Study of Hispanic/Latino health presents initial findings

Albert Einstein College of Medicine is 1 of 4 US field sites for landmark study

2014-02-24

(Press-News.org) February 24, 2014 – (BRONX, NY) –One in every six people in the U.S. is Hispanic/Latino and as a group they live longer than non-Hispanic whites (81.4 years vs. 78.8 years). Yet, despite their strong representation and relative longevity, little is understood about this group's health conditions and behaviors.

The Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL), the landmark research study of Hispanic/Latino health funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has released initial findings that show significant variations in disease prevalence and health behaviors among groups with different backgrounds.

Initial Findings The findings reported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the NIH, are the result of the national study that began in 2008. The data is based on interviews conducted with 16,415 study participants at one of four U.S. field centers ─ located in the Bronx, San Diego, Chicago and Miami.

Variation by Background "While many trends are consistent across all four field sites, there are clear differences between participants in each city – and more importantly, between each Hispanic group," said Robert Kaplan, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology & population health and principal investigator for HCHS/SOL at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, which established and operates the Bronx field center.

Among the highlights in The Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL) Data Book: A Report to the Communities:

The percentage of people who report having asthma ranged from 7.4 (Mexican) to 35.8 (Puerto Rican) The percentage of individuals who had pre-diabetes ranged from 32.1 (Dominican) to 37.7 (Mexican) The percent of people eating 5 or more fruits/vegetables a day ranged from 19.2 (Puerto Rican) to 55.0 (Cuban) Average minutes of daily recreational activity ranged from 17.7 (Cuban) to 28.3 (Puerto Rican)

"Teasing out these variations can help clinicians, public health advocates and members of the community focus their energies in the right places," explained Dr. Kaplan, who also holds the Dorothy and William Manealoff Foundation and Molly Rosen Chair in Social Medicine at Einstein. "Ultimately, we hope to uncover the key factors that can lead to improved health for all Hispanics."

The study investigators and NIH are partnering with the National Alliance for Hispanic Health and other national and local organizations to increase the reach of the study. Today, the Alliance released a booklet showing the data reported by all four field centers. The 40-page bilingual report, titled About Our Health: Results from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (SOL), will be available online.

INFORMATION: About HCHS/SOL HCHS/SOL is a multi-center epidemiologic study in Hispanic/Latino populations to determine the role of acculturation in the prevalence and development of disease and to identify risk factors playing a protective or harmful role. The study is sponsored by the NHLBI and six other institutes, centers and offices of the NIH.

For the first phase of HCHS/SOL, study participants underwent an extensive clinical evaluation to identify the incidence of diseases and risk factors, as well as other important characteristics such as lifestyle and health insurance status. While cardiovascular and lung health were key components of the evaluation, HCHS/SOL also performed a dental exam, hearing tests, and a glucose tolerance test. Most of the information presented in the NHLBI data book was collected through interviews. Analysis of clinical measurements performed during the baseline examination is underway.

Since the original exams between 2008 and 2011, study participants have been contacted annually to explore the relationship between their baseline health profiles and changes in health.

Einstein's research was supported by a contract from the NHLBI (N01HC65235).

About Albert Einstein College of Medicine Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University is one of the nation's premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. During the 2013-2014 academic year, Einstein is home to 734 M.D. students, 236 Ph.D. students, 106 students in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program, and 353 postdoctoral research fellows. The College of Medicine has more than 2,000 full-time faculty members located on the main campus and at its clinical affiliates. In 2013, Einstein received more than $155 million in awards from the NIH. This includes the funding of major research centers at Einstein in diabetes, cancer, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Its partnership with Montefiore Medical Center (http://www.montefiore.org/), the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein, advances clinical and translational research to accelerate the pace at which new discoveries become the treatments and therapies that benefit patients. Through its extensive affiliation network involving Montefiore, Jacobi Medical Center–Einstein's founding hospital, and five other hospital systems in the Bronx, Manhattan, Long Island and Brooklyn, Einstein runs one of the largest residency and fellowship training programs in the medical and dental professions in the United States. For more information, please visit http://www.einstein.yu.edu and follow us on Twitter @EinsteinMed. END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Researcher builds a better job performance review

2014-02-24

MANHATTAN -- A critical job performance evaluation can have a negative effect on any employee, a Kansas State University researcher has found. By studying how people view positive or negative feedback, Satoris Culbertson, assistant professor of management, has determined that nobody -- even people who are motivated to learn -- likes negative performance reviews. Culbertson is developing ways to help managers improve the process for reviewing employees. Culbertson and collaborators at Eastern Kentucky University and Texas A&M University surveyed more than 200 staffers ...

