Palmer Researcher Becomes First Chiropractic Consultant for HRSA

For more than half a decade, the federal government's Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Bureau of Health Professions has funded chiropractic research that has helped advance the profession. Until recently, the agency had never employed a doctor of chiropractic in a consulting role, but that changed this past fall when Dr. Lori Killinger of the Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research was selected as a consultant to the administration.

"I was honored to be brought on board," said Dr. Killinger. During her first year with HRSA, her goals will include:

• creating initiatives for those in HRSA's chiropractic program to collaborate with other administration programs in allied health, public health and geriatric education;

• paving the way for DCs to be employed by the U.S. government by developing hiring standards and other guidelines specific to chiropractic; and

• promoting the inclusion of doctors of chiropractic in current government-funded grant programs.

Dr. Killinger feels that her presence at HRSA may help advance chiropractic recognition at the federal level. "If chiropractors aren't sitting at the table," she said, "they won't be included in the discussion."

 

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Popular Antibiotic Tied to Stomach Illness in Infants

The Centers for Disease Control has released a statement advising doctors that a common antibiotic used to treat whooping cough in newborn babies may cause a severe stomach disorder.
A community hospital in Tennessee prescribed erythromycin to approximately 200 babies born there in February after they were exposed to whooping cough by a hospital worker. Seven babies became ill with pyloric stenosis, a condition in which a muscle at the bottom of the stomach enlarges. The enlarged muscle blocks food from passing to the small intestine, causing projectile vomiting and requiring surgery to correct the problem.

Erythromycin is one of the most often prescribed antibiotics on the market. In addition to whooping cough, infants are sometimes given the medication to treat chlamydia infections transmitted from mother to child during birth. An eye ointment used to prevent blinding gonorrhea infections also contains small amounts of erythromycin.

All seven babies who came down with pyloric stenosis were less than three weeks old when they began taking erythromycin. The CDC warns that physicians "should carefully evaluate the risks and benefits of erythromycin in newborns less than a month old" before prescribing the medication.

"We haven't made this association before," said Dr. Warren Rosenfeld, chairman of pediatrics at Winthrop Unitersity Hospital in Mineola, NY. "It calls attention to something people will look at now throughout the country."