RESEARCH UPDATES

December 20, 2006

Contrary to previous studies, folic acid, a B vitamin, does not decrease the risk of coronary heart disease or stroke for people with a history of vascular disease, according to an article published by Tulane University researchers in the Dec. 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and world, accounting for more than 30 percent of deaths worldwide and more than 37 percent of deaths in the United States. Approximately 71 million people in the U.S. have one or more form of cardiovascular disease.

Lydia A. Bazzano, assistant professor of epidemiology at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and colleagues analyzed 12 randomized clinical trials (with 16,958 participants) that compared folic acid supplementation with either placebo or usual care for a minimum duration of six months. The researchers reported the number of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases in each group.

The Tulane team's analysis suggests that folic acid supplementation is ineffective in prevention of cardiovascular disease among people with a history of vascular diseases. They recommend instead proven preventive strategies including smoking cessation, lipid reduction, treatment of hypertension and diabetes, maintenance of a healthy weight and physical activity.

 

December 15, 2006

Meshawn Tarver is looking for some grandmotherly advice. She wants to understand what affects a woman's choice of whether to breast- or formula-feed her baby, and she is recruiting families with several generations of African-American women on the mother's side to discuss the issue.

Tarver is senior program coordinator for breastfeeding and women's health at the Tulane Xavier National Center of Excellence in Women's Health.

"There are a lot of programs out there to encourage breastfeeding, but in order to be effective in the African-American community, we need to understand the way in which female relatives affect the choice that a new mother will make," says Tarver.

Breastfeeding rates are low in Louisiana, despite the fact that breastfeeding is nationally recognized as the best possible method for feeding infants, says Tarver, adding that African-American women breastfeed at lower rates than Caucasian women.

Tarver is looking for African-American women who have breast- or formula-fed at least one child and who have from two to three consecutive generations of women (grandmothers, great-grandmothers, aunts) on their mother's side who are willing to participate in focus groups and interviews about breastfeeding. The group meetings will take place in area churches. Interested women can call Tarver at 504-988-3702.

 

November 30, 2006

Tulane faculty members or students who are researching migration patterns caused by Hurricane Katrina may be interested in a "call for papers" issued by Elizabeth Fussell of the sociology department.

Fussell is one of the organizers of a conference to be held April 12-14, 2007, at Tulane on the topic, "Disaster and Migration: Hurricane Katrina's Effects on New Orleans' Population."

The U.S. experienced one of the largest mass migrations in recent history after Katrina, Fussell writes. In addition, after the damaged city reopened, two distinct migration flows into the city occurred when displaced New Orleanians returned and an unknown number of newcomers arrived in the city to clean up and rebuild.

Fussell hopes members of the Tulane community who may be doing research on this subject will submit scholarly papers to her by the deadline of Dec. 20. Submissions should be sent to Elizabeth Fussell, Sociology Department, Tulane University, 220 Newcomb Hall, New Orleans, LA 70118-5698.

The conference, sponsored by the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, Tulane and the Social Science Research Council of New York, will bring together scholars contributing to a social scientific understanding of disaster and migration. More information is available by e-mailing Fussell.

 

August 14, 2006

Thanks in large part to Tulane University, Louisiana ranked No. 27 out of all states that receive National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. Tulane is the largest single recipient of funding from the NIH in the state of Louisiana for fiscal year 2005, according to recent national data.

The university received $73,392,850 in funding from the NIH, which is 40 percent of the funding awarded to all Louisiana institutions. Tulane is ranked No. 79 out of the 3,419 institutions that receive NIH funding, up from No. 83 in fiscal year 2004.

"These rankings demonstrate national recognition of our competitive research capabilities," says Scott Cowen, Tulane president. "The strength of our research programs continues to draw funding to Louisiana as well as highly qualified faculty and students."

The Tulane University School of Medicine ranked No. 59 out of the 123 schools with NIH funding, which represents a steady improvement in ranking from No. 89 in fiscal year 2001.iscal year 2001.

 

June 30, 2006

Teaching young women to delay sex until marriage is a good start but is not enough to prevent the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, says Tulane international health researcher Sohail Agha. In fact, Agha's research of Zambian women showed that years of education was a stronger predictor of both delaying sex and using condoms.

The research team analyzed data from 5,534 unmarried Zambian women between 13 and 20 years old. According to Agha, this is one of the first studies to look at both behaviors. Overall, nearly 50 percent of the women surveyed had not initiated sex. Of those who had, only one in four reported using a condom the first time they had sex.

Overall, religious affiliation did not affect either the age of first sex or use of a condom during the first sexual event. However, women belonging to the more conservative denominations abstained longer, with 59 percent of Jehovah's Witnesses and 54 percent of Seventh Day Adventists reporting that they had never had sex. The survey also showed that only one in five women in these denominations used a condom the first time they had sex, compared to one in four overall.

The research was published in a recent issue of the journal of Adolescent Health.

 

June 16, 2006

People with high blood pressure are three times less likely to take their medications regularly if they have caretaking responsibilities for children or other relatives, says Marie Krousel-Wood, a researcher at Tulane University. Additionally, people who feel they can't see a doctor when they need to are two times more likely to report poor adherence to prescribed medicines.

"Nationally, we know that only one in three people with high blood pressure have the condition under control. Poor adherence to prescribed medications is a key factor contributing to poor blood pressure control," says Krousel-Wood, professor of family and community medicine. "We wanted to investigate factors that affect people's ability to take their medications as prescribed."

In partnership with the Ochsner Clinic Foundation, she studied 295 urban patients who were diagnosed with high blood pressure. Other patients reporting higher rates of poor adherence to prescriptions include current smokers, males, African-Americans, younger people and those earning less than $1000 a month.

Krousel-Wood recently received funding from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a larger, four-year study of medication adherence in older adults.

 

May 22, 2006

The focus will be on the latest Tulane University research in women’s health today (May 22) when Tulane faculty members make technical presentations from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in room 1201 of the Tidewater Building, 1440 Canal St.

The Third Annual Women’s Health Research Marathon Day and awards program will feature Paul Whelton, senior vice president for the health sciences, as the keynote speaker. He will discuss “Lifestyle Practices Intervention in Cardiovascular Disease and Clinical Practice.”

Speakers will discuss their research in such areas as blood pressure, breast cancer drugs, diabetes, cardiovascular risk factors, smoking among adolescent girls, and rheumatoid arthritis.

The presentations are organized by the Tulane-Xavier Center of Excellence in Women’s Health and the Tulane Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health Program.

 

April 12, 2006

Guilt is more effective than hope or fear in persuading people to undertake self-protective measures such as eating better or wearing sunscreen, according to a new study co-authored by Tulane University consumer behavior professor Mita Sujan.

That's because guilt, unlike hope or fear, is an internally based emotion which makes a person feel accountable for results, Sujan says.

"It really doesn't matter whether the motivating emotion is positive or negative. What's more important is making a person feel accountable," Sujan says.

So while fear of the sun's damaging effects might make a person apply sunscreen, guilt over exposing themselves to a disease that could take them away from their loved ones is a greater impetus to action.

To arrive at their conclusions, Sujan and Kirsten A. Passyn, a management and marketing professor at Salisbury University, conducted field experiments with approximately 500 college students, examining behaviors such as getting vaccinated for a campus outbreak of meningitis, using sunscreen and eating more high-fiber foods.

The study was published in the March 2006 issue of The Journal of Consumer Research.

 

April 10, 2006

High-tech methods of vaccine delivery may make needles a thing of the past, if a Tulane University team succeeds in using nanotechnology that allows the absorption of vaccines through the skin. Tulane is slated to receive $2.3 million from the National Institutes of Health over four years for research into technology that will allow vaccines to cross directly through the skin barrier.

"Vaccine applications using nanotechnology have the potential to increase overall immunity, be more stable, last longer between production and use, and lower the costs of vaccination programs," says principal investigator John Clements, chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Co-investigators include Lucy Freytag and Louise Lawson from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology; Kyrkiakos Papadopoulos, Yunfeng Lu and Vijay John from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; and Scott Grayson from the Department of Chemistry.

According to Clements, the research will draw from the wide range of expertise at Tulane, from developing complex particles smaller than atoms to take vaccines across the skin, to novel ways to watch the delivery process using newly acquired high powered microscopy tools at Tulane, to cell and small animal studies and, even further, to primate studies.

 

April 3, 2006

According to a new study by Tulane University researchers, African Americans from New Orleans were four times more likely to lose their jobs, more likely to experience high stress levels, and more likely to rely on religious faith than their white counterparts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

These are just a few of the findings by Tulane sociology professor James R. Elliott and sociology graduate student Jeremy Pais, who have completed a study on human responses to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The researchers used data from a Gallup telephone survey conducted one month after the storm with 1,510 adult survivors from across the Gulf South region.

Elliott and Pais analyzed patterns in evacuation behavior, housing and employment, post-disaster coping and stress and likelihood of return, and determined significant racial and class differences in the patterns. The two presented their analyses at the 69th annual meeting of the recent Southern Sociological Society in New Orleans. An article based on this research is to be published in the June issue of Social Science Research.

 

March 20, 2006

Chinese adults who are either underweight or obese increase their risk of early death, say Tulane University epidemiologists in an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“The relationship between weight and health outcomes has primarily been studied in Western populations," says lead author and principal investigator Jiang He, chair of epidemiology. “Our results show that a universal standard of healthy weights that puts body mass index between 23 and 27 can and should be applied to all racial and ethnic groups.”

The researchers analyzed data from 154,736 adults over the age of 40 years living in mainland China. The data had been collected over a 10-year period, once in 1991 and again in 1999-2000. Men with a BMI between 24 and 24.9 and women with a BMI between 25 and 26.9 were the least likely to die during the study, while those with the highest and lowest BMIs were the most likely to die.

Researchers note that male gender, cigarette smoking and alcohol use were common among leaner participants while heavier study subjects were more likely to be physically inactive and have high blood pressure.

 

February 23, 2006

The Newcomb College Center for Research on Women is seeking applicants for several different research grants.

• Current Tulane undergrads and graduate students researching topics relating to women may apply for funds to help with the cost of conducting original research in a class project, independent study or thesis. The program annually awards grants averaging $300 each and is supported by the Jesselyn Zurik Fund for Research, and by Friends of the Center. The deadline is March 10.

• The Shelley W. Coverman Award is a $500 annual award to a Tulane undergraduate or graduate student who has excelled in conducting an empirical social science research project on women's roles in society, or who has pursued with distinction a curriculum focusing on this area. Nominations from a Tulane faculty member are due the week of March 20.

• Grants of up to $1,000 are available through the Emily Shoenbaum Research and Community Development Grants Program, which supports projects that will benefit the lives of women and girls, particularly in Louisiana. Applicants may be students, faculty or staff members of any Louisiana college, university, primary or secondary school, as well as community scholars and activists. The deadline is March 10.

 

February 16, 2006

New federal funding to Tulane University will allow minority undergraduate and graduate students to get experience in international health research at seven sites around the world. Tulane, in collaboration with Xavier University, received $852,000 for a four-year Minority International Research Training grant from the National Institutes of Health.

"Our hope is that this opportunity will stimulate students to see health disparity issues in the U.S. in a broader perspective as global problems, so they will be able to understand the common problems populations share and be able to apply lessons learned from one group to another one," says Richard Oberhelman, principal investigator. Oberhelman, a clinical associate professor of tropical medicine at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, studies pediatric tuberculosis and gastrointestinal infections in Peru.

Students will work on international health projects in Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Mali, Guinea, China and Thailand. They will receive intensive training in research methodology, research ethics and biosafety before they travel. The project also includes pre-travel medical services and basic language training as needed.