Medicine
j7uy5 | October 2, 2006This is from the journal Menopause. The
link goes to the abstract; a subcription is required for full access.
It is a pilot study with results that are not robust enough
to use in routine clinical decision-making, but it does indicate a
possible benefit to supplementation of venlafaxine (Effexor) with HRT
in depressed postmenopausal women.
href="http://www.menopausejournal.com/pt/re/menopause/abstract.00042192-200613020-00011.htm;jsessionid=Fg9ZyB1TT5h1lKGn52MG1XLKMd3v4rT7knF02TDQV2jRY25S6tvX%211096339265%21-949856144%218091%21-1">Menopause
2006 Mar-Apr;13(2):202-11.
Efficacy of…
mikethemadbiologist | September 30, 2006Since I'm going away for a long weekend, I'll leave you with this post about phage therapy from the archives.
So Aetiology, in her new digs, wants a post. Well, here's one, inspired by a comment: phage therapy. "Phage therapy" is short for bacteriophage therapy. Bacteriophage are viruses that kill bacteria (literally, "bacteria devourers"). The basic concept of phage therapy is to introduce the phage into an infected patient. The phage infect the bacterium-an infection of an infection! Then the phage multiply within the bacterium, lyse (explode from the inside) the host bacterium and…
oracknows | September 29, 2006Earlier this week, I thought that I had identified this week's woo target. I told myself that this was it, that this was the one for this week. I even started writing it the other day, because, as much as I try to get this thing done early, somehow I always seem to be writing it at 11 PM Thursday nights. I thought this week would be different.
I was mistaken.
The reason that I was wrong was because I came across a link that was so amusing, so full of outrageously concentrated woo, that I just couldn't restrain myself from throwing my old topic to the wayside (well, not exactly; I can always…
mikethemadbiologist | September 25, 2006Do you want to know how to stop, or at least, lessen the next E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak? Improve our surveillance and public health infrastructure.
If we improve the infrastructure, we can speed the response time, making it easier to contain an outbreak.
Let's walk through each of the steps the CDC outlined in its response.
1. Incubation time: The time from eating the contaminated food to the beginning of symptoms. For E. coli O157, this is typically 3-4 days.
There's not much we can do to 'improve' this step. While random testing could be an option, when it comes to produce, I don't see…
mementomori | September 25, 2006When it comes to reading, I am new to the field of medical biography, having specifically avoided it for over 20 years just as the mailman of old eschewed taking long walks on his day off. Mercifully, enough time has passed that I no longer toss my popcorn into the inky depths if a patient of mine says hello to me at the movie theater. I am more comfortable integrating medicine into my personal life than I was during my residency, which we commonly referred to as the "Bataan Death March." I no longer leave the hospital ward via an obscure stairway at a speed that makes jackrabbits green…
j7uy5 | September 25, 2006One of the nutty aspects of the Medicare prescription drug program is
the so-called "
href="http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/21/the_face_on_the_doughnut_hole.php">doughnut
hole." The doughnut hole occurs once the
beneficiary reaches a certain spending limit. This is
described in a recent
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/24/AR2006092400957.html">Washington
Post article:
Under the standard plan, however, the government
picks up the bulk of
drug costs only until the beneficiary and the government together have
spent $2,250 for the year. At…
signout | September 24, 2006This month, I'm rotating through a small community hospital that is affiliated with the academic center where my residency program is based. For residencies based in well-staffed, well-resourced academic centers, the point of having their residents rotate through a community hospital is to expose them to the real world of medicine. A significant proportion of the hospitals in this country are community hospitals, and because these facilities have little to none of their budget devoted toward research, they often have far fewer specialty services and facilities than academic hospitals do.
This…
mikethemadbiologist | September 20, 2006A CDC website lays out how we actually identify an outbreak of O157:H7. Guess what? It doesn't happen like it does in the movies or on TV. This is why keeping these networks fully functional (i.e., adequately funded) matters: time is critical and delays in processing due to inadequate resources or personnel can be deadly. For kicks, imagine if this were something far more contagious than a food-borne pathogen.
Here's the timeline:
1. Incubation time: The time from eating the contaminated food to the beginning of symptoms. For E. coli O157, this is typically 3-4 days.
2. Time to…
clock | September 20, 2006This strange November 09, 2005 post should really be posted on Friday as part of the Friday Weird Sex Blogging....
Via Shakespeare's Sister and Blue Gal in a Red State comes this crazy article:
Serbs line up for testicle shocks
Men in Serbia are lining up to have electric shocks delivered to their testicles as part of a new contraceptive treatment.
Serbian fertility expert Dr Sava Bojovic, who runs one of the clinics offering the service, said the small electric shock makes men temporarily infertile by stunning their sperm into a state of immobility.
He said: "We attach electrodes to either…
terrasig | September 17, 2006This year's recipients of the Lasker Awards were announced yesterday. These awards from The Lasker Foundation are often referred to as the "American Nobels."
The award for Basic Medical Research went to three scientists for "the prediction and discovery of telomerase, a remarkable RNA-containing enzyme that synthesizes the ends of chromosomes, protecting them and maintaining the integrity of the genome."
