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Addressing the spiritual needs of someone with advanced cancer could be just as important as taking care of their medical needs, a new study suggests.

When asked what was important to them at the end of their lives, people dying of cancer ranked two factors highest: pain control and being at peace with God, the study found.

“Medicine tends to focus on the more scientific aspects of the person, and we’ve made wonderful strides in improving patient care, but there’s another important component of patient health: spirituality,” explained Dr. Tracy Anne Balboni, a radiation oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and the study’s lead author. “This is clearly an area where some important advancements can be made.”

The researchers discovered that people with advanced cancer were far more likely to choose hospice care when their spiritual needs had been addressed. And among those who were very religious, meeting spiritual needs increased the odds that a terminal patient would choose to forgo aggressive, yet often unsuccessful, medical treatments, the study found.

However, at least six of 10 people with advanced cancer reported that their spiritual needs were only minimally or not at all supported.

Results of the study were published online Dec. 14 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Earlier research had found that the most religious patients are much more likely to choose aggressive treatments during their last week of life in an attempt to prolong their life — even if those treatments don’t improve their quality of life. Aggressive treatments include mechanical ventilation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

“A religious person might think they need to do aggressive care,” said Balboni, adding that they may feel it’s wrong to give up. “But, if the medical team engages them more, they can help them understand that it’s not necessarily against their religion to forgo futile medical procedures.”

The new study involved 670 people with advanced cancer from seven treatment centers in the Northeast and Texas. The final analysis included information from 343 people who later died and whose caregivers completed a post-death interview. The average time between the start of the study and the person’s death was 116 days.

For purposes of the study, spiritual care was defined as patient-perceived support of their spiritual needs by their medical team and the receipt of pastoral care services.

Most people (60 percent) said that their spiritual needs either hadn’t been met or were minimally supported at the start of the study, and 54 percent had not received pastoral care visits. In the final week of life, 73 percent of the participants received hospice care, and 17 percent received aggressive care.

Those who had greater spiritual support from their medical team, including doctors, nurses, chaplains and more, reported a higher quality of life as they neared death than did those who felt unsupported spiritually.

People who felt they were getting better spiritual support were 3½ times more likely to receive hospice care. And among highly religious people, those whose spiritual needs were supported were five times more likely to receive hospice care and five times less likely to receive aggressive medical care, the study reported.

“We found that patients whose spiritual needs were well-supported seemed to transition to hospice more frequently and had a marked reduction in the use of aggressive care,” Balboni said.

Yet despite the findings, said Dr. Harold G. Koenig, co-director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University Medical Center, “few people are getting their spiritual needs met by the medical system.”

“Many doctors are uncomfortable discussing spirituality and haven’t been trained to do so,” he said. “And churches have a role, too. Although it’s not a popular topic, churches need to talk about the end of life in the pulpit. People don’t know theologically what they’re supposed to do.”

Religious people, Koenig said, are often left to think they should always have hope and should always “give God a chance to provide a miracle.” Hospice care, though, can often provide spiritual guidance and help people prepare for death, he said.

Doctors don’t need to actually provide spiritual care, Koenig said, but it’s important for physicians to acknowledge their patients’ spiritual needs and make sure they’re addressed by pastoral care or hospice. “The doctor does have to be the one to orchestrate this,” he said.

But if someone’s spiritual needs are not being met, Koenig and Balboni agreed that the person — or a friend or family member — needs to speak up. And if the patient’s doctor doesn’t feel qualified to discuss end-of-life spiritual issues, the doctor should be able to refer you to someone who can.

Childhood exposure to lead can cause permanent brain damage, a new study has found.

“What we have found is that no region of the brain is spared from lead exposure. Distinct areas of the brain are affected differently,” study author Kim Cecil, an imaging scientist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and a professor of radiology, pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, said in a news release.

The study included 33 adults, mean age 21, who were enrolled as infants in the long-term Cincinnati Lead Study, which looked at prenatal and early childhood exposure in 376 infants from high-risk areas of Cincinnati between 1979 and 1987.

The study participants had blood lead levels ranging from 5 micrograms to 37 micrograms per deciliter, with a mean of 14. They had IQ deficiencies and histories of juvenile delinquency and criminal arrests.

Functional MRI was used to monitor the participants’ brains while they did two tasks that assess attention, decision making and impulse control. The scans showed that in order to complete a task that required inhibition, participants with elevated blood lead levels required activation from additional regions within the brain’s frontal and parietal lobes.

“This tells us that the area of the brain responsible for inhibition is damaged by lead exposure and that other regions of the brain must compensate in order for an individual to perform. However, the compensation is not sufficient,” Cecil said.

According to Cecil, the brain’s white matter, which organizes and matures at an early age, adapts to lead exposure. But the frontal lobe, which is the last to develop, suffers permanent damage from lead exposure as it matures.

