Officials don’t know if the bat had rabies. It escaped. But they want to alert passengers of the risk just in case. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is trying to reach all 50 people who flew on Delta flight 5121, which departed from Madison, Wis., to Atlanta at 6:45 a.m. on Aug. 5.

If the animal was rabid, people could catch rabies from a bite or exposure to the bat’s saliva.

CDC officials asked anyone on the flight to call 1-866-613-2683. The airline didn’t retain the records for all the passengers.

The jet was in the air when the winged animal emerged and a passenger shot a video. Operators of the flight said it could have been a bird. But CDC says its rabies expert believes from the video that it was a bat.

Source: Associated Press

The findings come as a growing number of employers are seeking waivers from an early provision in the overhaul that requires them to enrich their benefits this year. At the end of April, the administration had granted 1,372 employers, unions and insurance companies one-year exemptions from the law’s requirement that they not cap annual benefit payouts below $750,000 per person a year.

But the law doesn’t allow for such waivers starting in 2014, leaving all those entities—and other employers whose plans don’t meet a slate of new requirements—to change their offerings or drop coverage.

Previous research has suggested the number of employers who opt to drop coverage altogether in 2014 would be minimal.

But the McKinsey study predicts a more dramatic shift from employer-sponsored health plans once the new marketplace takes effect. Starting in 2014, all but the smallest employers will be required to provide insurance or pay a fine, while most Americans will have to carry coverage or pay a different fine. Lower earners will get subsidies to help them pay for plans.

In surveying 1,300 employers earlier this year, McKinsey found that 30% said they would “definitely or probably” stop offering employer coverage in the years after 2014. That figure increased to more than 50% among employers with a high awareness of the overhaul law.

via Many Employers May Drop Health Coverage After Overhaul, Report Says – WSJ.com.

European experts say antibiotic-resistant infections are occurring at a rate that outstrips our ability to fight them with current medications. In the European Union over 25,000 patients die annually from drug-resistant infections that even our latest antibiotics cannot destroy.
WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan, said:

"The message on this World Health Day is loud and clear. The world is on the brink of losing these miracle cures. In the absence of urgent corrective and protective actions, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which many common infections will no longer have a cure and, once again, kill unabated."

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Surgeons said that last year across both sexes they performed 13.1million procedures last year, a 5 per cent increase on the year before. But amongst men only there was a 6% rise in those who went under the knife just to have their ‘man boobs’ scaled down.

The figures also showed a 14 per cent increase in the number of men getting facelifts and a 7 per cent hike in liposuction amongst males.

Surgeons said that older men are driving the rises because they want to look their best in a competitive job market.

The rise of smart casual clothes and ‘dress down Fridays’ also meant they were more likely to expose their portly figures, they said.

via Plastic Surgery for Men: Men Getting Cosmetic Surgery | Mail Online.

Researchers made this discovery while recruiting college students with normal hearing for a study that looked at the whether the use of personal music players can cause temporary hearing loss. Several of the students who reported normal hearing during telephone interviews showed signs of hearing loss when tested.

Source

The newest Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures report has found that for the almost 5.5 million people suffering from the disease in America there are almost 15 million unpaid caregivers for them.

Many of these caregivers are family members or close friends, with the majority of them being women older then 55 years of age.

These unpaid caregivers total over 17 billion hours of assistance to Alzheimer’s patients, which would cost over $200 billion in private health costs.

The report also details the effect that supplying the care has on the givers – often at a decrease to their own mental and physical health.

More then three out of every five caregivers reported high to very high mental and/or physical stress as well as 65% being classified as overweight or obese.

Often the act of caring for sick a sick family member or friend takes precedence over the caregiver’s own health.

Source

The preliminary report published online Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine is the latest of several recent studies that suggest scientists can spot Down syndrome through fetal DNA that has been shed into the mother’s bloodstream.

Down syndrome, which results in cognitive delays, is caused by having an extra copy of a particular chromosome. Currently, pregnant women get blood tests and ultrasound to find out if the fetus is at risk for Down syndrome. For a firm diagnosis, doctors take a sample of amniotic fluid or the placenta.

Those sampling procedures involve a small risk of miscarriage. A reliable diagnostic blood test also could give an answer earlier than the standard tests.

Several research teams have published studies suggesting that analyzing the mother’s blood can detect Down syndrome in a fetus. There’s no commercial test available yet, but at least one company hopes to introduce one in the U.S. within about a year.

In the latest report, scientists in Cyprus, Greece and England said that in a blind test, they correctly identified 14 Down syndrome cases and 26 normal fetuses.

They said a bigger study is needed to confirm the usefulness of their approach.

Source: Associated Press

It’s enough to make you grab a tissue: Minneapolis has tacked 16 days to the ragweed pollen season since 1995; LaCrosse, Wisc. has added 13 days, Winnipeg and Saskatoon in Canada have added 25 and 27 days, respectively.

The new research, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds the longer pollen seasons correlate with the disproportionate warming happening around the planet and attributed to greenhouse gas emissions.

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