The Health News USA July 26 2017

Overview

• Amazon is showing interest in health care, and it’s making industry players ‘nervous,’ says investors. Amazon has also been selling medical supplies online for some time. CNBC reported in May that the company was on the hunt for a general manager to lead a new pharmacy unit.
• Just a 5% decline in measles vaccination rates could triple the number of young children who get infected with the virus in the U.S., according to a study highlighting the risks of parents refusing to vaccinate their kids. If this vaccination rate dropped to 80%, it could result in 150 additional measles cases a year and cost government health programs $2.1 million dollars, not counting hospital bills, researchers estimate.
• From 2005 to 2012, the rate of calls to poison control centers about dietary supplements increased by almost 50%, and most of the exposures were in children younger than 6 years old, according to a study published in the Journal of Medical Toxicology. Henry Spiller, study author and director of Central Ohio Poison Control, said parents still need to be extremely cautious about leaving these products within access of children.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 26th of July 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health New

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/24/amazon-showing-interest-in-health-care-supply-chain-nervous.html000

Amazon is showing interest in health care, and it’s making industry players ‘nervous,’ says investors. Amazon is sending all kinds of signals that it’s interested in the healthcare industry.

CNBC reported in May that the company was on the hunt for a general manager to lead a new pharmacy unit. Since then, it has brought on a slew of health experts to bolster its cloud offering, Amazon Web Services, and rallied the industry to build applications for its Alexa voice technology. Amazon has also been selling medical supplies online for some time.

“I get asked all the time what Amazon is doing,” said Tom Rodgers, managing director of McKesson Ventures. McKesson, a medical distribution giant, is one of the companies that analysts suggest would be poised for disruption by Amazon. “Everyone in the supply chain is nervous,” Rodgers acknowledged. “It’s a low-level paranoia that Amazon will drive down profitability.” But Rodgers doesn’t think Amazon will take on the big distributors head on — at least not right away. Instead, he thinks the company will want to be the “partner of choice” to help consumers navigate health care.

That might pave the way for Amazon to get into other areas of healthcare, including pharmaceutical distribution.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-measles-vaccine-children-idUSKBN1A92DJ

Just a five percent decline in measles vaccination rates could triple the number of young children who get infected with the virus in the U.S., according to a study highlighting the risks of parents refusing to vaccinate their kids. Nationwide, about ninety three percent of children aged two to eleven years old get the measles vaccine, researchers note in JAMA Pediatrics. If this vaccination rate dropped to eighty eight percent, it could result in one hundred fifty additional measles cases a year and cost government health programs two point one million dollars, not counting hospital bills, researchers estimate.

“Given increasing parental decisions to not vaccinate their children, we wanted to understand the effect of small reductions in vaccine coverage on overall measles cases,” said study co-author Nathan Lo of Stanford University School of Medicine in California.

Measles is a highly contagious virus that can be serious or even fatal. It starts with a fever that can last a couple of days, followed by a cough, runny nose and pink eye. A rash develops on the face and neck then spreads to the rest of the body. In severe cases, pneumonia and encephalitis can develop.

People with measles can be spreading the virus for four days before and after the rash appears, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The virus can live for up to two hours on surfaces where an infected person coughs or sneezes. People can become infected by breathing in droplets or touching a contaminated surface and then touching their eyes, nose or mouth.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/24/health/dietary-supplements-poison-control-study/index.html

From two thousand and five to two thousand and twelve, the rate of calls to poison control centers about dietary supplements increased by almost fifty percent, and most of the exposures were in children younger than six years old, according to a study published Monday in the Journal of Medical Toxicology.

The study defines dietary supplements as any product that supplements the diet, including vitamins, minerals, herbs, botanicals, homeopathic agents and amino acids, and concentrates, metabolites, constituents and extracts of these ingredients. The researchers used data from the National Poison Data System, to which poison control centers submit their call information.

From two thousand and two to two thousand and twelve, there were two hundred seventy four thousand nine hundred and ninety eight dietary supplement exposures reported to poison control centers across the US: one call every twenty four minutes, on average. The symptoms most associated with supplement ingestion included tachycardia, or rapid heart rate; vomiting; nausea; irritability; drowsiness and dizziness. Seventy percent of the dietary supplement exposures were in children younger than age six; ninety nine of those were unintentional. Overall, only four point five percent of all supplement exposures resulted in serious medical outcomes, mostly in children under age six. Henry Spiller, study author and director of Central Ohio Poison Control, said parents still need to be extremely cautious about leaving these products within access of children.

“Sometimes, parents don’t think of keeping dietary supplements away from their kids, because they’re not medicines prescribed by the doctor. People think of them as natural,” Spiller said. “But they need to be treated as if they were a medicine. Don’t leave them out on the counter. Keep them out of reach.”Spiller said the two most common ways for children to ingest a supplement are while they’re exploring the house or when a parent mistakes it for another kind of medication.

From nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and twelve, the number of adults who reported using dietary supplements has remained steady in the range of forty nine to fifty four percent.