Detroit is the site of an important medical discovery that’s expected to reduce infant mortality.
Doctors at the Detroit Medical Center, Wayne State University, and the National Institutes of Health identified women likely to deliver their babies early with a simple hormone gel. They treated those women with a hormone gel and reduced the chance of premature delivery by 45 percent. Mike Duggan is the President of the Detroit Medical Center.
"The idea that you could spot a likelihood of that premature delivery and prevent it in really remarkable numbers it is a world changing discovery. This is going to change the infant mortality rate."
Doctor Tom Malone is the head of DMC’s Hutzel Women’s Hospital.
"Prematurity and small for gestational age probably impacts infant mortality more than anything else, and the infant mortality rate in the city of Detroit is the highest in the state. So you get an idea of how significant this study is."
Over 500,000 babies are born early each year in the United States. Prematurity is the leading cause of infant mortality.
The University of Michigan has announced it has created new embryonic stem cell lines for medical research. Developing its own stem cell lines has been an important goal of the university’s stem cell research center since its inception two years.
In a written statement, Gary Smith, co-director of the U-M Consortium for Stem Cell Therapies and leader of the cell-line derivation project, talked about the importance of this milestone for the consortium:
"All our efforts are finally starting to bear fruit...Creating disease-specific human embryonic stem cell lines has been a central goal of the consortium since it was formed two years ago, and now we've passed that milestone."
The stem cell lines carry genes responsible for a type of hemophilia and a neurological disorder. In the future, researchers at the University of Michigan hope to develop additional stem cell lines that will help with research into Huntington's disease, spinal muscular atrophy and Tay-Sachs.
New University of Michigan research finds more women are having more children by more than one father. The U of M study shows 28% of women with two or more children had those children by more than one man. Among African-American women that number goes up to 59%.
Cassandra Dorius is a demographer at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.
“I think it’s just that families are changing. That families have been changing for a long time and that this is just one more indication that they are new and different today."
Dorius says families with multiple fathers face higher stress levels, as children and parents try to balance emotional and financial pressures.
She says the growing remarriage trend , as well as single parenthood, is increasing ‘Multiple Partner Fertility’ in the U.S.
A new study says Ottawa County is the healthiest county in Michigan. The county borders Lake Michigan’s shore directly west of Grand Rapids.
Marcia Knoll is a community health analyst at Ottawa County’s Health Department. She says the department does not take credit for the county’s “healthiest” rating. Knoll says there are many organizations, churches and people working together to keep the community healthy.
“Instead of standing like silos, each with our own agenda and our own territory. So that’s not the environment here, that’s not the culture here and I think that has stood us well in the struggles and with our health care.”
The study was done by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It looks at a number of measures that affect a community’s health; how many people smoke, are overweight, and have access to fresh, healthy foods.
This weekend you’ll have a chance to buy a piece of Michigan and space history. A state of Michigan flag, carried on board Apollo 15, to the moon and back, is being auctioned. All three members of the Apollo 15 crew had ties to the University of Michigan.
“I would expect it to bring in 5 or 6 thousand dollars. I think the last one that sold at auction I donated brought in almost $6 thousand.”
Worden says the online auction is raising money for science scholarships.
“We give out something like 25 scholarships…10 thousand dollars each…every year…which means we have to raise a lot of money. And one of the ways we do that is by selling artifacts that are donated by astronauts who’ve made a flight…and that is kind of a mainstay how we raise our money.”
The online auction of NASA memorabilia concludes Saturday night at 10 pm. Anyone interested in bidding on the space flag should go to ‘AstronautScholarship.org’.
Brock Savelkoul, who was medically discharged from the Army after serving three tours in Iraq, received the Purple Heart because of a wound to his leg. But it's the traumatic brain injury and PTSD he sustained that are complicating his life.
For soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, one of the biggest threats has been IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices. When these bombs go off, they can do enormous physical damage. But they can also cause damage to the soldier that often goes undetected.
NPR's Daniel Zerdling and ProPublica conducted an investigation of Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs) in soldiers serving in the U.S. military.
In the series, Brain Wars, they found that "the military medical system is failing to diagnose brain injuries in troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom receive little or no treatment for lingering health problems."
We're beginning to learn more about the persistent debilitating effects of these brain injuries from studies of football and hockey players and other athletes involved in contact sports. These are unseen injuries. Injuries that, prior to our understanding of them, might have gotten a "shake it off, you just got your bell rung" response from a coach.
As it turns out, the military has been slow to understand the effects of these brain injuries as well.
To get a grasp of how these unseen brain injuries can affect somebody - watch this video of Sgt. Victor Medina who says, "sometimes I wonder if it would have been easier to get my leg blown off - you can see it.":
Students of Western Michigan University are reacting to the donation of $100 million dollars to Western Michigan University for their medical school. MLive reports:
A few hours after the announcement of a $100 million cash gift to jump-start Western Michigan University’s medical school, the event was replayed on a video kiosk inside the Bernhard Center and caught the attention of several students.
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