Stark Rural-Urban Disparity Found In Teen Vaccination Rates

Stat: Rural-Urban Gap In Some Vaccination Rates Leaves Health Officials Puzzled
New data on vaccination rates among U.S. teenagers provide some heartening news — but also pose a bit of a mystery. The report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows parents of teenagers are in the main following the CDC’s advice and keeping their children up to date on vaccines that should be administered in the early teens. (Branswell, 8/24)

NPR: Sibling Survivors Of Suicide Are Often Sidelined
When Taylor Porco's brother, Jordan, died by suicide during his freshman year at college in February 2011, people told her to be strong for her parents who were incapacitated by their grief. Hardly anyone seemed to notice that Porco, only 14 at the time, was suffering and suicidal. "I was really depressed and in such extreme pain. Nothing literally mattered to me after he died. All I wanted was my brother back. I never loved someone as much as I loved him," she says. (Weinstock, 8/25)

Stat: Could Activating Stem Cells Promote Hair Growth? UCLA Scientists Think They've Found The Metabolic Root
The roots of hair loss run deep: It’s linked to hormonal balance, immune response, stem cell signaling, and now, according to new research from University of California, Los Angeles — metabolism. The study, published in Nature Cell Biology, finds that the metabolism in the stem cells embedded in hair follicles is different from surrounding cells. When they tinkered with that metabolic pathway in mice, they could either halt hair growth — or make it proliferate. The UCLA researchers are now testing out a duo of drugs to try and prompt that hair to grow. (Keshavan, 8/25)

Stat: Why Do So Many Millennials Struggle To Take Their Pills Consistently?
Here’s a generalization about millennials you may not have heard before: They struggle mightily to take their daily pills as prescribed. Commercially insured young adults are significantly less likely than their older counterparts to be adherent to their diabetes medications, concludes a report released Friday by Express Scripts (ESRX), the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit manager. Just 40 percent of women and 48 percent of men between the ages of 20 and 44 had access to their prescribed diabetes medication at least 80 percent of the time, according to the report, which looked at 1.4 million patients in plans managed by Express Scripts. (Robbins, 8/25)

The Washington Post: Fewer Antibiotic Prescriptions Are Being Filled, A New Analysis Finds
The use of antibiotics among Americans with commercial health insurance has decreased during the past several years, according to a new analysis that nevertheless shows lingering variations for different ages and in different parts of the country. The study released on Thursday provides the latest evidence of how doctors and patients have begun to heed warnings that excessive antibiotic use breeds dangerous drug resistance and “superbug” bacteria. (Goldstein, 8/24)

The New York Times: Gut Bacteria Can Fluctuate With The Seasons
In Tanzania, not far from the Serengeti, live the Hadza, a community of about 1,300 people. For such a small group, they attract a lot of scientific attention. Many of the Hadza live solely on the animals they kill, along with honey, berries and a few other wild foods. For the first 95 percent of our species’s history, there was no other way to live. (Zimmer, 8/24)

Columbus Dispatch: New Engineered Blood Vessels Grow As Kids Grow
[Kevin] Blum was explaining why infants born in need of the vessel would require several operations as they age if surgeons use synthetic vessels that don’t grow as children grow. But a new procedure at Nationwide Children’s Hospital seeks to ensure that children need surgery only once. That’s because researchers are growing vessels, using a biodegradable tube onto which they place a patient’s own bone marrow cells. (Viviano, 8/25)

The New York Times: Mothers, Fathers And Obesity In Offspring
Studies have shown that obese women give birth to larger babies who are at risk for obesity and other metabolic problems later in life. Some have thought that the reason may be that obese mothers, whose bodies are rich in nutrients, somehow “overfeed” the fetus during gestation. A new study has found that this is unlikely. (Bakalar, 8/24)

WBUR: Severe Allergic Reactions To Food Are Increasing, In Adults As Well As Children
Life-threatening allergic reactions to foods have increased by five times over the last decade, according to a new analysis of private insurance claims by FAIR Health, an independent nonprofit that collects and analyzes data on privately billed health insurance claims. (Young, 8/24)

NPR: Neuroscientists Pinpoint Brain Cells Responsible For Recognizing Intonation
It's not just what you say that matters. It's how you say it. Take the phrase, "Here's Johnny." When Ed McMahon used it to introduce Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, the words were an enthusiastic greeting. But in The Shining, Jack Nicholson used the same two words to convey murderous intent. Now scientists are reporting in the journal Science that they have identified specialized brain cells that help us understand what a speaker really means. These cells do this by keeping track of changes in the pitch of the voice. (Hamilton, 8/24)

Huffington Post: Flame Retardants Linked To Lower Fertility Rates In Women
New research examining the link between common flame retardant chemicals and fertility rates finds that women with higher levels of the chemicals in their bodies have lower chances of fertilization, pregnancy and live birth compared with women who have low levels of the chemicals in their bodies. (Almendrala, 8/25)

Huffington Post: Watchdog Accuses Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Of Making ‘Deceptive’ Health Claims
In a complaint sent to two California district attorneys this week, the nonprofit Truth in Advertising, also known as TINA, says it conducted an investigation into Goop’s “inappropriate health claims” and “deceptive marketing” tactics, and it is calling on the lawmakers to make the site stop. (Shapiro, 8/24)

Kaiser Health News: Writing Your Way Through Cancer
When Lynn Scozzari wrote the beginning lines of [the] poem “The Offering” in 2013, she was staring at a photo of a naked woman seated on a rock, her arms thrust open to a valley below. Scozzari herself was in a conference room of the cancer center at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, Calif., seated at a table stocked with coffee and tissues. The year before, Scozzari had finished treatment for stage 4 breast cancer. Now, she was meeting with other patients and survivors who were also writing about their cancer experiences. (Jacewicz, 8/25)