“Many people think that once lead blood levels decrease, the effects should be reversible, but, in fact, lead exposure has harmful and lasting effects,” Cecil said.

The study was scheduled to be presented Tuesday at the Radiological Society of North America annual meeting, in Chicago.

Medical care for osteoarthritis patients in the United States costs $185.5 billion a year, according to a new study.

Of that amount, insurers pay $149.4 billion while patients pay $36.1 billion in out-of-pocket costs. Annual insurer costs are $4,833 per female patient and $4,036 per male patient. Women also have higher out-of-pocket expenses than men — $1,379 versus $694. The total cost for female patients is $118 billion, compared with $67.5 billion for male patients. All figures are in 2007 dollars.

“Understanding the economic costs of OA [osteoarthritis] is important for payers, providers, patients and other stakeholders. Our study clearly reflects the significant impact of OA on U.S. health-care spending,” study author John Rizzo, of Stony Brook University in New York, said in a news release.

For the study, which is published in the December issue of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism, Rizzo and his colleagues analyzed 1996-2005 data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. The data sample included 84,647 women and 70,590 men aged 18 and older who had health insurance. The health-care costs included physician, hospital and outpatient services, as well as drugs, diagnostic tests and related medical services.

People with osteoarthritis suffer gradual loss of cartilage, primarily in the knees, hips, hands, feet and spine. About 27 million Americans have osteoarthritis, which affects more women than men, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2030, it is projected that 25 percent of the U.S. population (nearly 67 million people) will have physician-diagnosed arthritis.

The study authors said increased awareness and better screening to identify patients with osteoarthritis may help delay disease progression and resulting disability, thus reducing medical costs.

“Our results suggest that patients with OA may benefit from greater efforts to promote exercise, proper medication use and appropriate surgical treatments for the disease,” Rizzo concluded.

After years of little progress, three new trials suggest that the latest generation of blood thinners may outperform the old standbys warfarin and clopidogrel (Plavix).

In one study, dabigatran etexilate (marketed as Pradax in Canada and Pradaxa in Europe; it is not yet approved in the United States) proved to be safe in preventing blood clots when patients were treated for acute coronary syndrome, a cluster of symptoms that might indicate a heart attack.

“Dabigatran seems to be safe on top of dual antiplatelet therapy [meaning aspirin and Plavix],” said study author Dr. Jonas Oldgren, chief physician in the department of cardiology at Uppsala University Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden. “It has already been shown to have superior efficacy compared with warfarin.”

A previous trial had demonstrated that dabigatran outperformed warfarin in preventing strokes in patients with atrial fibrillation.

The current trial, to be presented Wednesday at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., also saw a reduction in mortality, nonfatal heart attack and stroke, although it was not specifically designed to look at efficacy.

“Dabigatran appears to be superior to warfarin in terms of safety and more effective as well. This is the first alternative to warfarin that could signal a changing of the guard,” said Dr. Bernard Gersh, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn. “I think there are still questions that need to be answered but it’s fair to say that warfarin has been around for many, many years and everybody hates warfarin. Patients hate warfarin. Doctors hate warfarin. It’s not the most convenient drug, but it’s effective and it is cheap.”

The trial involved more than 1,800 patients in 24 countries with acute coronary syndrome who were randomized to receive one of four doses of dabigatran, made by Boehringer Ingelheim, or a placebo. All participants were also taking aspirin and Plavix.

“It’s premature to say that a drug like dabigatran will take the place of warfarin,” Gersh said. “There will be a lot of discussion about cost and convenience. It’s a twice-daily dose and there are some questions about a possible higher rate of heart attack. I don’t think this is truly resolved yet, but I think we can say that for the first time we have seen a drug that certainly has the potential to be an alternative to warfarin, and maybe even superior.”

Two other trials, both presented at the heart association meeting and published in the Nov. 18 issue of Circulation, looked at an anti-clotting pill called ticagrelor (Brilinta), comparing its performance with clopidogrel (Plavix). Brilinta, made by AstraZeneca, is also awaiting approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Prior Brilinta studies have found that it was better than Plavix in preventing new heart attacks and preventing deaths among patients who had already had a heart attack.

In one of the two latest trials, both conducted by researchers at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, patients with stable coronary artery disease who were also taking aspirin were randomized to Brilinta, Plavix or a placebo for six weeks.

The results showed that Brilinta could be turned off faster, meaning patients could go into surgery right away if needed, and lasted longer than Plavix.

The second Brilinta study showed that patients who didn’t respond to Plavix did respond to Brilinta.

All of this just signals the beginning of a new round of anti-clotting medications, experts said.

“There are several trials ongoing of other alternatives to warfarin. We will probably see results in the next two years,” Gersh said.

While research has suggested that the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders in American children was about 1 of every 150 children, a new government study estimates that the prevalence is more likely about 1 in every 91 children.

