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More than 65 percent of U.S. mothers with depression don’t receive adequate treatment, a new study has found.

Black, Hispanic and other minority mothers are least likely to receive adequate treatment. Mothers with health insurance are three times more likely to receive adequate treatment than those without insurance, wrote the researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.

“Health insurance facilitates access to adequate treatment for maternal depression. Expanding health insurance coverage to mothers with depression is a critical step in helping them get the care that they need,” study author Dr. Whitney P. Witt, an assistant professor of population health sciences, said in a news release from the university.

The analysis of national data on 2,130 mothers with depression also found that working mothers were less likely to receive adequate treatment, possibly because long work hours make it difficult for them to find time to seek treatment. This means that workplaces could prove a useful location for depression intervention.

“Services like employee-assistance programs can help these mothers get screened and treated, even if they are unable to visit a provider or a mental health professional in the health-care setting,” co-author Kristin Litzelman, a population health sciences doctoral student, said in the release. “Since healthy employees are productive employees, it’s often a win-win for employers to offer benefits that support employee mental health.”

Depression in mothers can have a major impact on the entire family, especially on the health and well-being of their children, the researchers noted. Treating depression in mothers can improve the long-term health of their families.

Health-care providers need to understand the racial, ethnic and educational disparities that affect treatment of mothers with depression in order to intervene and help these patients get the care they need, the study authors noted.

New research suggests that deep brain stimulation, already a common treatment for some neurological conditions, may be an effective way to treat Tourette syndrome.

“Our findings hold promise for helping people with severe Tourette syndrome, who are in need of new treatment options to improve their quality of life,” study author Dr. Andrea Cavanna, of the University of Birmingham in England, said in a news release from the American Academy of Neurology.

An estimated 2 million Americans suffer from Tourette syndrome, which is best known for making people uncontrollably shout words out loud. Other symptoms include spastic movements, facial tics, shoulder shrugging and jerking of the head or shoulders.

In the new study, 15 patients with severe Tourette syndrome plus obsessive compulsive disorder received deep brain stimulation — electrical impulses — through a surgically implanted brain pacemaker.

The subjects had about half as many tics on average after the treatment, and their symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and anxiety fell by 26 percent to 33 percent, the researchers reported in the Oct. 27 issue of the journal Neurology.

“Despite having only 15 patients in this study, it is the largest to date on the effectiveness of deep brain stimulation as a treatment for Tourette syndrome,” Cavanna said. “The results showed that all 15 people who were assessed after two years’ treatment experienced improvements in disabling tics and neurological problems, which is encouraging,” Cavanna added.

“Unfortunately, three patients from the original group of 18 were no longer part of the study at follow-up and this limits the ability to generalize our findings. More research needs to be done to confirm that deep brain stimulation is a safe and effective treatment for Tourette syndrome,” Cavanna said.

Traditional Pap tests and the newer liquid-based cytology are equally reliable in screening for cervical cancer, a new study has found.

In the United States, liquid-based cytology testing has all but replaced the traditional Pap test, but in Europe the debate continues over which method is best, according to Dr. Mark Schiffman, a senior investigator at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, co-author of an editorial accompanying the study’s publication in the Oct. 28 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study’s lead researcher, Albertus G. Siebers, from Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in the Netherlands, reflects that debate. “Liquid-based cytology is neither more sensitive nor more specific in detecting cancer,” he said. “However, the decision to convert to liquid-based cytology cannot be based on the performance of the method alone, as other arguments also play an important role.”

The difference between the two tests is not in the way samples are collected but in how they are treated in the laboratory. In a traditional Pap test, cells are collected and smeared on a slide for evaluation. In liquid-based cytology, the cells are rinsed in a vial of preservation solution.

The advantage of liquid-based cytology is that it also screens for human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes most cervical cancers.

To find out which test was best, the researchers randomly assigned 89,784 women who participated in the Dutch cervical screening program to have either a traditional Pap tests or a liquid-based cytology test.

“The main finding of the study is that we provided strong evidence that a relatively new screening method is not necessarily better than the old way of screening with conventional PAP smears,” Siebers said.

The Dutch screening program did not allow use of liquid-based cytology testing until recently, he said, because officials did not have sufficient data comparing it with the conventional method.

“The decision to convert to a new method is a very complex one,” Siebers said. “The performance of the method is, of course, imperative, but it is not the only factor. Other things must be considered, [including] screening time, the handling of the specimen, the reduced number of inadequates, the possibility of using residue for further diagnostic procedures such as HPV testing [and] the much more standardized way of handling the material that enables computer-assisted screening.”

All these factors should be considered to objectively estimate cost-effectiveness and decide whether a change in screening method should be made, Siebers said.

The study’s findings led to Dutch officials deciding to allow use of liquid-based cytology testing, he said.

Schiffman noted that liquid-based cytology is more expensive than the traditional Pap smear, but it is preferred by U.S. laboratories because specimens are easier to handle, and more analyses can be done in a day. In addition, the specimen can be used for HPV testing, which is common in the United States.

But any Pap testing could be on the way out, he said, because the ability to prevent and screen for cervical cancer is changing. “We now have vaccines that are going to keep getting better, and we have HPV testing, which is even more sensitive than Pap smears,” Schiffman said. “And new techniques will come along.”

He predicted major changes in cervical cancer screening in the next few years, “with the powerful sensitivity of doing HPV testing plus a Pap smear that is optimally done no more than every three years starting at age 30.”

But he said it remains to be seen whether women will accept screening every three years after having been accustomed to annual testing. “That’s a major change coming,” Schiffman said.

Female veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are less likely to complain of painful physical conditions than their male counterparts are.

The findings, from a study of more than 91,000 U.S. veterans, run counter to what is seen in the general population — where women typically show higher rates of chronic pain conditions, including migraines, fibromyalgia and persistent abdominal pain.

Among veterans in the study, 43 percent reported some type of physical pain over one year. And of those who had their pain evaluated at least three times, 20 percent had symptoms lasting at least several months.

Men, it turned out, were more likely to report either problem: 44 percent said they had pain at some point over the year, compared with 38 percent of women. Of those assessed for persistent pain, 21 percent of men had lingering symptoms, versus 18 percent of women.

When women did have pain, however, they were somewhat more likely than men to describe it as moderate to severe. Among veterans with any pain, 68 percent of females had moderate or severe pain, compared with 63 percent of men.

Researchers led by Dr. Sally G. Haskell, of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven, report the findings in the journal Pain Medicine.

Exactly why these findings in veterans differ from what’s been found among civilians is unclear, according to Haskell’s team.

The researchers speculate that combat exposure could be a factor. If men are more likely to be seriously injured or suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in a war zone that could explain their higher rate of pain complaints.

In addition, the researchers write, it’s possible that the “persistent level of threat” faced by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan essentially equalizes men’s and women’s risk of stress-related pain.

Understanding sex differences in veterans’ risks of various health problems will be increasingly important as more and more women enter the military, according to the researchers.

“As the VA plans care for the increasing numbers of female personnel,” Haskell said in a written statement, “a better understanding of the prevalence of pain, as well as sex-specific variations in the experience and treatment of pain, is important for policy makers and providers who seek to improve identification and management of diverse pain disorders.”