the relationship was not statistically significant." McHutchison says one of the more interesting findings from the study is that patients" response as early as four weeks after initiating therapy appeared to be a robust predictor of overall success. "We found that a steep decline and eradication of viral levels at one month after starting treatment was a powerful predictor of sustained viral suppression six months after treatment ended." McHutchison also says that only about 5 percent of patients who had a weak response by the end of the first month managed to achieve a sustained viral response. McHutchison says the study has several limitations. First, because of the way the medications are formulated, patients and doctors were aware of the type of peginterferon they were getting, so the study was not fully blinded. Also, despite overall response rates being equivalent in half the study population who received equivalent doses of ribavirin combined with peginterferon, the ribavirin dosing schedules differed between the regimens. Therefore, the study only compares regimens, and not the competing types of peginterferon. In addition, the findings should not be generalized to patients who have other HCV genotypes; the study was confined to only those with HCV genotype 1, the most common genotype in the U.S. and Europe. The IDEAL study was funded by Schering-Plough, which makes peginterferon alfa-2b, marketed as Pegintron. Peginterferon alfa-2a, also known as Pegasys, is made by Roche. Drs. McHutchison and co-principal investigator Mark Sulkowski, of Johns Hopkins, report receiving research grant support as well as speaking and advisory fees from Roche and Schering-Plough, as do many of the other study co-authors. Coauthors include Eric Lawitz, Mitchell Shiffman, Andrew Muir, Greg Galler, Jonathan McCone, Lisa Nyberg, William Lee, Reem Ghalib, Eugene Schiff, Joseph Galati, Bruce Bacon, Mitchell Davis, Pabak Mukhopadhyay, Kenneth Koury, Stephanie Noviello, Lisa Pedicone, Clifford Brass and Janice Albrecht. Michelle Gailiun Duke University Medical Center


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