By Roy Rivenburg and Christian Berthelsen, LA Times Staff Writers

A well-regarded stroke treatment program at UCI Medical Center is losing two key doctors, officials confirmed Thursday.

Varoujan Kostanian, a specialist in interventional neuroradiology, said he would enter private practice in Las Vegas sometime after July. Also departing is Wengui Yu, a neurologist and co-director of the neurological intensive care unit, according to UCI officials. His resignation is effective in August.

Kostanian, who obtained a Nevada medical license a month ago, hinted at unrest within UCI’s stroke treatment program. “A lot of things have happened around here. I don’t want to get into the politics of it, but I just figure I’m better off doing my own thing,” he said. He declined to elaborate.

UCI spokeswoman Susan Mancia declined to respond to his comments. (more…)

By Judith Graham and Miriah Meyer
Chicago Tribune staff reporters

Two days before the launch of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s signature health-care plan, All Kids, medical groups are voicing serious concerns about the program’s viability and physicians’ interest in participating.

“We are extremely, extremely worried about whether the program will run smoothly enough to allow access to care,” said Dr. Peter Eupierre, president of the Illinois State Medical Society, a physicians group.

At issue is growing dissatisfaction in the medical community with late payments by Illinois’ Medicaid program, a problem that could discourage physicians from taking on new patients under All Kids. Also, dissatisfied doctors may decline to take on new care-management responsibilities for Medicaid patients, a move planned to make All Kids affordable.

The new program begins Saturday, only nine months after Blagojevich trumpeted plans to make Illinois the first state in the nation to offer medical coverage to every child.

The governor claimed early success Thursday with the announcement that 43,000 previously uninsured children had enrolled in All Kids–close to the 50,000 enrollment target the state had set for the first year.

“Every kid should be covered,” Blagojevich said Thursday in Chicago, announcing a new partnership with the White Sox to promote the program. “Nothing is more important than making sure our kids are healthy.”

Several families stood by the governor’s side at the news conference. Among them were Michael and Tracie Evans from the Far South Side, who don’t have health insurance for their four children because it’s too expensive. As a result, the children haven’t had regular medical care for years.

Under All Kids, the family will pay $140 a month to cover the children. That amount is a fraction of the cost of buying coverage through Michael Evans’ employer.

“They’ve given me a list of what they want–they want their teeth looked at, they want to get their eyes examined,” Tracie Evans said with a laugh. “And I’m happy to say, yes, now I can take you.”

But many experts question whether Illinois is ready to make good on its promise of health care for all children while simultaneously implementing two major new programs affecting most of the state’s nearly 2 million Medicaid recipients.

Along with All Kids, the state will roll out a new disease management program Saturday for 160,000 Medicaid members with costly chronic conditions such as diabetes and asthma. Beginning next year, it will make a form of managed medical care known as primary-care case management mandatory for 1.2 million members.

“We’re pretty well-prepared. We know how to do expansions,” said Anne Marie Murphy, head of the Illinois Medicaid program, noting that Blagojevich has added 450,000 people to government-sponsored health plans in Illinois since he took office. (more…)

http://go.reuters.co.uk
Resistance to the effects of the blood-sugar regulating hormone insulin could boost a woman’s risk of endometrial cancer, a new study suggests.

Dr. Karen H. Lu of The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and her colleagues found that women with endometrial cancer were much more likely to have low levels of a protein secreted by fat cells known as adiponectin, which correlates with increased insulin resistance.

Obesity is a risk factor for endometriosis, Lu and her team note in the June 1 issue of Cancer. Researchers believe this is because heavier women have more circulating estrogen in their bodies, due to estrogen production by fat cells.

Lu and her colleagues set out to determine if another obesity-related factor, insulin resistance, might also be involved in endometrial cancer. They compared adiponectin levels in 117 women with endometrial cancer and 238 women with no history of cancer. They used adiponectin rather than directly measuring insulin resistance because the protein is not affected by fasting or food consumption. Study participants were divided into three groups based on their adiponectin levels: low, intermediate and high. (more…)

cbs4boston.com
http://www.topix.net

Separate smoking sections do not help much: Only smoke-free buildings and public places truly protect nonsmokers from the hazards of breathing in other people’s tobacco smoke, says a long-awaited surgeon general’s report.

Some 126 million nonsmokers are exposed to secondhand smoke, what U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona repeatedly calls “involuntary smoking” that puts people at increased risk of death from lung cancer, heart disease and other illnesses.

Moreover, there is no risk-free level of exposure to someone else’s drifting smoke, declares the report issued Tuesday, a conclusion sure to fuel already growing efforts at public smoking bans nationwide. Fourteen states have passed what are considered comprehensive smoke-free workplace laws, those that include restaurants and bars.

But the surgeon general is especially concerned about young children who cannot escape their parents’ addiction in search of cleaner air: Just over one in five children is exposed to secondhand smoke at home, where workplace bans do not reach. Those children are at increased risk of SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome; lung infections such as pneumonia; ear infections; and more severe asthma.

“Exposure to secondhand smoke remains an alarming public health hazard,” Carmona said. “Nonsmokers need protection through the restriction of smoking in public places and workplaces,” and by smokers voluntarily not puffing around children. (more…)

By ERIC BERGER
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

When a human cell becomes starved for the nutrients it needs to survive, it doesn’t just die.

Instead, the cell begins doing something its human host would find unthinkable: it begins eating itself in order to survive. By cannibalizing its lesser-used components to survive, a process called autophagy, a cell can survive until it finds a new source of energy.

Cancer researchers have recently become interested in autophagy as scientists have increased their understanding of how the process works on a molecular level. The goal of cancer research is to find the most efficient and effective way to kill cancer cells, and autophagy may represent a new way to get cancer cells to kill themselves.

But the process has proved both perplexing and promising for cancer researchers.

In some experiments, scientists have succeeded in inducing cancer cells to undergo continual autophagy and, eventually, consume themselves. In other experiments, the researchers have seen cancer cells use autophagy to survive the deprivation of nutrients.

“There are still more questions than answers,” said Dr. Seiji Kondo, associate professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who, until recently was one of a handful of academics studying the link between autophagy and cancer. (more…)