PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Seniors and sleeping pills: Empowered patients choose wisely

2014-04-14
(Press-News.org) The US Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act encourages patients to act as their own advocates for reducing unnecessary prescriptions that increase the risk of harm. The American Board of Internal Medicine Choosing Wisely® campaign echoes this message by asking older adults to refrain from using sleeping pills. According to the American Geriatrics Society, these medicines have been linked to memory problems, falls, fractures and motor vehicle accidents. "Many people believe that involving patients in the decision to curtail medical treatments is expecting too much," says Dr. Cara Tannenbaum, Pharmacy Research Chair and geriatrician at the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal and professor at the University of Montreal. "On the contrary: we now have evidence that patients who are better informed make smarter choices." Dr. Tannenbaum's study, released today by JAMA Internal Medicine, randomized 303 chronic sleeping pill users aged 65 to 95 to receive a patient empowerment de-prescribing intervention in a wait-listed fashion. Participants were recruited from community pharmacies in the region of Quebec, Canada. On average, participants used sleeping pills for 10 years and took approximately 10 different medications per day. The empowerment interventon was a 7-page handout which described the risks of sleeping pill use and encouraged patients to discuss a tapering protocol with their physician or pharmacist. Sixty-two percent of seniors who received the empowerment intervention spoke to their health provider about reducing sleeping pill consumption. Six months later, 27% succeeded in breaking free of the habit, while another 11% were in the process of tapering. "These results are incredible," affirms Dr. Tannenbaum. "Many older adults are addicted to sleeping pills for years. Provision of the latest scientific knowledge empowered them to take their medication safety into their own hands. They raised the issue with their health care provider and started the cycle rolling for de-prescribing. Just because you take a medication for a long time does not mean you can never get off it." The study concludes that seniors are not given enough credit for being active and able participants in decisions about their health care and medication use. Dr. Tannenbaum's findings provide a concrete action plan for implementing the recommendation issued in the Revised Beers Criteria published in the spring of 2012 by the American Geriatrics Society that sleeping pills – and 53 other medications - should be avoided in seniors. "Interestingly, women are more likely to consume sleeping pills than men" explains Dr. Tannenbaum. "The empowerment intervention was equally effective in both sexes. Last year the FDA cut the recommended dose of the sleeping pill zolpidem in half for women. There is growing recognition that certain drugs act more powerfully in females because of women's small size and body composition. There is a need for research to ensure that women are informed of these risks in an effective, timely and scientifically correct fashion." The empowerment intervention can be found online on the JAMA Internal Medicine website.

INFORMATION: Notes The University of Montreal is offiically known as Université de Montréal.

About the author Cara Tannenbaum, MD, MSc, is a geriatrician and researcher in health promotion at the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (IUGM). She is also the inaugural Michel-Saucier Endowed Chair in Geriatric Pharmacology, Health and Aging from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Université de Montréal and a Professor of Medicine at the Université de Montréal. She leads a program of research in epidemiologic and clinical geriatric health. Her clinical practice aims to improve medical care for older people. She was the 2013 recipient of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Betty Haven's Prize in Knowledge Transfer in Aging.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Gene panels may be useful, cheaper alternative to whole-genome sequencing, study finds

2014-04-14
STANFORD, Calif. — As many as 10 percent of women with a personal or family history of breast or ovarian cancer have at least one genetic mutation that, if known, would prompt their doctors to recommend changes in their care, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The women in the study did not have mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 (mutations in these genes are strongly associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer), but they did have mutations in other cancer-associated genes. The study was conducted using what's known ...

Collaborative care model manages depression, anxiety in patients with heart disease

2014-04-14
Bottom Line: A telephone-based collaborative care model helped manage depression and anxiety, and improved health-related quality of life in patients with heart disease. Author: Jeff C. Huffman, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and colleagues. Background: Depression following acute cardiac conditions is common and generalized anxiety and panic disorders occur at higher rates in patients with heart conditions. Depression and anxiety are determinants of health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Collaborative care (CC) models use nonphysician care managers ...

Nano shake-up

Nano shake-up
2014-04-14
Significant advances have been made in chemotherapy over the past decade, but targeting drugs to cancer cells while avoiding healthy tissues continues to be a major challenge. Nanotechnology has unlocked new pathways for targeted drug delivery, including the use of nanocarriers, or capsules, that can transport cargoes of small-molecule therapeutics to specific locations in the body. The catch? These carriers are tiny, and it matters just how tiny they are. Change the size from 10 nanometers to 100 nanometers, and the drugs can end up in the wrong cells or organs and ...

Study says we're over the hill at 24

2014-04-14
It's a hard pill to swallow, but if you're over 24 years of age you've already reached your peak in terms of your cognitive motor performance, according to a new Simon Fraser University study. SFU's Joe Thompson, a psychology doctoral student, associate professor Mark Blair, Thompson's thesis supervisor, and Andrew Henrey, a statistics and actuarial science doctoral student, deliver the news in a just-published PLOS ONE Journal paper. In one of the first social science experiments to rest on big data, the trio investigates when we start to experience an age-related ...

