Health Headlines - September 10

Baby Boomers' Hospital Care Costs Mounting: Report

American hospitals spent about $56 billion in 2007 caring for baby boomers aged 55 to 64, an amount that was roughly equal to the amount spent on people 10 years older, a new federal report finds.

Using data from the 2007 Nationwide Inpatient Sample, the Agency for Health Care Research said that the amount hospitals spent on baby boomers equaled about 16 percent of total expenditures. This age group took up nearly as many health care dollars as patients aged 65-74 ($59 billion), while $46 billion was spent on Americans aged 45 to 54, according to an AHRQ news release.

Other findings:

• The average hospital bill for a baby boomer patient was $11,900 versus $10,400 for 45-54 year-olds.
• Compared to 45-54 year-olds, baby boomers had double to triple the odds of being hospitalized for osteoarthritis, stroke, respiratory failure, COPD, heart arrhythmias, blood infections, congestive heart failure, knee/hip replacements and bypass procedures.
• Medicaid and other public insurance covered 37 percent of baby boomers, while 52 percent had private insurance and 6 percent had no insurance.

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Poor Trial Results a Setback for First Stem Cell Drug

Prochymal, an experimental drug which its makers had hoped would be the first mass-produced medication derived from stem cells, has failed two late-stage clinical trials, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

The drug is derived from mesenchymal stem cells found in the bone marrow of young adults and cultured in the lab. It was hoped that Prochymal might help ease graft-versus-host disease, a dangerous condition that can occur in patients after organ transplants.

But in one trial, patients who took Prochymal along with steroids had a 45 percent response rate, little different from the 46 percent response rate for those who took a steroid and a placebo. And in a second trial, conducted in patients who were not benefiting from steroid therapy, 35 percent of those receiving Prochymal showed a reduction in their graft-versus-host disease, compared to 30 percent of those on placebo -- not a statistically significant difference.

The drug's maker, Columbia, Md.-based Osiris Therapeutics, said that the second did show a statistically meaningful benefit for a subset of patients with graft-vs-host disease targeting the liver or gastrointestinal system. However, the Times noted that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration typically does not approve drugs that benefit only a subset of patients.

The failure of the drug to impress in these two trials suggests there's still much researchers don't understand about stem cells. "Understanding [these cells] well enough to translate to the clinic -- that's the hurdle we're at," Dr. Darwin Prockop, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Texas A&M Health Science Center, told the Times.

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HHS' Sebelius Counsels Kids with Asthma on Swine Flu

The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services delivered a special message to students with asthma on Tuesday about how to stay healthy and avoid missing school as the H1N1 swine flu season approaches.

Kathleen Sebelius visited 7th graders at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School in Philadelphia. The school is a partner in the Merck Childhood Asthma Network (MCAN), which helps children better control their asthma.

Children with asthma are at high risk for complications from seasonal flu, as well as the H1N1 swine flu virus. "Nothing is more important than keeping our children healthy, in school and ready to learn as we start the new school year," Dr. Floyd Malveaux, executive director of MCAN and former dean of the College of Medicine at Howard University, said in an MCAN news release.

Addressing students and their parents, Sebelius emphasized the value of education and the need to develop healthy habits to stay well.

"Staying healthy can be a challenge for students with asthma -- a factor that is even further complicated with the possibility of being exposed to the H1N1 virus, which can increase the severity of asthma symptoms, leading to possible hospitalizations," Malveaux said.