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Nursing Shortage Eases With Recession's Help
"The nation"s deep recession is helping to alleviate the decade-long nursing shortage, as workers who had left the field in better times are returning in droves," the Wall Street Journal reports. The paper quotes a study, one of six papers on the nursing workforce published today in the journal Health Affairs, that found "nearly a quarter-million nurses entered the work force in 2007-08, an 18% surge that was the largest two-year increase in at least three decades." Many of them had left nursing, but "re-entered the work force to compensate for a spouse"s lost income or health benefits, the study said." The increase is "particularly remarkable at a time when the U.S. economy has shed more than six million jobs, helping to solidify the profession"s "recession-proof" image." The study found that the surge in new nurses is due to "efforts to expand nursing schools, attract more young people into the field and improve working conditions," along with an increase in the number of foreign-born nurses.

Lower Cancer Risk For Obese Women Who Underwent Weight-Loss Surgery
An article published Online First and in the July edition of The Lancet Oncology indicates that weight-loss surgery known as bariatric surgery could be linked to a reduction in cancer risk in obese women, but not in obese men.
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PharmAthene Submits SparVax(TM) Regulatory Strategy To FDA
PharmAthene, Inc. (NYSE Amex: PIP), a biodefense company developing medical countermeasures against biological and chemical threats, announced that the Company has submitted its comprehensive regulatory strategy to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) outlining the non-clinical and clinical development plans for licensure of SparVax(TM), a next generation recombinant protective antigen anthrax vaccine.
Endocrinology

Ben-Gurion U. Researchers Identify How Stressed Fat Tissue Malfunctions

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, in a collaboration with colleagues from the University of Leipzig, Germany, have identified a signaling pathway that is operational in intra-abdominal fat, the fat depot that is most strongly tied to obesity-related morbidity. The paper was just published in the Endocrine Society"s the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism ( J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab. 2009; 94:2507-251) "Fat tissue in obesity is dysfunctional, yet, the processes that cause fat tissue to malfunction are poorly understood -- specifically, it is unknown how fat cells "translate" stresses in obesity into dysfunction," said Dr. Assaf Rudich, senior lecturer from the Department of Clinical Biochemistry at Ben-Gurion University. Fat tissue is no longer considered simply a storage place for excess calories, but in fact is an active tissue that secretes multiple compounds, thereby communicating with other tissues, including the liver, muscles, pancreas and the brain. Normal communication is necessary for optimal metabolism and weight regulation. However, in obesity, fat (adipose) tissue becomes dysfunctional, and mis-communicates with the other tissues. This places fat tissue at a central junction in mechanisms leading to common diseases attributed to obesity, like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Fat tissue dysfunction is believed to be caused by obesity-induced fat tissue stress: Cells over-grow as they store increasing amounts of fat. This excessive cell growth may cause decreased oxygen delivery into the tissue; individual cells may die (at least in mouse models), and fat tissue inflammation ensues. Also, excess nutrients (glucose, fatty acids) can also result in increased metabolic demands, and this in itself can cause cellular stress. The BGU and Leipzig teams established a setup for collecting fat tissue samples from people undergoing abdominal surgery. The team identified a signaling pathway that is operational in intra-abdominal fat, the fat depot that is most strongly tied to obesity-related morbidity. The degree of activation of a signaling pathway from these individuals was compared with those of leaner people, those with obesity predominantly characterized by accumulation of "peripheral" fat, and those with obesity with predominant accumulation of fat within the abdominal cavity. They discovered that the signaling pathway was more active depending on the amount of fat accumulation in the abdomen, and that it correlated with multiple biochemical markers for increased cardio-metabolic risk. Moreover, the expression of one of the upstream signaling components, a protein called ASK1, predicts whole-body insulin resistance (an endocrine abnormality that is strongly tied to diabetes and cardiovascular disease), independent of other traditional risk factors. Researchers also demonstrated that although non-fat cells within adipose tissue express most of this protein in lean persons, the adipocytes themselves increase its expression by more than four-fold in abdominally-obese persons. "The importance of this study is not only in contributing to the understanding of adipose tissue dysfunction in obesity, but as a consequence, may provide important leads for novel ways to prevent the dangerous consequences, such as type 2 diabetes, of intra-abdominal fat accumulation," states Dr. Iris Shai, a BGU researcher at the S. Daniel Abraham International Center for Health and Nutrition and Soroka University Medical Center in Beer-Sheva, Israel. Notes: The project was initially established by a grant from BGU"s National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev (NIBN). Then by grants from The Israeli Association for the Study of Diabetes, D-Cure, The Israel Science Foundation (ISF), and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Activated Ask1-MKK4-p38MAPK/JNK Stress Signaling Pathway in Human Omental Fat Tissue May Link Macrophage Infiltration to Whole-Body Insulin Sensitivity Matthias Bl̿her, Nava Bashan, Iris Shai, Ilana Harman-Boehm, Tanya Tarnovscki, Eliezer Avinaoch, Michael Stumvoll, Arne Dietrich, Nora Kl̦ting, and Assaf Rudich J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab. 2009; 94:2507-2515. Department of Medicine (M.B., M.S., N.K.), Department of Surgery II (A.D.), University of Leipzig, 04107 Leipzig, Germany; Department of Clinical Biochemistry (N.B., T.T., A.R.), and The S. Daniel Abraham International Center for Health and Nutrition (I.S., A.R.), Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84103, Israel; and Soroka University Medical Center (I.H.-B., E.A.), Beer-Sheva 84101, Israel. Andrew Lavin American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev


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