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    <recommendedItem id="20100101_19_410"
                     title="Most Adults Are Not Getting Necessary Vaccinations"
                     score="0.01"
                     href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/Pneumonia/tb/18317?impressionId=1265795762784"
                     
      &lt;p&gt;Public health experts say they&apos;re concerned about the low number of U.S. adults who receive recommended vaccinations  --  and in particular about seniors who aren&apos;t immunized against pneumonia.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As of 2008, one-third of people 65 and older had not received the pneumococcal vaccine, according to a report issued by the Trust for America&apos;s Health (TFAH), the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In 36 states, 30% or more of their older residents had not received the vaccine.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The worst coverage was in the District of Columbia, where 45.6% of seniors had not been vaccinated. Even in the best performing state, Oregon, more than a quarter (26.8%) of older people had not received the one-time shot.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Among all adults, the investigators also found extremely low rates of immunization against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (2.1%), shingles (&amp;lt;2%), human papillomavirus (10%), and seasonal influenza (36.1%).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;The vaccination efforts around the 2009 H1N1 outbreak actually showed how well our public health system can react to vaccinate millions of people in a very short amount of time,&quot; L.J. Tan, PhD, director of medicine and public health for the American Medical Association, told reporters in a conference call.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;But I think our response also clearly demonstrated that we do have a lack of a strategy and a system for vaccinating adults.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Added Jeffrey Levi, PhD, executive director of TFAH, &quot;We need a national strategy to make vaccines a regular part of medical care and to educate Americans about the effectiveness and safety of vaccines.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Doing so could avoid 40,000 to 50,000 deaths from vaccine-preventable illnesses and save about $10 billion in healthcare costs each year, he said.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But, according to William Schaffner, MD, chair of IDSA&apos;s immunization working group and a co-author of the report, there are many obstacles to adult vaccination efforts.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;First, unlike children in school, adults lack widespread institutional access to immunizations nor is there a way to require most adults to undergo vaccination.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In addition, there are limited interactions with the healthcare system because, also unlike in children, care in adults generally revolves around acute care and not well care visits.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Insurance coverage also plays a major role in low vaccination rates among adults, and not just in the uninsured or underinsured.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Most insurance plans do not cover routine vaccination, Schaffner said, a situation that would change under pending healthcare reform legislation in Congress. That would require insurers to pay for all vaccinations recommended by the CDC&apos;s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Schaffner also cited what he called misunderstandings and misinformation regarding the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, and the limited support for research, development, and production of vaccines as reasons for low immunization rates among adults.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;It&apos;s a shame that we aren&apos;t focusing enough resources on the science to prevent disease and we don&apos;t have a system where we can better protect people by getting them all of the vaccines that are currently available,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Tan outlined several recommendations the report makes to increase adult vaccination rates, starting with the creation of a program to provide vaccine coverage to uninsured individuals.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Also, he said, the CDC and local and state health departments should be given more funding to conduct public education campaigns to increase awareness about the importance of vaccination.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For their part, physicians should adopt practices to enable them to offer their adult patients vaccines at appropriate visits, like general physicals and cancer screenings, and to make a review of vaccination history a part of standard care.&lt;/p&gt;

    </recommendedItem>
    <recommendedItem id="20100101_19_343"
                     title="U.S. Marshals Seize Unapproved Ozone Generators"
                     score="0.007"
                     href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/EnvironmentalHealth/tb/18228?impressionId=1265795762784"
                     
      &lt;p&gt;WASHINGTON  --  U.S. Marshals have seized 77 unapproved ozone generators, valued at almost $76,000 from a California device manufacturer, the FDA announced.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The devices were advertised as treatments for various conditions, including cancer, AIDS, hepatitis, herpes, and other diseases, but lacked approval or efficacy data to support the claims made on their behalf, an FDA release said.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The raid came after the company, Applied Ozone Systems (AOS) of Auburn, Calif., failed to respond to a voluntary recall request last December, the agency said.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The FDA raised concerns that patients using AOS-IM and AOS-IMD devices will consider it an appropriate treatment for an affliction and delay or stop FDA-approved and proven medical treatments. Patients using the devices may risk infection from contamination of the applicator or catheter, the release said.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The FDA recommended that healthcare professionals and consumers cease use of the devices.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The agency said it obtained an inspection warrant for the company&apos;s manufacturing facilities after the owner refused to admit FDA inspectors. It said the inspection revealed several breaches of the FDA&apos;s good manufacturing practice requirements for medical devices, which had never been approved in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Ozone is an unstable allotrope of oxygen with three atoms, instead of the normal two. Ozone generators produce ozone from oxygen and have consumer and industrial applications, but ozone itself is harmful to the respiratory system, even at relatively low concentrations.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Instructions with the Applied Ozone Systems devices suggest blowing ozoned air into the rectal and vaginal areas.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Friday&apos;s seizure was part of a joint effort of the FDA and the California Department of Public Health to remove or prevent unapproved or unsafe medical devices from entering the market.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A statement on the company&apos;s Web site said the two ozone generator models, which sold for $750 and $1,200 respectively, were no longer available by order of the FDA and California authorities.&lt;/p&gt;

