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Giving to YSM hits a record high
Gifts and new pledges to the School of Medicine jumped to a record $63.5 million for fiscal year 2000 that ended June 30. That’s 57 percent higher than the 1999 total of $40 million and 34 percent higher than the previous record, $47 million in fiscal 1998. Associate Dean Jane E. Reynolds attributed the record number to the robust stock market, a more aggressive development operation and “the extremely high caliber of faculty proposals that were funded by gifts during the year.” The $63.5 million figure—which is included in the record University-wide total of $358 million for fiscal 2000—includes $29.2 million from foundations, $15.5 million from individuals, $13 million from agencies and $5.8 million from corporations. Says Reynolds, “I think the best is yet to come.”
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A new generation of diabetics?
Rising rates of obesity among children may point to a coming surge in type 2 diabetes and a pressing need to find ways of staving off the disease’s clinical development, according to data reported at the American Diabetes Association meeting in June by Sonia Caprio, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics. She tested 110 obese children and found that 19 percent had elevated blood sugar, a condition known as impaired glucose tolerance, putting them at risk for the most common form of diabetes. Says Caprio: “We know there is borderline type 2 diabetes in these kids. Do we try to treat them to prevent it?” She has begun to look at what effect medical therapy, nutritional counseling and exercise may have in warding off the disease in obese children.
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In the soap dispenser, a lurking danger
Adding antimicrobials to consumer products such as hand lotions and soaps may not add to their effectiveness and could contribute harmfully to antibiotic resistance. According to Yale pediatrician Myron Genel, M.D., acquired resistance to antimicrobials may predispose bacteria to resistance against therapeutic antibiotics as well. Genel chaired the American Medical Association Council on Scientific Affairs, which issued a report on antibiotics in June. Antimicrobials, which kill disease-causing bacteria, are commonly used in hospitals and other health care settings to reduce surface colonization of bacteria, but the AMA council found no evidence to support their addition to household cleansing agents. The report encouraged the FDA to expedite its regulation of antimicrobial use in consumer products.
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A new showcase for art
There’s an art to medicine, and some medical practitioners are also artists in their own right. Visitors to the Yale Physicians Building can now view artwork by Yale doctors and others associated with the School of Medicine. Last June, a gallery area that recently became part of the New Haven artSPACE program began showcasing work by Yale faculty and staff and other artists from greater New Haven. Featured artwork in the inaugural show included photographs by Amy L. Friedman Meguira, M.D., assistant professor of surgery; a bronze sculpture by Wayne O. Southwick, M.D., professor emeritus of orthopaedics and rehabilitation; and oil paintings by Barry L. Zaret, M.D., Robert W. Berliner Professor of Medicine and chief of the section of cardiovascular medicine. The gallery’s second show, photographs by Burim Myftiu of Kosovo, opened in September.
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Hero to nitpickers everywhere
After dealing with an epidemic of head lice at a New Haven day-care center, Sydney Z. Spiesel, M.D. ’75, Ph.D., assistant clinical professor of pediatrics, came up with a shampoo that makes the louse eggs, or nits, visible under ultraviolet light. The shampoo contains a nontoxic fluorescent dye that causes the nits to glow brightly on the hairshaft when viewed under ultraviolet light. Spiesel, whose invention landed him on the pages of The New York Times, the local press and Time magazine, said that his shampoo will not kill the eggs, but it makes them easy to see and eliminate.
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Blacking out behind the wheel
Fainting spells are behind an increasing number of automobile collisions, particularly among the elderly. A cardiac cause of that fainting can often go undetected and should be considered by physicians, according to Mark H. Schoenfeld, M.D., associate clinical professor of medicine. He and his colleagues studied 54 patients who had lost consciousness for unknown reasons while driving and then been referred to the Yale cardiac electrophysiology service over a 14-year period. They discovered that 78 percent were found to have cardiac irregularities. None of those who received treatment experienced another fainting spell while driving. Schoenfeld presented his findings in May at the meeting of the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology. He advised colleagues to look at possible cardiac disorders when unexplained fainting spells occur.
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A potential boost for transplanted hearts
Heart transplants often fail because the donor heart is not strong enough to overcome the lung damage common in people with chronic heart failure. Recognizing that in most cases only the left side of the heart fails, chief of cardiothoracic surgery John A. Elefteriades, M.D. ’76, HS ’83, and colleagues have come up with a novel technique for retaining the healthy right half. They aim to give a transplant patient the pumping power of a heart-and-a-half to overcome the lung damage. So far the technique has been attempted only in dogs, but the surgeons hope to apply it to humans soon. A description of the method was published in the June issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. The technique could reduce the number of deaths following transplant and allow the use of weaker donor hearts to increase the currently limited number of donor hearts available.
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Interdisciplinary journal debuts at Yale
The schools of medicine, public health and law have joined forces to launch the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics. The biannual journal will be peer-reviewed by a board of national experts; more than 70 students from Yale graduate and professional schools will edit the publication and oversee its production. It will publish articles on legal, ethical and policy issues in health care and related areas, including case studies of specific current policy questions and recent court decisions. Publication of the first issue will coincide with a symposium on racial and ethnic disparities in health to be held at the law school in February.
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Use of alternative medicine widespread among the mentally ill
The use of unregulated alternative or complementary treatments is growing rapidly throughout the population. Yale investigators have found it is particularly prevalent among people with psychiatric disorders. People with illnesses such as depression, schizophrenia and anxiety disorders are 25 percent more likely to use alternative or complementary treatments than those without such disorders.
“The results suggest that a substantial portion of patients with mental conditions use these therapies, whether to treat mental or other medical conditions,” said Benjamin G. Druss, M.D., M.P.H. ’95, assistant professor of psychiatry and epidemiology and public health, the study’s lead author. Published in the July issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, the findings, Druss said, speak to the potential importance of screening for these treatments, which may interact with prescription psychiatric medicines. The researchers found that 9.8 percent of those reporting a psychiatric illness made a visit to a complementary or alternative practitioner, and about half of these people (4.5 percent) made a visit to treat the psychiatric illness. Among alternative treatments used for that purpose, herbal remedies were the most common.
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