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Drop In U.S. Births Began Before Recession, Census Data Show
Newly released Census Bureau data show that even before the current economic recession began in September 2008, population growth among children younger than age one began to decline, the AP/Kansas City Star reports. Between July 2007 and July 2008, the number of children younger than age one in the U.S. increased 0.9%, compared with a record 2.7% increase the previous year. Although births tend to drop during economic downturns as more people decide that they cannot afford to support children, experts said it is not clear why the recent drop began months before the current recession emerged. Stephanie Ventura, a demographer for the National Center for Health Statistics, said that it will be impossible to know what factors contributed to the change until demographic breakdowns are available later this year. The AP/Star reports that increases in teenage births had been driving up birth rates in recent years.Historically, birth rates have declined during poor economic times -- including the recessions of 1973, 1982 and 2001 -- and births dropped nearly 26% during the Great Depression. Mark Mather, an associate vice president at the Population Research Bureau, said, "The economy does matter. If prospects look worse for families, they"re going to be very likely to have fewer kids" (Yen/Wagster Pettus, AP/Kansas City Star, 5/19).
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AMA Opposes Public Insurance Plan, As Obama Prepares Reform Pitch
America"s largest, most influential physician group said "it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system," the New York Times reports. In comments to the Senate Finance Committee, the American Medical Association said, "The introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans," and would lead to an "explosion of costs" (Pear, 6/10).
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'Consumer-Directed' Plans Rise In Popularity As Businesses Scramble To Cut Health Costs
High-deductible health insurance plans coupled with health savings accounts (tax-advantaged funds for covering medical costs), are becoming the plan of choice for Connecticut"s small businesses newly offering insurance to employees, Hartford Business reports. The plans, called "consumer-directed health plans," make up 60 percent of the insurance company Aetna"s new small business sales. Nationally, the number of people with these plans rose from 3.2 million in 2006 to eight million this year.
Public Health

'Surprising Link' Points Toward A New Antibiotic

As the best drugs become increasingly resistant to superbugs, McMaster University researchers have discovered a completely different way of looking for a new antibiotic. In a paper published May 29 in the journal Chemistry and Biology, with colleagues in Germany and Wilfrid Laurier University, they report on work with the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, the leading cause of infections in hospitals and the second most common community-acquired infection. Fewer and fewer antibiotics are effective against this bacteria. Cell wall-active antibiotics, such as penicillin, kill bacteria by blocking production of the cell wall. The researchers provide new evidence for genetic connections among three processes in the cell wall - teichoic acid, peptidoglycan and poly-isoprenoid synthesis. "Never before has such a profound link been drawn between these biosynthetic pathways supported by genetic, computational and biochemical evidence," they said in their paper. "We found a connection that perhaps no one expected in the way the cell wall synthesis is wired," said lead author Eric Brown, professor and chair of the department of biochemistry and biomedical sciences in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. "We found they are inextricably linked in their genetics and biochemistry," he said. "Along the way in this study, we have built a system that is ripe for being exploited as a way to search for small molecule drugs that would target these processes." Potentially, he said, this may lead to the development of a new antibiotic. Brown said the current arsenal of antibiotics was developed during the golden age of antibiotic drug discovery from 1930 to 1960, and then development stopped. Research began again in earnest, he said, when troublesome strains of hospital and community-acquired infections began to emerge, such as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). "Since the 1960s, drug companies have for, the most part, been tweaking existing molecules, such as building better penicillin with minor changes to the original scaffold. But, you are not very far away from resistance when all you do is a little tweak." The discovery of a "surprising link" between the three processes involved in cell wall synthesis lets researchers build a method of looking for molecules that will disturb the balance between them. "It offers a completely different way of looking for a new antibiotic that would be active against the cell wall," Brown said. Veronica McGuire McMaster University


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