How Expansion Will Change The Look Of Medicaid

Adults making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level () will be able to sign up for Medicaid, under an expansion paid for entirely by the federal government between 2014 and 2017.

The catch is that states, which share in the expense of regular Medicaid, will have to pay up to 10 percent of the expansion tab later. The governments in some states don’t want to do that. Only half the states were agreed to go ahead with the easier path to coverage made possible by the Affordable Care Act.

So how will the expansion change who signs up for Medicaid coverage? Some researchers at the University of Michigan Health System took a look by analyzing data from the National health and nutrition examination survey

Demographically, the new enrollee population will have a higher proportion of whites, and a higher proportion of males,” Dr. Tammy Chang, lead author of the study, tells Shots. The new enrollees are likely to be younger, too. (See the chart for a fuller breakdown.)

Overall, she says the Medicaid enrollees will be healthier and fewer of them will be obese. But more of them will be smokers and drinkers, and they’re also less likely to be depressed. “We can really focus on them as physicians for prevention and improving their health behaviors,” she says.

The findings were published  in the Annals of Family Medicine.

 

Smartwatch Is Next Step In ‘Quantified Self’ Life-Logging

You could call it the phantom menace . Each year, in the midst of winter a rumor surfaces, a about a new Apple product that sets tech bloggers buzzing.

Over the spring and summer, hype builds. Then nothing. Last year, the tech world was left waiting for an Apple TV. This was the year of the iWatch — or at least the year of iWatch hype.

Last week, Samsung rolled out its own version f this imaginary Apple device, and early reviews have been poor. Analysts say the Galaxy Gear, priced at $299, is expensive and the battery life is short. While the watch has voice recognition a la Dick Tracy — the device fell flat with many gadget geeks.

“So the watch itself, if all it is is a glorified smartphone and has some other features to it, it’s not so interesting,” says Brad Feld, a venture capitalist in Boulder, Colo.

What really excites technologists like Feld about watches is how intimate these devices could be. A watch touches your skin, so it can take your pulse, measure your temperature and record the quality of your sleep. Feld says it could become almost like another organ.

“I think we are at version 0.1 of human instrumentation,” he says.

Feld envisions a world of wearable devices — not just watches — that record all kinds of intimate details about our lives. He thinks this data could help make all of us healthier, happier and more fulfilled human beings.

This is the idea of the .quantified self

“When you talk about quantified self, it’s important to acknowledge it’s a social movement first,” says Sarah Rotman Epps, at Forrester Research. “It’s a group of people who identify themselves as being interested in quantifying themselves — in tracking data about their lives.”

Feld is one of them. He’s trying to run a marathon in every state in the country and uses technology to track himself obsessively.

“So I use a bunch of different things,” he says.

He uses a Fitbit, which tracks daily activity and heart rate, and a Fitbit scale to weigh himself. A Garmin watch tracks his runs, and he wears a monitor to track oxidation in his blood. He runs blood tests quarterly and uses devices to track his sleep.

“I instrument myself when I run,” he says.

Most people probably won’t follow Feld to these extremes, but according to Rotman Epps, millions of Americans are already tracking themselves with an app or a device. And Forrester Research found roughly a third of online adults are interested in using a device to track things like sleep. But all this data can be incredibly revealing.

“I choose not to wear my own personal device in bed — whether I am sleeping or doing something else,” Rotman Epps says, laughing. “That’s just where I draw the line.”

In 2011, Fitbit accidentally posted information online about when some of its users were having sex. And sleep patterns can offer telltale signs of depression. By sharing this data with an app or device-maker, Rotman Epps says, you are giving up control.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled more than once that when someone shares information about themselves with a business, the person no longer has any reasonable expectation of privacy. But that hasn’t cooled the fervor of entrepreneurs in this space.

Max Levchin, one of the co-founders of PayPal, recently launched Glow, an app to help women to get pregnant.

“You are opting to put this data in the cloud,” says Rotman Epps.

After interviewing many of these companies on privacy and their plans for the future, she says she has concerns.

“The attitude of these companies is that they will be stewards of your data, but the reality is they don’t even know what their business model is,” she says.

Members of the quantified-self movement have demanded that many firms let users download and delete information, but Rotman Epps is still wary. She says if a company changes its privacy policy there is not much a user could do.

Source BBC news

Mosquito ‘invisibility cloak’ discovered

A hand in a mosquito cage was not attractive when covered with the chemical

A naturally occurring substance found in human skin could yield a viable alternative to existing mosquito repellent, scientists say.