Elizabeth H. Blackburn (UC-San Francisco)Carol W. Greider (Johns Hopkins)Jack W. Szostak (Harvard)
Most cancer researchers, biochemists, and cell biologists know all three of these…
oracknows | September 15, 2006It's about time it was Friday. No, it's not because it will mean any less work for me; in fact, this weekend will probably mean more, as I have to go to a workshop that's more like boot camp. It's more because the subject matter of this blog had become such a major bummer, with the fifth anniversary of September 11, followed by a rumination about aging, followed by two posts about the dismal funding situation at the NIH. The only thing breaking up the gloom was getting a chance to point out a lovely deconstruction of an HIV "skeptics'" misguided attempt at claiming the mantle of skepticism,…
oracknows | September 14, 2006I hadn't planned on writing about this again after yesterday. The subject is profoundly depressing to those of us needing to compete for declining NIH grant resources with only a 9% chance of success the first time. However, given that Your Friday Dose of Woo will make an appearance tomorrow to make everything all right; that is, assuming that my O.R. day tomorrow isn't too stressful. After all, there's little better to lift your spirits than a bit of amusing woo, you know.
In any case, a commenter named Theodore Price said:
Orac, maybe (almost certainly not actually) you didn't mean it this…
tfk | September 12, 2006Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline wants you to think he's a spiritual man. He sues family planning clinics, tries to peek into women's medical records for evidence of sin, he even has his staff sort through donated CDs, making sure impure lyrics don't wind up in our libraries.
As the campaign against recent Democratic convert Paul Morrison heats up, Kline is reaching out to churches. It seems only natural. But he's not there for the spiritual solace, and he isn't interested in hearing lots of God-talk.
In a memo sent out by an anonymous "Concerned Citizen" Kline is quoted telling his…
signout | September 7, 2006On my first day as a medical resident in clinic, one of the patients on my roster was listed as having a chief complaint of "genital rash." No big deal, I thought to myself. I am a young, progressive, body-positive doctor. Everyone has genitals! I am unfazed by genitals! Let there be a genital jubilee in my clinic! I'll make s'mores!
But when I walked into the room and saw the patient-a 24-year old guy with not-small shoulders and a great big smile-a policeman, for the love of God-my hands got clammy. I was torn between the urge to flirt and the urge to bolt. But I am a doctor now, so I faked…
tsmith | September 5, 2006This week's edition of Grand Rounds, the weekly compendium of medical blogging, is up over at Clinical Cases and Images.
Other carnival news:
The next edition of Pediatric Grand Rounds is scheduled for September 10th,and hosted by Shinga of Breath Spa for Kids. Because of the time difference to the UK your contributions would be much appreciated by no later than Saturday, September 9, 17:00 London time; send them to breath.spaATSIGNgooglemail.com.
And finally, the next edition of Animalcules, the carnival of the wee beasties, will go live next Thursday, Sept. 14, at Viva la evolucion!.…
evolgen | September 4, 2006
Welcome to the fifth edition of Mendel's Garden -- the blog carnival devoted to all things genetical. In this edition, we have 17 articles from 14 blogs on biomedical research, evolutionary genetics, and molecular and cell biology. The entire collection can be found below the fold.
Biomedical Genetics
Ruth Schaffer at Eating Fabulous reviews how genetically engineered tomatoes may help fight human disease. Ruth also writes for The Biotech Weblog, where she has written a post on genetic markers that can be used to predict premature birth.
Hsien Hsien Lei, who blogs at Genetics and Health,…
revere | September 1, 2006WHO has just issued case definitions for H5N1 infections. Case definitions are criteria that must be satisfied to designate a person as being "a case" of H5N1 infection. Case definitions are not clinical tools but epidemiological ones. Epidemiological measures pertain to populations and require the ability to count cases and at risk populations. For example, a case fatality ratio (sometimes incorrectly called a case fatality rate) is the percentage of people infected with H5N1 that die from the disease. A case definition is necessary to determine the denominator, those infected with H5N1.…
oracknows | August 31, 2006Boy, oh, boy, I had to control myself on this one. Yes, dear reader, while I was away this last week and a half, many were the times that I wanted to let loose about this. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) lack of Internet access at some times and other vacation activities at other times interceded. Now that I'm back home (although not back to full blogging, as I'm still on vacation until Labor Day), it's time to weigh in.
As you know, I've written extensively (some might say too extensively) about the Abraham Cherrix case, the case of a 16 year old boy who won…
pharyngula | August 29, 2006This Newsweek article on the latest innovation in stem cell research is infuriating. The author, Michael Gerson, is a Republican hack with no competence in biology, which seems to qualify him to be a serious judge of science to this administration.
The issue of stem cells was the first test of the infant Bush administration, pitting the promise of medical discovery against the protection of developing life and prompting the president's first speech to the nation. His solution--funding research on existing stem-cell lines, but not the destruction of embryos to create new ones--was seen as a…
oracknows | August 28, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts.) These will appear at least twice a day while I'm gone (and that will probably leave some leftover for Christmas vacation, even). Enjoy, and please feel free to comment. I will be checking in from time to time when I have Internet access to see if the reaction…