Using Incentives To Encourage Adherence To Health Interventions
The suggestion to pay for individuals to engage in pro-health behaviors and the question if this idea is an effective, sustainable, as well as cost-efficient tool to promote individual and public health is a controversial issue. This week's PLoS Medicine reports on the view of an international team of researchers from the Philosophy Department and Center for Ethics and Policy at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA, who write: "When incentives are used to encourage utilization of, or compliance with, established means of producing individual or public health benefits and when it is likely that recipients are already favorably disposed to these goals, then traditional concerns about the provision of incentives in research may be misplaced, and even misguided.
The High Rate Of Trauma Among American Women With HIV AIDS And Its Public Health Consequences
Physical violence, sexual abuse and other forms of childhood and adult trauma are major factors fueling the epidemic of HIV/AIDS among American women. Scientists have known for years that traumatized women are at greater risk of becoming infected. Now, two new studies from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Harvard Medical School demonstrate that a high rate of trauma among women already infected with HIV also plays a role in the epidemic. Described in back-to-back papers in the journal AIDS and Behavior, the new work demonstrates that women with HIV are exposed to trauma and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at rates far higher than those occurring in women in general.
Study Of Selenium Metabolism
Spanish and Danish researchers have developed a method for the in vivo study of the unknown metabolism of selenium, an essential element for living beings. The technique can help clarify whether or not it possesses the anti-tumour properties that have been attributed to it and yet have not been verified through clinical trials. "It is vox populi that doctors around the world recommend selenium supplements to complement traditional therapy against cancer and the AIDS virus but the truth is that the basics of these properties are not clear, " explains to SINC Justo Giner, a chemist from the University of Oviedo (Spain).