ScienceCache
Vol. 190
Dec. 17, 2004
VISITS BY NURSES IMPROVE LIVES OF NEW MOTHERS, CHILDREN FOR YEARS
Backed by 20 years of work, nurse researchers have developed a program
for home visits by nurses to low-income women who are pregnant with their
first child, dramatically improving the lives of both the mothers and
their children. A nationwide rollout of the program is now in full swing
at 170 sites, backed by urging from the Justice Department and $13 million
in grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. And hundreds of millions
of public dollars, to cover operating costs, have been invested by communities
where the program is being established. The support confirms the program
as an effective, practical way to help people with fewer resources at
a crucial time in their lives. The most recent findings by School of
Nursing researchers and their colleagues, published this week in the
journal Pediatrics, show a host of program benefits for the mothers and
their children. The women assisted by nurses had fewer subsequent pregnancies,
longer intervals between births of their first and second children, longer
relationships with current partners, and fewer months of using welfare
and food stamps. In addition, nurse-visited children demonstrated higher
intellectual functioning, better vocabulary scores and fewer behavior
problems. “Over two decades, we’ve refined the program to
make sure we’re addressing the vital needs of these women and their
families. Our research is showing lasting effects on their lives,” says
Harriet Kitzman, co-investigator on the study and professor of nursing
and pediatrics.
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ROCHESTER CHOSEN TO HELP COORDINATE NATIONAL PARKINSON’S
EFFORT
All roads lead to Rochester – for Parkinson’s patients around
the nation who are taking part in many clinical studies of the disease.
The Medical Center has been chosen as home to a new Parkinson’s
Disease Data and Organizing Center, an administrative entity created
by the National Institutes of Health to help coordinate information from
the growing number of Parkinson’s studies being conducted by doctors
and scientists around the nation. Doctors estimate that there are currently
anywhere from 1,500 to 3,500 patients taking part in more than 25 clinical
studies of Parkinson’s disease annually. The new center will pool
and manage the data from 15 existing Parkinson’s disease centers
funded by NIH and eventually aims to include information from all the
clinical studies of Parkinson’s that the agency funds. In effect,
data about all Parkinson’s patients around the country who are
taking part in studies will pass through Rochester, making the city a
hub for Parkinson’s research. “Working together like this
will strengthen the power of the data to answer important questions and
should lead to a lot of collaborative research,” says neurologist
Roger Kurlan, a Parkinson’s expert who leads the new center. “Pooling
the data will add to the power of our numbers, hopefully allowing us
to answer additional questions about the disease that might otherwise
go unanswered.” The new center is funded by NIH with $5.7 million
for the next five years.
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EXPECTATIONS PLAY STRONG ROLE IN NAUSEA FROM CHEMOTHERAPY
Women with breast cancer who expect severe nausea from chemotherapy are
five times more likely to experience intense nausea than others who don’t
anticipate the side effect, according to a study at the James P. Wilmot
Cancer Center. A person’s expectation, the study shows, is a strong
predictor of nausea. Scientists suggest that oncologists should consider
changing the way they educate patients about possible side effects, emphasizing
the use of nausea-control medications and techniques to reduce the expectations
of nausea. “It’s not simply mind over matter,” says
Joseph Roscoe, a research assistant professor and the leader of the study
funded by the National Cancer Institute. “Some people know their
bodies better than others, and know that they’re susceptible to
nausea from previous experience with motion sickness or pregnancy-related
nausea.” Nausea and vomiting are the chief complaints that people
with cancer have about their chemotherapy treatment. While there has
been significant progress in controlling vomiting, managing the pervasive
nausea is still a challenge. The work was published in the December issue
of CANCER.
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