Medicine
revere | December 2, 2008Cholera is a vicious disease. It can take a healthy person and kill him or her in a day by rapidly dehydrating them from a massive, watery diarrhea. The resulting electrolyte imbalance can lead to vascular collapse or cardiac arrest. Cholera is usually spread by fecally contaminated drinking water, and hence is completely preventable. It is also easily treatable by keeping the patient hydrated with the oral rehydration therapy, basically minimally fortified water. Yet this preventable and treatable disease is now epidemic in the country of Zimbabwe. Government sources admit to over 400 deaths…
purepedantry | December 1, 2008Drug companies are not publishing all the trial data that they submit to the FDA, and those trials that are published are more likely to show positive results.
Rising et al. compared all the New Drug Applications (NDAs) (the vehicle for initiating a new clinical trial) given to the FDA in 2001 and 2002 to subsequent published literature. They found that only about 3/4 of the trials were later published in journals, and those that were published were 5 times as likely to show favorable results for the drug being tested by the drug company as those that were not:
The researchers identified…
oracknows | December 1, 2008I tell ya, I'm on the light blogging schedule for a mere four days, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the happy invasion of family on Thursday and Friday, and a significant amount of grant writing I've had to deal with on Saturday and Sunday, and somehow I missed not only a study relevant to my field of interest, but the reaction of antiscientific quackery apologists to said study. First, let's look at the reaction, then the study, which reports that as many as 22% of mammographically detected breast cancer may spontaneously regress.
First off the block is Dr. Joel Fuhrman:
It's…
mikethemadbiologist | November 28, 2008One of things I've done in my job is write letters of recommendation for various genome sequencing projects, particularly antibiotic resistance related projects, so it's always good to see that those letters might result in published work. So onto to an incredibly resistant Escherichia coli strain.
E. coli SMS-3-5 is a strain of environmental E. coli that is incredibly resistant to a broad range of antibiotics, to the point where the antibiotic does not go into solution. Of 33 antibiotics tested, only imipenem, meropenem, amikacin, gentamicin, and nitrofurantoin were effective against this…
ddobbs | November 26, 2008
Lisa Bero
Critics of the FDA drug-trial process have often complained that the drug companies are free to publish only the trials that are flattering to their cause (that is, only those that show effects above placebo and relatively low side-effects). As explained in Wired Science, UC San Francisco health policy expert and Cochrane Collaboration co-director Lisa Bero has been picking this process apart:
The difference between what drug companies tell the government and doctors suggests that they're cooking the books, which could mislead doctors making prescriptions.
Of 33 new drugs…
sb admin | November 24, 2008The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is a government agency tasked with (among other things), "[exploring] complementary and alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science." In this space we have talked about NCCAM quite a bit, but I have to admit that I don't think about them very much. The other day, though, I was reading though JAMA and I came across a study funded by the agency. The study, which showed that Ginkgo does not prevent Alzheimer's-type dementia, was pretty good, so I cruised on over to NCCAM's website to see what else they'…
oracknows | November 24, 2008One of the handful of key themes that run through this blog day in, day out, week in, week, out, and year in, year out is that science and the application of the scientific method represent the most successful strategy that humans have yet come up with to improve human health. A consequence of this theme, of course, is the consideration of unscientific "therapies," specifically those known as "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or, sometimes, "integrative medicine" (IM). As chronicled here (and many other places), the vast majority of CAM therapies are based on prescientific…
bioephemera | November 22, 2008
The Moment of Conception and Ensoulment
Illumination from Jean Mansel, Vie de Nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ,
fifteenth century, fol. 174. 11.1 x 15.8 cm.
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
From "Making Visible Embryos"
Via the invaluable Morbid Anatomy, I discovered a remarkable new website, "Making Visible Embryos." Assembled by Tatjana Buklijas and Nick Hopwood of the University of Cambridge, with the support of the Wellcome Trust, it traces the evolution of our understanding of the human embryo, beginning with an unexplored mystery within the inaccessible womb, through epigenesis and…
sb admin | November 21, 2008Here's a question for you: is there, or should there be, any difference between studies of "alternative" and non-alternative medicine? I've argued before that there is no such thing as alternative medicine. So why do we need a separate agency to study "alternative" medicine? The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine seems to be just such an agency. For example, the latest study of Gingko biloba for the prevention of dementia could have been funded by other agencies, such as NIMH. Why NCCAM?
First a glance at the study in question. In the introduction, the authors…
tsmith | November 20, 2008 Few things can take me out of blogging hibernation (especially when the next grant deadline is Monday...) However, one of those things that I'll carve out time to write about is an interesting, hot-off-the-presses Ebola paper, and especially one describing a new strain of the virus--and there just happens to be such a paper in the new edition of PLoS Pathogens. Details after the jump...
Previously, 4 types of Ebola viruses had been identified. Ebola Zaire has typically been the worst as far as fatality rates (around 80-90%), with Ebola Sudan coming in close behind (roughly 50-70%). The…
dgmacarthur | November 20, 2008Pharmacogenomics Reporter (subscription required) describes an intriguing twist in the ongoing struggle between the nascent personal genomics industry and regulatory bodies: apparently the FDA is exploring the possibility of collaborating with consumer genomics providers to track adverse drug reactions:
Lawrence Lesko, director of FDA's Office of Clinical Pharmacology, said the agency has already begun preliminary discussions with some undisclosed personal genomics firms "to evaluate the feasibility" of forging such alliances.
