Gearing Up for a Flu Shutdown
The feds want everybody to start planning for a flu pandemic-now. Last week the government rolled out a strategy for communities if a flu pandemic of any variety, avian or otherwise, hits. "Pandemic influenza is not necessarily imminent, but we believe it's inevitable," says Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And since there probably won't be enough vaccine-the best protection-on hand at the start, she adds, localities should implement other measures. They include asking infected people and their household members to stay home from work, dismissing schools and closing child care programs, canceling public gatherings, and arranging for employees to work from home. "Closing schools makes sense," says John Bartlett, professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies. "Children have always been the vectors of influenza."
Flu conduct. The feds have also created a pandemic severity index, modeled after the hurricane ranking system, which will be posted at www.pandemicflu.gov. Consumers can play a role too, experts say, by practicing basic flu etiquette: covering coughs and sneezes, washing hands frequently, and staying home from work and keeping kids out of school when sick. "We don't have high-tech answers to these problems," says Jonathan Fielding, director of public health for Los Angeles County.
Tainted Air May Harm the Heart; Slothfulness May Sideline You; Unequal Treatment in the ER
Tainted Air May Harm the Heart
Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle report that women who live where levels of air pollution produced by car exhaust and power plants are high have a greater-than-average risk of developing heart problems and of dying from them. Over several years, the team tracked the health of almost 66,000 postmenopausal women living in various metropolitan areas, none with previous heart disease. Every additional 10 micrograms per cubic meter increase in the levels of smoke and dust translated to a 24 percent increase in the risk of a heart attack or other cardiac problem. Joel Kaufman, the epidemiologist and internist who led the study-which appears in the New England Journal of Medicine-theorizes that the pollutive particles may encourage hardening of the arteries. Prior research suggests men are also at risk. - Katherine Hobson
Slothfulness May Sideline You
Men who are troubled by erectile dysfunction may want to get up off the couch and make a lifestyle change: namely, adopt a regular exercise routine. A new survey published in the current issue of the American Journal of Medicine found a strong association between physical inactivity and impotence. Men who admitted to watching more than five hours a day of television or who considered themselves "less active" than other men their age were almost three times as likely to have the problem as their more active peers. About 18 percent of American men over the age of 20 were found to have erectile dysfunction. About half of men with diabetes or cardiovascular disease are affected. - Adam Voiland
Unequal Treatment in the ER
If you're an African American man with chest pain, you're 25 to 30 percent less likely to get standard tests like a chest X-ray to detect a heart attack than if you're a white male, according to a new study of 7,000 patients. Women and people on Medicaid or Medicare also get fewer tests. "This suggests a real bias in the healthcare system," says Gary Green, an ER physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a coauthor of the study in Academic Emergency Medicine. Hospital staffs are not openly bigoted, he says, but may be making unconscious judgments about patients that result in a lower standard of care. If patients don't get these tests, Green adds, they should ask why. - Josh Fischman
This story appears in the February 12, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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