medical devices
Electrical stimulation may help amputees with balance and phantom pain, early study suggests
Courtesy Nathan Langer/UPMC & Pitt Health Sciences
Like other people after amputation, Lauren Gavron needed oxycodone to dull the pain from her missing lower left leg. But the drug fogged her thinking, keeping her from driving. Then she became one of three participants in a proof-of-concept study, now described in Nature Biomedical Engineering, in which electric jolts to her spine not only made her pain vanish but also helped her walk and keep her balance.
"You really wouldn't believe it," Gavron, 67, said. "As soon as the pain would start, it just all went away." That feeling was temporary and came with the risk of infection, a chance she wasn't willing to take longer-term because she had lost her leg to a sepsis infection. And while stimulating spinal nerves to generate sensation in a missing limb isn't a new idea, the researchers wanted to test whether that could also reduce pain. STAT's Lizzy Lawrence explains.
health inequity
In new medical schools, diversity language did not match diverse student populations
Medical schools that include language about diversity in their mission statements do not have significantly more diverse student populations, according to an analysis of 60 medical schools that opened since 2000. The newer medical schools also contain student populations with similar or even less diversity than older schools, with the analysis showing newer schools had a Black population of 5% compared to 8% in medical schools as a whole.
Of the 60 new allopathic and osteopathic medical schools, 45% referred to diverse patient populations in their mission statements and 23% referred to a diverse student population, found the study, published yesterday in JAMA Network Open.
"These results suggest that substantial reform is needed in the recruitment and admissions process so that mission statements are not just hollow words," the authors wrote, noting that numerous studies show a diverse health care workforce improves care but that diversity will also be more difficult to achieve following the recent Supreme Court ban on the use of affirmative action in school admissions.
The study found there was not a single Native American or Alaska Native medical student in any of the newer schools, whether they included a diversity statement or not, STAT's Usha Lee McFarling tells us. (Because of data limitations from more recent years, the analysis excluded schools opened after 2020, and therefore did not include the Oklahoma State University College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cherokee Nation, which opened in 2021 and has more than 100 Native American students.)
health
Americans' health is trending downward, poll finds
The Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index entered some negative territory this year compared to the pre-Covid era. The percentage of U.S. adults classified as obese (38.4%) and who have diabetes (13.6%) have both gone up, while healthy eating has gone down since 2019. The brightest spot in the report was exercise. It didn't go up, but it didn't go down either, with half of respondents saying they got 30 or more minutes at least three days per week.
The survey relied on more than 5,000 respondents to report their habits, their height and weight, and if they'd been diagnosed with diabetes (type 1 or type 2). Asked if they had eaten healthy food the day before, fewer than half said yes. More people in 2023 said they were being treated for high blood pressure or high cholesterol. "Much of the recent increase in obesity may be associated with modified health behaviors resulting from the pandemic," the report concludes.
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