Pharmaceutical researchers at Merck have developed a promising drug called Ionafarnib to combat the rare disease progeria, a fatal affliction that causes rapid aging in children. According to the Wall Street Journal, children suffering from progeria die of heart attack or stroke at a young age due to an excess of the protein progerin, which accumulates in the body as people age. Researchers hope that better understanding progerin formation may inform their understanding of the body’s aging process, which could lead to medical breakthroughs in curing common cardiovascular diseases:

The drug appeared to slow, and in some cases reverse, damage caused by the disease, including arterial stiffness, which also is linked to heart problems in the normal aging population. [...]

Over the past few years, papers have been published demonstrating that progerin, a mutant form of the Lamin A protein, which is critical in organizing the genome inside the body’s cells, accumulates in everyone as they age. The thinking is that a drug that mitigates cardiovascular problems in children with progeria might also affect cardiovascular problems more broadly.

“More data suggests that this mechanism at least in some cases may be related to things that happen in normal aging, and the study is of interest in that regard,” said Brian Kennedy, president and chief executive of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, Calif.

The findings in the Ionafarnib trial underscore the often unpredictable nature of medical and pharmaceutical innovation. Major breakthroughs in medical science were born out of research geared towards entirely unrelated subjects, including the discoveries of insulin and penicillin — in fact, Ionafarnib itself was meant to be a cancer-treatment drug before showing promise for progeria patients. It goes to show that continued innovation and research into rare disorders has the potential to unlock countless biomedical mysteries that plague the human species.

A new study from the Guttmacher Institute investigates the ways that women believe their birth control has impacted their lives. Although the strong connection between increased access to contraception and increased improvements to women’s lives has been confirmed, women are rarely asked to speak about the effects of birth control on their own lives and in their own words — a gap that the study’s authors hoped to fill.

The majority of respondents confirmed that being able to use contraception has had a significant impact on the quality of their lives, particularly by giving them the economic autonomy to pursue goals like becoming financially independent or getting a college degree. 63 percent of women said their birth control allowed them to take better care of themselves or their families, 56 percent reported it helped them support themselves financially, 51 percent credited contraception with allowing them to complete their education, and 50 percent said it enabled them to either keep or get a job. When asked why they are currently in need of contraceptive coverage, women noted that an unintended pregnancy would put a financial strain on their lives — a full 65 percent of women said their primary reason for using birth control is because they could not currently afford to take care of a new baby.

Study author Laura Lindberg pointed out that the ability to have control over childbearing is an important value for women, since — unlike men — women’s reproductive systems are inextricably linked to their ability to achieve their economic goals. “Women value the ability to plan their childbearing, and view doing so as critical to being able to achieve their life goals,” Lindberg explained. “They need continued access to a wide range of contraceptives so they can plan their families and determine when they are ready to have children.”

The study notes that the Centers for Disease Control celebrated the development of modern contraception as one of the 10 most important public health achievements of the 20th century, and the authors point to their findings as further proof of “the value of ensuring women’s continued and increased access to a full range of contraceptive services and methods.” Following this line of thought, President Obama’s health care reform law adopted new guidelines to define contraception as basic preventative care for women. Although Obamacare’s birth control provision that requires employer-based insurance plans to cover birth control without a co-pay went into effect on August 1, conservative religious groups continue to fight against the imperative to provide affordable health care for women.

A new brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that President Obama’s health care reform represents a significant step forward for Americans with HIV, helping to expand health insurance to many HIV-positive individuals who would be “otherwise unable to access affordable and stable health care coverage.” Representing hugely important tactics to continue addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic, several of Obamacare’s provisions will have a directly positive impact on the estimated 1.1 million Americans who live with the HIV virus:

• Obamacare will prevent insurance companies from denying HIV-positive Americans coverage simply based on their HIV status. The health care reform law prohibits insurance companies from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions, including HIV. Before Obamacare, Americans living with HIV often struggled to find insurance companies willing to take them on — according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, just 13 percent of HIV-positive individuals were covered under private insurance in 2010.
• Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid program helps low-income Americans with HIV who otherwise wouldn’t qualify for coverage. Over 40 percent of HIV-positive Americans accessed their health insurance through the Medicaid program in 2010, and expanding Medicaid even further will extend additional coverage to this community. Furthermore, under Obamacare, HIV-positive individuals do not have to have to be diagnosed with AIDS as a precursor to qualifying for Medicaid coverage. Although this was an old eligibility requirement for the program, the health reform law ensures the states that accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion will not have to impose this restriction on Americans living with the HIV virus.
• HIV-positive Americans will no longer reach limits on the amount of treatment their insurance companies are willing to cover. Obamacare eliminates lifetime coverage caps and phases out annual limits, which will help all Americans with chronic conditions — including the Americans who rely on treatment for HIV infections — continue to be able to afford the care they need without reaching an arbitrary cut-off set by their insurance companies.
• HIV testing will likely be covered under Obamacare. This year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is expected to recommend routine HIV screenings as a part of regular preventative care, similar to a routine blood pressure test. Since the health reform law requires insurers to cover the preventive services recommended by the Preventative Services Task Force, a new standard for HIV testing could ensure that it becomes a standard part of annual check-ups. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that about 20 percent of the total population of Americans who are infected with HIV don’t know they have the virus, so regular tests that don’t incur an out-of-pocket expense could help encourage more Americans to learn their status.
• Since Obamacare helps close the prescription drug coverage gap for Medicare beneficiaries, HIV-positive individuals will be more likely to afford their drug treatments for the virus. By closing the “donut hole,” or the gap in coverage for expensive prescription drugs under the Medicare program, Obamacare will help ensure that older Americans living with HIV aren’t unable to afford any of the 26 antiretroviral drug treatments that can be used to combat HIV infections. Twelve percent of Americans with HIV relied on Medicare for their health coverage in 2010, and that number may rise significantly as the population of HIV-positive Americans continues to age.
• Obamacare increases resources for HIV research and prevention. The health care reform law allocates $10 billion over ten years for a new fund that focuses on prevention, wellness, and public health activities. In 2010, $30 million from that fund was awarded to the Centers for Disease Control for HIV prevention activities, including new investments in HIV surveillance and testing among high-risk populations.

Medical errors, fraud, and systemic abuse in U.S. health care are unnecessary and largely-preventable contributors to the nation’s rising health costs. Americans tend to trust their doctors and caretakers, but evidence suggests that in some instances, their faith is misplaced. The Obama Administration, through anti-fraud provisions in the health reform law and independent Administration efforts, is cracking down on insurance companies, doctors, and providers who game the system for personal benefit.

In their most explicit warnings to health care providers to date, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius issued a letter to hospital trade associations on Monday cautioning that fraud in Medicare billing paperwork and illegal practices such as “upcoding” would be met with the full force of federal law. As the letter declares, “False documentation of care is not just bad patient care; it’s illegal.”

And The New York Times reports that the Administration wants to go one step further by instituting a new federal initiative that would allow consumers and patients to fill out a questionnaire assessing their care and hospital stays. Initial versions of the “care questionnaire” include questions meant to discern possible medical errors by doctor, hospitals, and pharmacists:

A draft questionnaire asks patients to “tell us the name and address of the doctor, nurse or other health care provider involved in the mistake.” And it asks patients for permission to share the reports with health care providers “so they can learn about what went wrong and improve safety.”

In seeking White House approval this month for a prototype of the reporting system, Dr. Carolyn M. Clancy, the director of the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a part of the Public Health Service, said, “Currently there is no mechanism for consumers to report information about patient safety events.”

“Patient reports could complement and enhance reports from providers and thus produce a more complete and accurate understanding of the prevalence and characteristics” of medical errors, Dr. Clancy said.

The Obama Administration has already reinforced existing Medicare anti-fraud programs in recent days by allocating an additional $7 million to the national Senior Medicare Patrol program, a volunteer-driven consumer-protection group that trains seniors, Medicare beneficiaries, and care providers how to identify and report Medicare fraud.

By some estimates, consumer-empowerment measures and medical anti-fraud programs could save close to $4 billion in wasteful medical spending annually.