Lashing out at your spouse? Check your blood sugar

Lashing out at your spouse? Check your blood sugar
2014-04-14
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Lower levels of blood sugar may make married people angrier at their spouses and even more likely to lash out aggressively, new research reveals. In a 21-day study, researchers found that levels of blood glucose in married people, measured each night, predicted how angry they would be with their spouse that evening. At the end of the 21 days, people who had generally lower levels of glucose were willing to blast their spouses with unpleasant noises at a higher volume and for a longer time than those who had higher glucose levels. The study shows how ...

Ferns borrowed genes to flourish in low light

Ferns borrowed genes to flourish in low light
2014-04-14
DURHAM, N.C. -- During the age of the dinosaurs, the arrival of flowering plants as competitors could have spelled doom for the ancient fern lineage. Instead, ferns diversified and flourished under the new canopy -- using a mysterious gene that helped them adapt to low-light environments. A team led by Duke University scientists has pinpointed the curious origins of this gene and determined that it was transferred to ferns from a group of unassuming moss-like plants called hornworts. The findings were announced today, April 14, in the Proceedings of the National Academy ...

Plugging an ozone hole

2014-04-14
CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Since the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, scientists, policymakers, and the public have wondered whether we might someday see a similarly extreme depletion of ozone over the Arctic. But a new MIT study finds some cause for optimism: Ozone levels in the Arctic haven't yet sunk to the extreme lows seen in Antarctica, in part because international efforts to limit ozone-depleting chemicals have been successful. "While there is certainly some depletion of Arctic ozone, the extremes of Antarctica so far are very different from what we find in the ...

Fire and drought may push Amazonian forests beyond tipping point

2014-04-14
Falmouth, Mass. – Future simulations of climate in the Amazon suggest a longer dry season leading to more drought and fires. Woods Hole Research Center scientists Michael Coe, Paulo Brando, Marcia Macedo and colleagues have published a new study on the impacts of fire and drought on Amazon tree mortality. Their paper entitled “Abrupt increases in Amazonian tree mortality due to drought-fire interactions,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that prolonged droughts caused more intense and widespread wildfires, which consumed more forests ...

Faithful allies since the Cretaceous

Faithful allies since the Cretaceous
2014-04-14
Like humans, many animals depend on beneficial microbes for survival. Although such symbioses can persist for millions of years, the factors maintaining their long-term stability remain, in most cases, unknown. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and the University of Regensburg, in collaboration with researchers in the USA, now discovered that certain wasps tightly control mother-to-offspring transmission of their bacterial symbionts. This stabilizes the symbiotic alliance and contributed to its persistence over the past 68-110 million years. ...

'Problem wells' source of greenhouse gas at unexpected stage of natural gas production

Problem wells source of greenhouse gas at unexpected stage of natural gas production
2014-04-14
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - High levels of the greenhouse gas methane were found above shale gas wells at a production point not thought to be an important emissions source, according to a study jointly led by Purdue and Cornell universities. The findings could have implications for the evaluation of the environmental impacts from natural gas production. The study, which is one of only a few to use a so-called "top down" approach that measures methane gas levels in the air above wells, identified seven individual well pads with high emission levels and established their stage ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

As farm jobs decline, food industry work holds steady

Kennesaw State researcher aiming to move AI beyond the cloud

Revolutionizing impedance flow cytometry with adjustable microchannel height

Treating opioid addiction in jails improves treatment engagement, reduces overdose deaths and reincarceration

Can’t sleep? Insomnia associated with accelerated brain aging

Study links teacher turnover to higher rates of student suspensions, disciplinary referrals

How harmful bacteria hijack crops

Crowded conditions muddle frogs’ mating choices

A new way to guide light, undeterred

Researchers uncover how COVID-19 may linger in cancer patients and affect treatment outcomes

Tiny metal figurines from Sardinia's Nuragic civilization in around 1,000 BC reveal extensive ancient Mediterranean metal trading networks

Natural microfibers may degrade differently to synthetic materials under simulated sunlight exposure in freshwater and seawater conditions, with implications for how such pollutants affect aquatic lif

Indian new mums report better postpartum wellbeing when their own mum acts as their primary support - while women whose mother-in-law is the primary caregiver instead report significantly lower overal

Young adult intelligence and education are correlated with socioeconomic status in midlife

Traditional and “existential” wellness vary significantly between US regions

Smartwatches detect early signs of PTSD among those watching coverage of the Oct 7 attacks in Israel

The pandemic may have influenced the trainability of dogs, as reported by their owners

The withdrawal of U.S. funding for tuberculosis could lead to up to 2.2 million additional deaths between 2025 and 2030 inclusive

A ‘universal’ therapy against the seasonal flu? Antibody cocktail targets virus weak spot

Could robots help kids conquer reading anxiety? New study from the Department of Computer Science at UChicago suggests so

UCSB-designed soft robot intubation device could save lives

Burial Site challenges stereotypes of Stone Age women and children

Protein found in the eye and blood significantly associated with cognition scores

USF study reveals how menopause impacts women’s voices – and why it matters

AI salespeople aren’t better than humans… yet

Millions of men could benefit from faster scan to diagnose prostate cancer

Simulations solve centuries-old cosmic mystery – and discover new class of ancient star systems

MIT study explains how a rare gene variant contributes to Alzheimer’s disease

Race, ethnicity, insurance payer, and pediatric cardiac arrest survival

High-intensity exercise and hippocampal integrity in adults with cannabis use disorder

[Press-News.org] Seniors and sleeping pills: Empowered patients choose wisely