Help for docs, older patients

Excerpts from the Globe's blog on the Boston-area medical community.

A Boston coalition has created a free, two-page questionnaire to help primary care physicians recognize and meet the needs of older patients. The work of the Boston Partnership for Older Adults, which includes 200 organizations and individuals concerned about the needs of older people, was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The questionnaire, and a companion version for patients, is meant to help raise issues about quality of life and support, said Clare Wohlgemuth, nursing director of the Boston University Geriatric Services at Boston Medical Center and chairwoman of the partnership's health committee. Common geriatric problems a patient might not raise in an office visit are falls, urinary incontinence, sexual activity or the burden of care they might be providing for someone else, Wohlgemuth said.

ELIZABETH COONEY

Another 10,000 people signed up for the state's subsidized insurance plan last month, bringing the total to 115,418, the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector announced. The bulk of the enrollees in the Commonwealth Care program are getting full subsidies, but more than 22,000 are required to pay small premiums.

In addition, 7,164 people now have insurance through a separate, unsubsidized program, called Commonwealth Choice. Seventy percent of those people have chosen plans offered with lower than market premiums, most of which have coverage limits or high deductibles.

ALICE DEMBNER

A lecture Friday honored Sue Kim Hanson, a researcher in the Boston University School of Medicine's pulmonary center before she died along with her husband and daughter on the second plane that struck the World Trade Center.

Tom Maniatis, a Harvard professor of molecular and cellular biology, delivered the sixth annual Sue Kim Hanson Lecture in Immunology. His topic was how innate immune cells respond to viral infections by directing how antiviral proteins are made.

ELIZABETH COONEY

Aggressive brain tumors receive more than one chemical signal telling them to grow, so more than one targeted drug should be used to shut these switches down, Dana-Farber researcher Dr. Ronald DePinho and his colleagues report in the online edition of the journal Science.

Testing a combination of three or more drugs, including Tarceva and Gleevec, against glioblastoma multiforme, a lethal brain tumor, the authors discovered they were able to block the abnormal signals and kill the cancer cells. Their research may explain why drugs such as Gleevec that target only one signaling pathway have had only limited success against tumors like glioblastoma.

ELIZABETH COONEY

Dr. John Halamka is used to fielding questions about the radio frequency identification chip embedded in his arm, and not just when he sets off security alarms at Home Depot.

The chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who had the microchip containing his medical data implanted in 2004, says he isn't worried by an Associated Press report that the US Food and Drug Administration ignored studies linking the chips to cancer in mice when it approved the devices.

"The chip is ceramic, surrounded by medical-grade glass that is, to my knowledge, invisible to the immune system," he said in an e-mail. "Thus, I cannot imagine how a chip could induce tumors."

ELIZABETH COONEY

Sophie Currier, the Harvard PhD, medical student and nursing mother who was denied extra time to pump her breasts during an all-day exam of medical knowledge, is suing the board that administers the exam.

Her lawyer, Christine Smith Collins, is asking a federal court for an immediate order requiring the National Board of Medical Examiners to provide extra time and an appropriate place for pumping. Currier plans to take the clinical knowledge exam on Sept. 24 and 25.

Dr. Ruth Hoppe, chairwoman of the governing board that oversees the tests, said she could not comment directly on Currier's case, but that the board tries to keep the tests as fair and uniform as possible. At the same time, she said, the nonprofit board of medical examiners tries to accommodate test-takers with personal difficulties that do not qualify as full-fledged disabilities, such as breast-feeding, bone fractures, back pain, and bowel problems.

CAREY GOLDBERG

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