They say the chemical could help render people “invisible” to the insects.

At the American Chemical Society meeting, they revealed a group of compounds that could block mosquitoes’ ability to smell potential targets.

When a hand with these chemicals was placed in a mosquito filled enclosure, it was completely ignored.

The team says their work could help prevent the spread of deadly diseases.

Mosquitoes are among the most deadly disease-carrying creatures. They spread malaria, which in 2010 killed an estimated 660,000, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Ulrich Bernier of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) who presented the work, said his team was exploring other options to Deet – a repellent which some do not favour.

Buzzing off

In fact, earlier this year a team of scientists said that the widely used repellent was losing effectiveness.

“Repellents have been the mainstay for preventing mosquito bites… [but] we are exploring a different approach, with substances that impair the mosquito’s sense of smell. If a mosquito can’t sense that dinner is ready, there will be no buzzing, no landing and no bite,” said Dr Bernier.

It has long been known that some people are more attractive to mosquitoes than others, but now the team has pinpointed a group of chemical components secreted naturally, that can mask human smell from the blood-sucking insects.

Dr Bernier explained that hundreds of compounds on the skin makes up a person’s smell. In order to see what smells attracted mosquitoes, his team sprayed various substances onto one side of a cage.

It was the compounds that didn’t attract any mosquitoes that they looked at further and when sprayed on a human hand, the insects did not react or attempt to bite.

‘Invisible hand’

These chemical compounds, including 1-methylpiperzine, were found to completely block their sense of smell.

The compounds could be added into many cosmetics and lotions, Dr Bernier added.

“If you put your hand in a cage of mosquitoes where we have released some of these inhibitors, almost all just sit on the back wall and don’t even recognize that the hand is in there. We call that anosmia or hyposmia, the inability to sense smells or a reduced ability to sense smells.”

Commenting on the work, James Logan of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it was exciting to find out exactly which chemicals repelled mosquitoes.

“Although we already have good repellents on the market, there is still room for new active ingredients. The challenge that scientists face is improving upon the protection provided by existing repellents.

“If a new repellent can be developed which is more effective, longer lasting and affordable, it would be of great benefit to travellers and people living in disease endemic countries,” Dr Logan told BBC News.

But he said that it would take many years before a new product would make it to market.

Source: BBC News/health

Lung cancer drug ‘could help treat ectopic pregnancy

A lung cancer drug could be given to women with ectopic pregnancies in a bid to help them avoid surgery.

A joint study by researchers in Edinburgh and Melbourne, Australia, found that combining a drug called gefitinib with existing treatment was more effective at curing the condition.

An ectopic pregnancy is when an embryo implants in the Fallopian tube.

It can be treated with drugs if identified early, but surgery is needed when it is more developed.

Each year, about 12,000 women in the UK have an ectopic pregnancy and the condition is responsible for up to 80% of pregnancy-related deaths.

The study, published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynaecology, involved a trial of 12 women.

Gefitinib, usually used to treat lung cancer, blocks a protein that is known to encourage cell growth, and which was found to be present in high levels at the site of ectopic pregnancies.

Scientists from the Edinburgh University’s medical research council centre for reproductive health, and the University of Melbourne, suggested that combining gefitinib with the conventional treatment – called methotrexate – could reduce the need to remove the Fallopian tube in a significant number of cases.

They said this would help a patient’s level of fertility.

The researchers also found that the drug combination was able to shorten the time it took to successfully treat ectopic pregnancies in women who did not need surgery.

Dr Andrew Horne, who led the study, said: “An ectopic pregnancy can be extremely stressful for the woman involved.

“If we can reduce the need for surgery, and thereby help fertility levels, then that would be an enormous benefit.

“Reducing the treatment time for women who do not need surgery would also have a significant impact in reducing the emotional stress of such a diagnosis.”

Researchers now plan to run a larger trial.

Source: BBC News

Girls suffer second-degree burns from fruit

It was supposed to be a normal play day for five friends splashing in a pool in the back yard.

It ended with the group of girls in horrific pain and eventually intensive care in hospital after they all suffered second-degree burns.

The five had spent the day in the pool, splashing around and having fun, The Hanford Sentinel reports. What at first seemed to be overexposure to the sun blossomed into softball-sized blisters and second-degree burns.

Stephanie Ellwanger’s girls, Jewels, 12, and Jazmyn, 9, wound up spending several days in an intensive care unit, hooked up to morphine to manage the pain. They stayed in hospital two weeks. Now they’re not allowed out in the sun for at least six months.

But what caused the Ellwanger girls and their three friends – Reyghan, Candy and Bailey – to end up with massive blisters and peeling skin was a mystery.

Doctors were stumped.

Ellwanger, of Hanford, California, later remembered that the girls played with limes from a neighbour’s tree, squeezing the fruits and splashing in the juice.

After a Google search and some time trying to convince dubious medical staff, the girls were diagnosed with phytophotodermatitis, described as “a chemical reaction [to the lime juice] that makes bare skin hypersensitive to ultraviolet light.”

It’s caused by contact with photosensitizing compounds which occur naturally in some fruits and vegetables — like limes.
Read more: Fox news

 

Magic ‘mushroom diet’? Experts scoff at weight-loss claim

A new diet fad claims that replacing one meal a day with mushrooms will help women shed fat, but only in certain parts of the body — the waist, hips and thighs — but not the bust.

The two-week diet, called the M Plan, according to the Daily Mail, has been touted by celebrities such as Kelly Osbourne and Katy Perry.

Experts say that there’s nothing magical about mushrooms — replacing one meal a day with any vegetable would help a person lose weight, said Katherine Tallmadge, a registered dietitian, and op-ed contributor to LiveScience.

And the claim about selective weight loss doesn’t hold up to science. “There’s no evidence that any diet … will help you lose weight in a particular spot,” Tallmadge said.

How people lose, and also gain, weight is determined largely by genetics, Tallmadge said, but factors such as age and smoking habits also play a role.

Studies show older women are more likely to gain weight around their belly, likely due to changing hormone levels, Tallmadge said. Smoking has also been linked to an increased risk of gaining weight in the midsection.

However, studies suggest that certain exercises may help people lose weight selectively: there’s evidence that walking is an effective exercise for helping people lose belly fat, Tallmadge said.

 

Fetal alcohol disorders common in adopted, foster kids

Children adopted from orphanages or in foster care have a high rate of fetal alcohol syndrome and other physical, mental and behavioral problems related to alcohol exposure before birth, according to a new review of past studies.

Among those children, researchers found that rates of alcohol-related problems – which can include deformities, mental retardation and learning disabilities – were anywhere from nine to 60 times higher than in the general population.

“It’s increasingly well recognized that this is a very high-risk population and one that we should really be paying attention to,” Phil Fisher, a psychologist who studies foster and adopted children at the University of Oregon in Eugene, said.

“We know that one of the main reasons that kids end up in foster care or being made eligible for adoption is because their parents have substance abuse problems,” added Fisher, who wasn’t involved in the new research.

The findings are based on a review of 33 studies of children in the care of child welfare agencies or foster parents, as well as kids before and after their adoption from orphanages. Most of the studies were conducted in Russia or the United States.

Compiling the studies with the most accurate reporting techniques, Dr. Svetlana Popova from the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and her colleagues found six percent of children in those settings had fetal alcohol syndrome.

The condition includes a distinctive set of facial features, including a small head, jaw and eyes, and other physical developmental defects, especially of the heart. Slow growth and delayed development after birth are also typical of fetal alcohol syndrome.

Close to 17 percent of the children had a more loosely-defined fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which covers any physical, mental or behavioral issues caused by prenatal alcohol exposure.

The highest rates of fetal alcohol syndrome were seen among children in a Russian orphanage for kids with special needs and among those adopted from Eastern Europe by families in Sweden. In those studies, anywhere from 29 percent to 68 percent of children showed severe alcohol-related damage.

In other cases, such as a study of Chinese children adopted and brought to the United States, there were no reported instances of fetal alcohol syndrome, the study team reported Monday in Pediatrics.

Fisher said it’s important to know that although problems related to alcohol exposure are common among adopted and foster children, not all kids have been exposed – and some with prenatal exposure are “quite resilient” and do fine.

“I don’t think anyone wants to create the impression that every child in the foster care system … and every child who’s adopted has very severe problems,” he told Reuters Health.

Still, he said there is a need for more recognition of the challenges faced by children who have been exposed to drugs and alcohol in the womb. Rather than focusing only on their obvious current symptoms, he said fetal alcohol disorders should be treated as chronic diseases, like diabetes.

“The supports need to be available in an ongoing way,” Fisher said.

He also pointed to the importance of identifying children who have some of the effects of drug and alcohol exposure – but not ones as obvious as the distinct facial features seen with fetal alcohol syndrome – and getting them support as soon as they enter the child welfare system or are adopted.

