What vaccines have you had? And what vaccines do you need?
August is National Immunization Awareness Month so take the time of year to look into such questions.
According the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, ?óÔé¼?ôVaccines offer safe and effective protection from infectious diseases. By staying up-to-date on the recommended vaccines, individuals can protect themselves, their families and friends and their communities from serious, life-threatening infections.”
The CDC website offers in-depth resources on immunizations, including an immunization scheduler for bothchildren and adults.
Congratulations to Drs. Janet Leigh and Michael O’Brian who were recently awarded two very prestigious national awards.
Janet Leigh, BDS, DMD, Chair of the Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Dentistry, is one of ten Health Policy Fellows selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation?é?« (RWJF) for 2009-10. She is the first dentist to be selected since 1999. The award comes with a grant in the amount of $165,000 for the residential stay, travel, research, conferences, and other leadership development activities.
Michael E. O?óÔé¼ÔäóBrien DDS, JD, Clinical Associate Professor and Director of Predoctoral Studies in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Dentistry, has been selected as the recipient of the 2009 Daniel M. Laskin Award by the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. The award recognizes the “Outstanding Predoctoral Educator in OMS” (Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery).
When on-campus many users are experiencing problems accessing videos in both Current Protocols and Springer Protocols. This seems to be an issue with Internet Explorer only. If possible try accessing the same sites in Firefox (neither Chrome or Safari worked for me). We are working with campus IT to have this matter resolved quickly.
CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) published the 2009 guidelines for the use of influenza vaccine for the prevention and control of seasonal influenza on July 30th, 2009. These guidelines are for seasonal flu, for which there are vaccines, and not swine flu, though clinical trials are underway for the H1N1 virus.
“Flu season” generally runs October – May. During these months, the CDC collects and publishes weekly influenza surveillance reports, like the one shown above. In fact, you can even get flu updates sent to your phone.
Who needs the seasonal flu vaccine? Health care workers, for one, as well as young children, the aged, pregnant women and people with chronic medical conditions. LSUHSC – NO usually offers flu shots for a small fee during the month of October.
More flu information from the CDC.
The 2010 edition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?óÔé¼Ôäós Yellow Book includes new or expanded sections on medical tourism, traveling safely with chronic diseases and conditions, and expert perspectives on popular travel itineraries worldwide. The updated book, which is a definitive guide for healthy international travel, is now available online.
Our EMBASE.com problem was fixed over the weekend. Please let us know if you encounter any problems: reference@lsuhsc.edu.
~Edit~ Users are reporting that this new version is very glitchy. We are working to resolve the issue. (3:15 pm/Aug. 3, 2009)
EMBASE.com is being transitioned to it’s new version. Unfortunately during that transition (in the Netherlands), our subscription information seems to have been lost. Since Amersterdam has already started their weekend, access will probably not be reinstated until Monday.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today issued a final regulation classifying dental amalgam and its component parts ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ elemental mercury and a powder alloy?óÔé¼ÔÇØused in dental fillings. While elemental mercury has been associated with adverse health effects at high exposures, the levels released by dental amalgam fillings are not high enough to cause harm in patients.
Read the Press Release here.
The FDA’s website on dental amalgam has more information on the subject.
If you would like to read more about the subject, here are some citations from PubMed.
NOLAReady is a service provided by the City of New Orleans Office Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness. “NOLAReady is an alert system that allows City Officials to contact you during an emergency by sending text messages to your:
* E-mail account (work, home, school, etc.)
* Cell phone, pager
* Smart phone or hand held device”
Alerts can be viewed at their webpage and you can select alerts by zipcode.
Caveats: They seem to ask for a lot of personal data and under universities neither LSUHSC or Tulane Med are listed which is odd.
Love to dye your tongue fun colors with New Orleans snowballs in the Summer? Look closer at the FD&C blue dye no.1 in your bubble gum flavored treat.
Researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center have discovered that the food additive may protect nerves in the event of spinal cord injury. The report was published in the early edition section of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences yesterday.
The only side effect was that the rats turned blue.
Link to the pdf of the article is available to LSUHSC faculty staff & students. It can be accessed off-campus with a valid LSUHSC library barcode & PIN. You can find more information at our remote access webpage.
July is full of space anniversaries, from the moon landing (July 15th) to the establishment of Cape Canaveral (July 24th), but what did this mean for medicine?
To understand the history of a medical subject, I sometimes check out its history in MeSH. The current subject is Aerospace Medicine and has been since 1980, but it was Aviation Medicine from 1966-74 and Space Flight from 1975-79. If a comprehensive historical search is required, it is always good to check out the Online & History Notes in MeSH.
Check out this article by SE Parazynski, a former astronaut and a physician, entitled “From model rockets to spacewalks: an astronaut physician’s journey and the science of the United States’ space program.” This article is freely available to the general public through PubMed Central.
LSUHSC New Orleans has an official twitter feed and its username is LSUHSCHealth. If you don’t have a twitter account, you can always follow its updates using an RSS reader.
Fragile X syndrome is the most common known cause of intellectual disability that can be inherited. CDC and its partners have been working on several public health activities to find out more about fragile X syndrome.
Fragile X is a group of genetic disorders that can affect individuals and their families in many ways because they are all caused by changes in the same gene, the Fragile X Mental Retardation 1 (FMR1) gene. The group of fragile X conditions includes:
Fragile X syndrome
Fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS) can cause tremors and problems with walking, balance, and memory. FXTAS occurs in some older men who have changes in the FMR1 gene.
Fragile X-associated primary ovarian insufficiency (FXPOI) can lead to infertility and early menopause. This condition affects some females who have changes in the FMR-1 gene.
Learn more about Fragile X syndrome from the CDC.
July 21st is National Junk Food Day, but try not to go wild. According to the CDC, Louisiana went from having under 15% obesity rate in 1990 to a rate of 25-29% in 2008. If you’re going to celebrate today, just try to be smart and eat healthy the rest of the week.
This week’s Chancellor’s Notes (pdf) features a story on the opening of the Library Commons.
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