The study, which is published in the October issue of Pediatrics, estimated that 110 of every 10,000 U.S. youngsters will be diagnosed at some point in their lives with an autism spectrum disorder. That currently translates to about 673,000 American children with some form of autism, according to the study.

“I think this is a very important study that says the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders may be even higher than we suspected previously,” said Geraldine Dawson, chief scientific officer of Autism Speaks.

“Autism is a major public health challenge, and this study is another call to action that we need to be able to provide care across the lifespan,” she said.

Autism spectrum disorders are a group of neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism, Asperger syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder. Severity varies from child to child.

Characteristic behavior includes impaired social interaction, difficulty with communication and repetitive behaviors. Over a lifetime, health-care costs for someone with autism are estimated to be more than $1.6 million, according to the study.

The researchers culled data for the study from the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health, which included more than 78,000 children from across the country, all between 3 and 17 years old.

Parents of 1,412 children reported that a doctor had given their child a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. Only 913 parents, however, said their child currently had an autism spectrum disorder.

Of that group, 494 parents classified their child’s autism as mild, and 320 parents described it as moderate. Just 90 parents said their child’s autism was severe.

Cynthia Johnson, director of the Autism Center at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, attributed the increase to better diagnostic criteria and an increasing awareness of autism.

“This is more data that adds to what’s already in existence that shows autism spectrum disorders are common,” Johnson said.

As to the large percentage of children who were diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder in the past, but whose parents said they currently were not autistic, Johnson said the reasons behind that finding were not clear.

She theorized, though, that “symptoms may lessen with early intensive services, especially for milder cases.”

The authors also suggested that autism might have been considered during the initial diagnosis of a child but later dropped if the child turned out to have another disorder.

“We do know that individuals with autism can have a diagnosis early on and then lose that diagnosis, and we don’t know the factors that could explain this,” Dawson said. “Is it having received good, early behavioral intervention? Or, is there a group of kids that have better biological outcomes? Or, it may have something to do with how kids get diagnosed at different ages. Maybe as kids develop, they may not be getting the same kind of evaluations.”

The study also found that the odds of receiving an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis were four times higher for boys than girls, and that non-Hispanic black and multiracial children were less likely to have an autism spectrum disorder than white children.

An estimated 13 million infants worldwide are born premature each year and more than one million of them die within the first month of life, according to a report released Sunday.

Premature births account for 9.6 percent of total births and for 28 percent of newborn deaths, the data in a White Paper from the March of Dimes and other organizations found.

The highest rates of premature birth are in Africa, followed by North America (Canada and the United States combined).

“Premature births are an enormous global problem that is exacting a huge toll emotionally, physically and financially on families, medical systems and economies,” Dr. Jennifer L. Howse, March of Dimes president, said in a news release.

In the United States alone, the annual cost of caring for preterm babies and their associated health problems is more than $26 billion a year.

“If world leaders are serious about reaching the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health, then strategies and funding for reducing death and disability related to preterm birth must receive priority,” Howse said.

The March of Dimes’ Global and Regional Toll of Preterm Birth report used data from the recently published Bulletin of the World Health Organization, which probably underestimates the extent of preterm birth worldwide, according to Howse.

More than 85 percent of the world’s preterm births occur in Africa, where about 11.9 percent (four million babies a year) are born preterm. Rates in other regions are: 10.6 percent in North America; 9.1 percent in Asia; 8.1 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean; 6.4 percent in Oceania (Australia and New Zealand); and 6.2 percent in Europe.

In more affluent regions, 1,014,000 infants each year are born preterm — 7.5 percent of total births. In middle-resource regions, 7,685,000 infants are born preterm — 8.8 percent of total births. In low-resource regions, 4,171,000 infants are born preterm — 12.5 percent of total births, according to the report.

Rates of preterm birth in the United States have increased 36 percent in the past 25 years due to a number of key factors. More women over age 35 are getting pregnant and there’s increased use of assisted reproductive technologies, resulting in more multiple births, the report stated.

Infants who survive preterm birth are at risk for a number of serious lifelong health problems such as cerebral palsy, blindness, hearing loss, and learning disabilities.

Currently, there is no reliable way to prevent or delay preterm birth.

“While much can be done right now to reduce death and disability from preterm birth even in low-resource settings, we need to know more about the underlying causes of premature birth in order to develop effective prevention strategies,” Christopher P. Howson, vice president for global programs at the March of Dimes, said in the news release.

The authors of the new report said more needs to be done to educate health professionals, policy makers, women of childbearing age, and others about the global toll of preterm birth, as well as how to care for women with high-risk pregnancies and their babies.

The report is scheduled to be presented this month at the International Conference on Birth Defects and Disabilities in the Developing World, held in New Delhi, India.