Free Bus Travel for Teens Curbs Road Traffic Injuries and Benefits Environment: Researchers

by Rukmani Krishna on? June 15, 2013 at 12:32 AM Lifestyle News The findings show that it also seems to boost the number of short journeys taken by bus, which might otherwise have been cycled or walked.
The researchers wanted to assess the public health impact of giving teens in London free bus travel. The scheme was introduced for 12 to 16 year olds in 2005, and for 17 year olds in 2006.

They therefore used data from the London Area Transport Survey and London Travel Demand Surveys to calculate the number of journeys made in London?as well as distance and principal mode of travel?before (2001-4) and after (2005-9) the scheme was introduced.

And they looked at official data on traffic injuries and hospital admissions to see if the scheme had any noticeable effects on personal safety.

The analysis showed that the proportion of short journeys teens took by bus doubled from 2% to 5%, although the overall number of journeys they took did not increase.

The number of short trips walked also fell in tandem with an increase in this length of journey taken by bus, although there was no appreciable impact on total distance walked.

But there was clear evidence of a fall in the number of short journeys cycled and in distances cycled by young people, although this mode of travel was not hugely popular among this age group before the introduction of the scheme.

Rates of road traffic casualties had started falling before the introduction of the scheme, and continued to fall afterwards, but at a greater rate in young people, largely among passengers and cyclists. Pedestrian casualty rates remained the same.

Hospital admission rates for assaults had been rising among teens before 2005, but were higher among this age group after the scheme's introduction.

The number of daily car journeys taken by young people and adults fell, and the average distance travelled by car also shrank, suggesting that free bus travel prompts a shift away from car use and may therefore be a greener option.

There didn't seem to be any fall in the use of buses by older people after the scheme's introduction either.

"The findings suggest, unsurprisingly, a good uptake in use of buses for fulfilling travel needs, including for short journeys," write the authors.

"One disadvantage appears to be some reduction in the proportion of short trips by walking, and in the (already) low level of cycling; these might be detrimental to the establishment of future travel habits bringing regular physical activity," they suggest.

"On the other hand, the increase in the use of public transport may help to establish travel behaviour for later life that entails some physical activity, as well as helping to reduce car use," they say.

Source-Eurekalert

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Exercise Benefits Patients With Type 2 Diabetes: Study

Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body does not produce enough insulin, a hormone that regulates the movement of sugar into the cells, or when the cells resist the effects of insulin. The disease can lead to a wide range of complications, including damage to the eyes and kidneys and hardening of the arteries.

Exercise is recommended for people with diabetes, but its effects on different fat deposits in the body are unclear, according to the study's senior author, Hildo J. Lamb, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Radiology at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands.

"Based on previous studies, we noticed that different fat deposits in the body show a differential response to dietary or medical intervention," he said. "Metabolic and other effects of exercise are hard to investigate, because usually an exercise program is accompanied by changes in lifestyle and diet."

For the new study, Dr. Lamb and colleagues assessed the effects of exercise on organ-specific fat accumulation and cardiac function in type 2 diabetes patients, independent of any other lifestyle or dietary changes. The 12 patients, average age 46 years, underwent MRI examinations before and after six months of moderate-intensity exercise totaling between 3.5 and six hours per week and featuring two endurance and two resistance training sessions. The exercise cycle culminated with a 12-day trekking expedition.

MRI results showed that, although cardiac function was not affected, the exercise program led to a significant decrease in fat volume in the abdomen, liver and around the heart, all of which have been previously shown to be associated with increased cardiovascular risk.

"In the present study we observed that the second layer of fat around the heart, the peracardial fat, behaved similarly in response to exercise training as intra-abdominal, or visceral fat," Dr. Lamb said. "The fat content in the liver also decreased substantially after exercise."

Dr. Lamb noted that the exercise-induced fat reductions in the liver are of particular importance to people with type 2 diabetes, many of whom are overweight or obese.

"The liver plays a central role in regulating total body fat distribution," he said. "Therefore, reduction of liver fat content and visceral fat volume by physical exercise are very important to reverse the adverse effects of lipid accumulation elsewhere, such as the heart and arterial vessel wall."

The findings point to an important role for imaging in identifying appropriate treatment for patients with type 2 diabetes, which the World Health Organization projects to be the seventh leading cause of death worldwide by 2030.

"In the future, we hope to be able to use advanced imaging techniques to predict in individual patients which therapeutic strategy is most effective: diet, medication, exercise, surgery or certain combinations," Dr. Lamb said.

Source-Eurekalert

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Study Underlines Benefits of Linking Multiple Health Record Sources

Electronic health records are increasingly used to measure health outcomes, and for research, but records from one part of the health service (e.g. primary care) may not capture health events occurring in other parts of the health system (e.g. hospital care).

So a team of researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and UCL compared electronic health records for one major disease event - heart attack (myocardial infarction) - across four national health record sources in England: primary care, hospital care, disease registry and death records.

Previous studies have typically compared only one or two electronic sources.

They identified 21,482 patients with a record of acute myocardial infarction in one or more of the four data sources.

Risk factor profiles and one year all cause mortality rates were comparable across records from different sources.

However, they found that each data source missed a substantial proportion of cases. For example, only one third of non-fatal myocardial infarctions were recorded in all three data sources (primary care, hospital care and disease registry), while two thirds were recorded in two sources.

Primary care records were the single most complete source of non-fatal myocardial infarction records (not recording one quarter), hospital records missed one third and the disease registry nearly half.

In other words, acute myocardial infarction was underestimated by 25-50% using one source compared to using all three.

"With the current emphasis on measuring clinical outcomes in health systems and recent plans to use linked data to drive improvements in the care of patients with cardiovascular disease, our study has important implications for practice and policy," say the authors.

And they say future research should focus on areas such as improving how data are coded, understanding how linkages with primary care, admission to hospital and mortality data compare, and evaluating the quality of the data available in these linked data.

Source-Eurekalert

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Risk of Cancer Posed by CT Scans Should be Weighed Against Benefits in Diagnosing Diseases

The study findings are reported in the British Medical Journal today and involved researchers at eight other centres in Australia, Oxford University, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France.

Professor Mathews said: "CT scans were very useful in providing detailed three dimensional pictures to diagnose or exclude disease in internal organs and in most cases, the benefits of having a scan clearly outweigh the risk of a later cancer. Nevertheless, our new findings will remind doctors to order CT scans only when there is a definite medical reason, and to insist that CT scans use the lowest possible X-ray dose'. he said.

"As an individual patient, your risk of cancer from a CT scan is very low. Nevertheless, it is clear from our study that if we reduce the number of scans performed in a large population, and continue to reduce the doses from individual scans, there will be a small but corresponding reduction in the number of cancers in later years."

It is well known that large doses of radiation can damage DNA and increase the risk of a later cancer. However, the radiation doses from CT scans are very small, and there has been uncertainty about whether such small doses would cause cancer, and whether any small increase in risk could be measured reliably.

This study answered questions by linking de-identified Medicare records of CT exposures for the entire population of young Australians, aged 0-19 years between 1985 and 2005, to cancers diagnosed up to the end of 2007.

The risk of cancer increased with the number of CT scans, and the proportional increase in risk was greater for those exposed at younger ages. Nevertheless, as CT usage increased with age, the majority of cancers in this study followed exposures in the teenage years. Although this study did not directly assess the effects of CT exposures after the age of 19, the results suggest that cancer risk will increase following CT scans in adult life.

With improvements in CT technology, the average radiation dose per scan is expected to fall, although CT scan numbers have continued to increase in many countries.

Source-Eurekalert

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