“If we don’t do the early screening and detection … then I think we’re in a much more challenging position,” he said.

“We hope that the results of this study will attract attention to the needs of children in care affected by prenatal alcohol exposure,” Popova told Reuters Health in an email.

She agreed that spotting problems as soon as possible is important.

“Early screening may lead to early diagnosis, which can lead to early participation in developmental interventions, which can in turn, improve the quality of life for children with a (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder),” she said.

Early intervention, Popova added, may also help prevent future mental health problems and trouble in school.

Source : Fox News

Rescued kitten infected girl with rare virus

A teenager in the Netherlands who rescued a drowning kitten from a ditch developed a large, blackened open wound on her wrist, which took multiple doctors several weeks to find its rare cause, researchers say.

The kitten that the girl rescued was sick and died the following day, and the 17-year-old went on a trip to Italy and Switzerland, during which time she developed a red wound on her wrist that blistered before turning black. She also developed painful red bumps on her arm, spanning from the wound on her wrist up to her armpit.

Suspecting the wound was a bacterial infection, doctors prescribed antibiotics, but the medicine didn’t work. Once back in her home country, the feverish girl went to the hospital again.

“When I saw the wound, I expected it to be a normal wound, so I was quite surprised when I saw the big ulcer,” said Dr. Jojanneke Heidema, a specialist in pediatric infectious disease at St. Antonius Ziekenhuis Hospital in Nieuwegein, Netherlands, who reported the case.

“It did not look like a normal bacterial infection, so I went looking for other causes of a necrotic ulcer,” Heidema said. Necrotic ulcers are wounds with dead tissue. [Image: the blackened, open wound]

The doctors began to suspect that the wound was caused by the cowpox virus. The cowpox infection is so rare that physicians sometimes have never even seen one, or simply don’t think of it.

The doctors got in touch with a virologist whose lab was equipped to run tests for cowpox. A few days later, lab results proved the cowpox virus was, indeed, the culprit. “The girl had been treated by different doctors for about 13 days by then,” Heidema said.  [Image: red bumps covering the arm]

After another week, the girl got better on own, and the wound healed within two? Months, leaving a scar. Cowpox is a self-limiting disease, meaning it usually doesn’t need medical treatment.

“In cowpox disease, your own immune system will deal with the infection,” Heidema said.

The cowpox virus was involved in the invention of the first vaccine, against the related virus that causes smallpox, the deadly but now eradicated disease. At the end of the 18th century, Edward Jenner, an English physician, observed that milkmaids who had contact with the cattle-carrying cowpox virus rarely contracted smallpox — they seemed protected. Based on this observation, Jenner used the cowpox virus to produce the first smallpox vaccine, in 1796.

Other than cowpox, some possible causes of a necrotic wound like the one the girl had were drug-resistant bacteria, abscess and anthrax, the researchers said.

The doctors learned that the girl had cut herself in her wrist before rescuing the kitten. But it is possible to become sick from an infected cat, cow or small rodent even when the skin is intact, they said.

“Most patients with cowpox infections have had scratches from the infected animal, but there are also cases where no scratches were reported,” Heidema said.

It’s hard to determine how sick the kitten was because it also drowned, the researchers said, but the kitten’s mother and siblings were all ill, and taken to the vet to be put down.

The case report was published Sept. 2 in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

 

Research renaissance offers new ways out of depression

As Susan sits chatting to a nurse in a London clinic, a light tapping sound by her head signals that parts of her brain are being zapped by thousands of tiny electro-magnetic pulses from a machine plugged into the wall.

The 50 year-old doctor is among growing ranks of people with so-called treatment-resistant depression, and after 21 years fighting a disorder that destroyed her ability to work and at times made her want to “opt out of life”, this is a last resort.

Until recently, Susan and others like her had effectively reached the end of the road with depression treatments, having tied the best drugs medical science had to offer, engaged in hours of therapy, and tried cocktails of both.

But a renaissance in research into depression prompted by some remarkable results with highly experimental treatments has changed the way neuroscientists see the disorder and is offering hope for patients who had feared there was nowhere left to go.

Their drive to find an answer has taken neuroscientists to uncharted waters – researching everything from psychedelic magic mushrooms, to the veterinary tranquilizer ketamine, to magnetic stimulation through the skull, to using electrical implants – a bit like a pacemaker for the brain – to try and reset this complex organ’s wiring and engender a more positive outlook.