    </recommendedItem>
    <recommendedItem id="20100101_19_250"
                     title="Cancer Research &quot;Giant&quot; Lawrence Garfinkel Dies at 88"
                     score="-0.002"
                     href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pulmonology/Smoking/tb/18108?impressionId=1265795762784"
                     
      &lt;p&gt;Epidemiologist Lawrence Garfinkel, MA, a legendary researcher for the American Cancer Society whose work helped establish a link between cancer and smoking and other activities, died of cardiovascular disease Thursday in Seattle, Washington at 88.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;The American Cancer Society today mourns the loss of one of its most important historical figures,&quot; said John R. Seffrin, PhD, the society&apos;s chief executive officer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;Larry Garfinkel joined the American Cancer Society as a young scientist in 1947, and for more than four decades played an instrumental role in expanding knowledge of and reducing death from smoking.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Garfinkel&apos;s 1982 Cancer Prevention Study-II (CPS-II) is the largest contemporary study of tobacco and mortality, with 1.2 million participants and 77,000 data-compiling volunteers across 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;CPS-II uncovered the effects of lifestyle factors, such as obesity, alcohol consumption, medications, genetic elements, that affect cancer and other chronic diseases, the analysis of which still reveals important clues about cancer today.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The study also found lung cancer mortality rates in women increased five-fold from data collected in the original Cancer Prevention Study, while cancer rates among non-smoking women remained the same. This information provided strong evidence that lung cancer was almost exclusively a disease found in smokers.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Garfinkel was born on January 11, 1922 in Manhattan&apos;s Lower East Side and was raised in the South Bronx.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He served in the army during World War II, where he was seriously injured in northern France in August, 1944.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, Garfinkel graduated from the City College of New York and received a Masters Degree from Columbia University. He also received several honorary doctorates.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Garfinkel began work for the ACS in 1947.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He assisted E. Cuyler Hammond, MD, and Daniel Horn, MD, in the first ACS prospective mortality study of 187,783 males in the late 1940&apos;s by coordinating much of the field work, including training thousands of ACS volunteers in data collection techniques.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Garfinkel acted as the co-principal investigator of the larger Cancer Prevention Study I (CPS-I) in 1959. The study enrolled 1 million participants across 25 states and required over 68,000 volunteers to collect data.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In the 1960s, he contributed to more than two dozen major papers on the relation between smoking and health. He was co-author of one of the first reports combining epidemiology with pathology and provided some of the first direct evidence of lung damage related to smoking.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Garfinkel also contributed to issuance of the landmark 1964 Surgeon General&apos;s report on smoking and health.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He was appointed director of ACS research in 1979 after Hammond&apos;s retirement.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Garfinkel retired from the ACS in 1989. Over the course of his career, he had contributed to more than 100 journal articles.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Richard D. Klausner, MD, then-director of the National Cancer Institute, said at the time: &quot;Few individuals have contributed as much to our present-day knowledge about the disease consequences of smoking.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;His remarkable achievement is an important reminder what a tremendous impact an individual can make, and inspires all of us to continue the fight against cancer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Garfinkel continued to volunteer with the ACS after his retirement and taught biostatistics at the New York University Dental School.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He is survived by his brothers, Harold and Melvin; his sons, Martin and Herb; a daughter-in-law, Margaret Cary, and two grandchildren.&lt;/p&gt;

    </recommendedItem>
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                     title="Modifier Gene Linked to Severity of Cystic Fibrosis"
                     score="-0.005"
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