Now it will become cheaper to make second-generation biofuel for our cars

2014-02-24

Producing second-generation biofuel from dead plant tissue is environmetally friendly - but it is also expensive because the process as used today needs expensive enzymes, and large companies dominate this market. Now a Danish/Iraqi collaboration presents a new technique that avoids the expensive enzymes. The production of second generation biofuels thus becomes cheaper, probably attracting many more producers and competition, and this may finally bring the price down. The world's need for fuel will persist, also when the Earth's deposits of fossil fuels run out. Bioethanol, ...

Biomedical bleeding affects horseshoe crab behavior

2014-02-24

DURHAM, N.H. – New research from Plymouth State University and the University of New Hampshire indicates that collecting and bleeding horseshoe crabs for biomedical purposes causes short-term changes in their behavior and physiology that could exacerbate the crabs' population decline in parts of the east coast. Each year, the U.S. biomedical industry harvests the blue blood from almost half a million living horseshoe crabs for use in pharmaceuticals — most notably, a product called Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL), used to ensure vaccines and medical equipment are free ...

Significant discrepancies between FISH and IHC results for ALK testing

2014-02-24

DENVER –The findings of a recent study indicate that routine testing with both fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) may enhance the detection of ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Accurate determination of ALK-positive tumors is necessary to identify patients with advanced NSCLC who are most likely to benefit from targeted therapy with an ALK inhibitor. The discovery of ALK rearrangement in about 1% to 7% of NSCLCs led to the development of ALK inhibitors, such as crizotinib, which have significantly improved treatment ...

Researchers find flowing water can slow down bacteria

2014-02-24

In a surprising new finding, researchers have discovered that bacterial movement is impeded in flowing water, enhancing the likelihood that the microbes will attach to surfaces. The new work could have implications for the study of marine ecosystems, and for our understanding of how infections take hold in medical devices. The findings, the result of microscopic analysis of bacteria inside microfluidic devices, were made by MIT postdoc Roberto Rusconi, former MIT postdoc Jeffrey Guasto (now an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Tufts University), and Roman ...

Tip to dieters: Beware of friends and late night cravings

2014-02-24

There's more to dieting than just sheer willpower and self-control. The presence of friends, late night cravings or the temptation of alcohol can often simply be too strong to resist. Research led by Heather McKee of the University of Birmingham in the UK monitored the social and environmental factors that make people, who are following weight management programs, cheat. The study¹ is published in the Springer journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine.² Eighty people who were either part of a weight-loss group or were dieting on their own participated in the one-week study. ...

Novel assay developed for detecting ALK rearrangement in NSCLC

2014-02-24

DENVER – Researchers have developed a novel technique for detecting ALK rearrangements in non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs) that is more sensitive and easier to perform than currently available techniques. The technique can help enhance the routine practice of diagnostic ALK testing on NSCLCs, which is crucial for identifying patients with advanced NSCLC who are most likely to benefit from targeted therapy with an ALK inhibitor. None of the current three routine methods used to detect ALK rearrangements in NSCLC is without drawbacks, especially for tissue specimens ...

A fast and effective mechanism to combat an aggressive cancer

2014-02-24

Ovarian cancer accounts for more deaths of American women than any other cancer of the female reproductive system. According to the American Cancer Society, one in 72 American women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and one in 100 will ultimately die of the condition. Now Prof. Dan Peer of Tel Aviv University's Department of Cell Research and Immunology has proposed a new strategy to tackle an aggressive subtype of ovarian cancer using a new nanoscale drug-delivery system designed to target specific cancer cells. He and his team – Keren Cohen and Rafi Emmanuel from ...

EARTH Magazine: Tsunamis from the sky

2014-02-24

Alexandria, VA – On a beautiful, clear June morning in 1954, a massive wave suddenly swept out of Lake Michigan killing at least seven people along the Chicago waterfront. At the time, the wave was attributed to a storm that had earlier passed over northern Lake Michigan, but how it came to swamp faraway Chicago, with no warning, was not understood. The Great Lakes, along with the Mediterranean, Japan and many other parts of the world, have a long history of such waves, which have characteristics similar to tsunamis triggered by earthquakes or landslides. Only recently, ...

Cardiovascular Institute researcher: Cancer drug may lower sudden cardiac death risk

2014-02-24

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A researcher at the Cardiovascular Institute (CVI) at Rhode Island, The Miriam and Newport hospitals has found that a new class of drugs, originally developed to treat cancer, reduces sudden cardiac death risk after a heart attack. The findings were published online in advance of print in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. "Currently, there are limited options to reduce sudden cardiac death following a heart attack," said principal investigator Samuel C. Dudley, M.D., Ph.D., chief of cardiology at the CVI. "The benefit of most drugs ...

Study of Hispanic/Latino health presents initial findings

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: