Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, refers to a group of diseases that cause airflow blockage and breathing-related problems. It includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. COPD makes breathing difficult for the 16 million Americans who have this disease. Millions more people suffer from COPD, but have not been diagnosed and are not being treated. Although there is no cure for COPD, it can be treated.
Your Health
National Donate Life Month
Donate Life America – For the 2019 National Donate Life Month theme, Donate Life America was inspired by bicycles and the phrase “Life is a beautiful ride.” Like the donation and transplantation journey, a bicycle serves as a symbol of progress, renewal and the moving circle of life.
Bicycles come in all styles, shapes and sizes, but each is comprised of the same components, essential to supporting the rider and converting their energy into motion. Similarly, organ, eye and tissue donation offers many ways to give hope, support and strength to patients waiting, recipients and donor families. We each carry the potential to help make LIFE a beautiful ride for ourselves, and then for others, by registering as a donor, considering living donation, being a caregiver and championing the cause.
This National Donate Life Month, we ask you to consider your role in this lifesaving and healing journey, and how you can inspire others to provide hope through donor registration and living donation.
Tickborne Diseases Increasing
National Institute of Health – The incidence of tickborne infections in the United States has risen significantly within the past decade. It is imperative, therefore, that public health officials and scientists build a robust understanding of pathogenesis, design improved diagnostics, and develop preventive vaccines, according to a new commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine from leading scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.
Bacteria cause most tickborne diseases in the United States, with Lyme disease representing the majority (82 percent) of reported cases. The spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi is the primary cause of Lyme disease in North America; it is carried by hard-bodied ticks that then feed on smaller mammals, such as white-footed mice, and larger animals, such as white-tailed deer.