Their sometimes surprising findings have in turn taught them more about depression – leading to a view of it not as a single mental illness but a range of disorders each with distinct mechanisms, yet all producing similarly debilitating symptoms.

“The thinking about depression has been revitalized,” said Helen Mayberg, a neurologist at Emory University in Atlanta in the United States.

“We have a new model for thinking about psychiatric diseases not just as chemical imbalance – that your brain is a just big vat of soup where you can just add a chemical and stir – but where we ask different questions – what’s wrong with brain chemistry and what’s wrong with brain circuits.”

Add a chemical and stir?

There’s little doubt that until this new breath of hope, depression had been going through a bad patch.

Affecting more than 350 million people, depression is ranked by the World Health Organization as the leading cause of disability worldwide. In extreme cases, depressed people kill themselves. Around a million people commit suicide every year, the majority due to unidentified or untreated depression.

Treatment for depression involves either medication or psychotherapy – and often a combination of both. Yet as things stand, as many as half of patients fail to recover on their first medication, and around a third find no lasting benefit from any medication or talking therapy currently available.

High hopes for “wonder” drugs like Prozac, Seroxat and others in their class of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in the 1980s and 1990s were dimmed by studies in the 2000s that showed they helped a proportion of people, but left at least 30 percent of patients little or no better than before.

And as chronically depressed patients move from trying one drug to the next, or one type of therapy to another, their hopes too dim as it becomes clear that failing to get better with each depressive bout in turn also ups their chances of relapse.

For Susan, the battle seemed never ending.

When she was at her lowest, she dreaded each day, says she was “frightened of everything” and overwhelmed even by straightforward tasks like making a meal for her two children.

“I was taking double doses of antidepressants – two types at once – and because I was also very agitated I was on (the sedative) chloral hydrate to help me sleep,” she told Reuters.

“So I was on this massive amount of medication, but with no effect whatsoever on my depression. Nothing was working.”

Desperate to help patients like Susan, and alarmed by news of some pharmaceutical firms such as GlaxoSmithKline abandoning research and development in depression because it was proving too hard to find new drugs that could turn a profit, doctors began looking for new approaches.

“We often encounter patients who say ‘I’ve tried a million things and nothing seems to be working’,” said Rafael Euba, a consultant psychiatrist at the London Psychiatry Centre (LPC) where Susan was treated. “We want to instill a feeling of hope.”

Electro-therapy

In Susan’s case, past experience with a controversial electrical intervention – electro convulsion therapy (ECT) – which she says was what eventually clawed her back from her severe depression 17 years ago, lead her to investigate the latest in electrical treatments – so-called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or rTMS

Approved by medicines regulators in the United States and in Europe it is a painless treatment that uses electro-magnetic induction to activate an area of the brain that psychiatrists know is involved in the regulation of mood.

Unlike ECT, which gained notoriety in the 1975 American drama film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, rTMS it does not induce “shock”, but is far more targeted, delivering a pulse to neurons in the brain and that makes them fire again.

At the LPC – currently the only place in Britain where patients can get rTMS – a treatment course can be anything from 3 to 6 weeks of half an hour a day, five days a week.

It isn’t cheap. The treatment costs $2,300 per week, with the average course lasting four weeks. And some patients also need weekly or fortnightly “maintenance” sessions beyond that.

Patients put on a white fabric cap and the electro-magnetic coil is positioned over the part of the brain that needs help – normally the left dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex, which is a few inches above the temple beneath the skull.

“Unlike with other psychiatric treatments, patients tend to find this experience quite pleasant,” said Euba. “All you get is a slight tingling on the scalp – and some people like that because it’s a physical sensation that something is happening.”

Although they are from a controlled trial and show only a snapshot of the couple of dozen patients treated and monitored at one clinic, Euba’s results so far have been striking.

Of 24 patients with depression ranging from mild to severe who received rTMS at the LPC, 18 of them – or 75 percent – got completely well and were classed as being in remission. Two more responded to treatment but did not get completely well, and only four – 17 percent – did not respond.

Deep brain stimulation

Mayberg and her colleagues in the United States had also been intrigued by the potential for electrical stimulation to ease severe depression, but they went in deeper.

After the success of using deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices made by firms such as Medtronic to treat tremors in patients with Parkinson’s disease, her team conducted a trial using them in a small number of patients who’d had depression for decades and had not been helped by numerous different drugs.

Electrical stimulation devices were implanted into the brains of patients with severe depression and bipolar disorder.