In marketing ancestry and disease-predisposition genetic testing…
sb admin | November 19, 2008Our regular readers are well aware of the product defense tactics pioneered by the tobacco industry and taken to a new level by manufacturers of other dangerous products. Hazards magazine has just put out a new article about a manganese company thatâs following that playbook faithfully, even though itâs clear that its factory is making workers terribly ill.
Ten workers from the Assmang manganese processing plant in Cato Ridge, South Africa have been certified by the countryâs Compensation Commissioner as being permanently disabled as a result of manganism, a Parkinsonâs-like syndrome…
oracknows | November 19, 2008It looks as though the Jenny McCarthy woo factor has claimed two more celebrity victims' brains. If a recently viewed press release is any indication, it appears that Anthony Edwards and Dustin Hoffman are getting into the autism quackery business:
Internet Marketing Company joins Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Edwards and others in fight to help children with Autism.
GREENSBORO, N.C. (June 4, 2008) -- Market America announced today that it is in the development and testing stages of a new line of nutraceutical products that will support the health of children with Autism…
oracknows | November 19, 2008Busy, busy, busy.
Between work and getting ready to for the 100th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle on Thursday as I mentioned on Monday, I'm afraid I don't have time for my usual sterling gems of skeptically insolent prose or an analysis of a scientific paper that a couple of my readers have sent me. If too many science or medical bloggers haven't totally deconstructed it by then, maybe I'll take it on either on Friday or Monday. Until then, if you haven't gotten me an entry to the Skeptics' Circle yet, you still have about 12 hours left until the deadline at 6 PM EST.
In the meantime, that…
oracknows | November 17, 2008I almost feel sorry for acupuncturists these days. Almost.
Well, not exactly. Clearly, given the infiltration of woo into academic medicine, acupuncturists are in demand even in the most allegedly "science-based" of academic medical centers. After all, acupuncture is what I like to refer to as "gateway woo," an unscientific placebo-based therapy that has somehow come to be viewed as seemingly respectable, as though there's something to it. It's not hard to see why acupuncture has achieved this status. Indeed, there was a time when I, the arch-skeptic, the guy who has built up one of the top…
revere | November 13, 2008Last spring NIH scientist Charles Natanson published a meta-analysis of studies on hemoglobin-based blood substitutes in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Natanson, C., Kern, S. J., Lurie, P., Banks, S. M. & Wolfe, S. M. J. Am. Med. Assoc. 299, 2304-2312 (2008)). Blood substitutes are . . . well . . . blood substitutes. Like blood, they carry oxygen, but have long shelf lives, don't need refrigeration, don't require cross-matching and meet the need for situations where there is a shortage of fresh whole blood. A meta-analysis is a systematic summary, often expressed…
gregladen | November 12, 2008It is hard to kill fungus. Well, not really. They can't handle being burned and chlorine does them in and lots of other chemicals are bad for hem. But when a fungus infects a person ... like with Aspergillos, an infection with Aspergillus in the lungs, fungi are tricky. To kill an infectious agent, one typically poisons it somehow, but to ingest, inject, inhale, or even topically apply a chemical may also affect the person. The reason it is relatively easy to kill an infecting bacterium than it is to kill an infecting fungus is, in part, because fungi are phylogenetically more closely…
tfk | November 11, 2008Ronald M. Green writes in the Washington Post:
Few issues are likely to generate more emotional opposition than federal funding of stem cell research. Handled wrongly, it could energize conservative opponents and derail Barack Obama's presidency. There is no question that we must move ahead, but caution is key.
Actually:
Time Poll conducted by Abt SRBI. June 18-25, 2008. N=805 likely voters nationwide. MoE ± 3.
"There is a type of medical research that involves using special cells, called embryonic stem cells, that might be used in the future to treat or cure many diseases, such as Alzheimer'…
dgmacarthur | November 11, 2008
Reports in Australian papers the Age and the Brisbane Times note the impending arrival of a newcomer to the personal genomics scene: Lumigenix, a home-grown offering cooked up by Sydney entrepreneur Romain Bonjean.
The new arrival will face several major obstacles to establishing itself in the market. Firstly, 23andMe has been offering its well-established and well-publicised service in Australia since October 3rd (announced on Twitter). There's no obvious home-ground advantage for an industry where the service requires only a postal address and an internet connection, so Lumigenix will…
oracknows | November 10, 2008I had been planning on taking on a couple of articles about breast cancer to start out the week. However, between having to deal with a tsunami of leaves before Monday, when the giant trucks come along to pick them up today and a number of other issues, I didn't have time. As much as I love taking a recent study and doing an in-depth analysis, such posts take probably twice as much time for me to do as the average post. Unfortunately, various issues this weekend prevented that, at least for today.
Fortunately, there's always homeopathy.
Yes, homeopathy is always there for the easy post. Even…