Health Highlights: Sept. 9, 2009

Sept. 10 -- Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Baby Boomers' Hospital Care Costs Mounting: Report

American hospitals spent about $56 billion in 2007 caring for baby boomers aged 55 to 64, an amount that was roughly equal to the amount spent on people 10 years older, a new federal report finds.

Using data from the 2007 Nationwide Inpatient Sample, the Agency for Health Care Research said that the amount hospitals spent on baby boomers equaled about 16 percent of total expenditures. This age group took up nearly as many health care dollars as patients aged 65-74 ($59 billion), while $46 billion was spent on Americans aged 45 to 54, according to an AHRQ news release.

Other findings:

• The average hospital bill for a baby boomer patient was $11,900 versus $10,400 for 45-54 year-olds.
• Compared to 45-54 year-olds, baby boomers had double to triple the odds of being hospitalized for osteoarthritis, stroke, respiratory failure, COPD, heart arrhythmias, blood infections, congestive heart failure, knee/hip replacements and bypass procedures.
• Medicaid and other public insurance covered 37 percent of baby boomers, while 52 percent had private insurance and 6 percent had no insurance.

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Poor Trial Results a Setback for First Stem Cell Drug

Prochymal, an experimental drug which its makers had hoped would be the first mass-produced medication derived from stem cells, has failed two late-stage clinical trials, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

The drug is derived from mesenchymal stem cells found in the bone marrow of young adults and cultured in the lab. It was hoped that Prochymal might help ease graft-versus-host disease, a dangerous condition that can occur in patients after organ transplants.

But in one trial, patients who took Prochymal along with steroids had a 45 percent response rate, little different from the 46 percent response rate for those who took a steroid and a placebo. And in a second trial, conducted in patients who were not benefiting from steroid therapy, 35 percent of those receiving Prochymal showed a reduction in their graft-versus-host disease, compared to 30 percent of those on placebo -- not a statistically significant difference.