“In this treatment the stimulation continues all the time – they implant the “pacemaker” and leave it switched on for years – and only sometimes they have to change the battery,” said Jonathan Roiser, a reader in cognitive neuroscience at University College London.

According to study results published in the Archives of General Psychiatry journal last year, the number of patients who had responded to treatment after two years was very high – at 92 percent – and the proportion who were completely well and in remission from their depression was 58 percent.

For psychiatrists more used to seeing patients fail again and again to get better on any kind of treatment, these results were unheard-of. “It was a remarkable finding,” says Roiser.

Yet it’s not just the brain’s wiring that is getting more attention. Chemistry, too has thrown up some exciting results.

Researchers who looked, for example, at the veterinary tranquilizer ketamine – or “Special K” as it is called as a party drug – found that in some patients with depression it dramatically reduced their symptoms, sometimes within hours – and kept their mood stable for several weeks after treatment.

Inspired by these uplifting findings, several drug firms, including Roche, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit, are in the early or mid stages of developing ketamine derivatives into what they hope will become successful new antidepressants.

Define subtypes and treat accordingly

Experts say the success these new and some still experimental treatments for depression emphasizes the re-thinking of it as not one but a cluster of disorders.

“We now have this increasingly influential model of what is causing mental health problems like depression – one focused on the brain circuits,” said Roiser.

“We’ve learnt a lot about how these circuits operate, what kind of cognitive tasks they are involved in, how they interact and how they are connected to each other.”

More evidence of this came in a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in which researchers found that brain scans of depressed patients could help predict whether they would be more likely to respond to treatment with anti-depressant drugs or with psychotherapy.

The study focused on a part of the brain known as the insula, which plays a role in influencing emotions.

It found that in patients whose scans showed their insula consumed an excess of glucose, psychotherapy was more likely to help. In patients whose insula were less active, consuming less glucose, antidepressants were more successful.

“Our gut tells us there are subtypes (of depression), and this shows that if you look the brain, you should define the biology and treat accordingly – just as we do in other branches of medicine (like cancer or diabetes),” said Mayberg.

Far from being defeated by the emergence of depression as a more complex a disorder than first assumed, scientists say the renaissance in research is based in confidence that deeper knowledge will ensure new and better treatments can be found.

Roiser confesses to feeling “extremely excited and optimistic” about the future of treating mental illnesses.

“We’re in a movement away from the traditional psychological and biological explanations for depression – which look increasingly outdated and simplistic – and we’re in the middle of specifying these disorders in terms of their underlying brain circuits,” he said. “That’s a much better position than we were in 20 years ago.”

 

 

CDC: Hard-hitting anti-smoking ads save lives

Graphic advertisements, featuring real people living with debilitating and disfiguring effects from smoking, are saving lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New research published in “The Lancet” medical journal suggests the first series of ads in the “Tips from Former Smokers” campaign encouraged at least 100,000 smokers to quit successfully — twice the number CDC officials had expected.

“We think this is a testament to the incredible power of the real stories that these people told,” said Dr. Tim McAfee, director of the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. “This is exactly what smokers had told us they thought would work the best to support them and motivate them to quit.”

The CDC ads, which appeared during the spring of 2012, featured real people living with amputated limbs, breathing through stomas and dealing with other smoking-related health problems.

In one ad, Terrie Hall, a North Carolina cancer survivor, demonstrates her morning routine of putting on a wig and false teeth, as well as a hands-free valve for her stoma. The ad made a lasting impression on a Kentucky mother, who said she quit smoking after watching the ad with her son.

“I noticed after she had stopped speaking and saying her part, you could see vulnerability and a little bit of disappointment and regret in her eyes that I could definitely agree with,” said Lisha Hancock. “There’s nothing that touched me like Terrie’s ad. It definitely impacted my life and, in return, impacted my family’s life. We all live happier and healthier now.”

“Hard-hitting ads work,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD.

The CDC paid approximately $50 million to produce and place the advertisements. It was the first time the federal government funded a nationwide tobacco education ad campaign.

Federal health officials say the campaign is a good investment because smokers who quit not only increase their life expectancies, but reduce their average annual health care expenses.

“The impact is huge because a smoker costs about $2,000 more (per year) than a non-smoker, and about $1,000 more than an ex-smoker, to care for,” Frieden said. “And if you do the math, this program pays for itself in a year or two in reduced health care and societal expenditures.”

The CDC has posted the ads online, along with resources for quitting smoking.

Read more: Fox News/health