Medicine
revere | April 25, 2007Yesterday a new medical journal was launched, Open Medicine. It's the product of Drs. John Hoey and Anne Marie Todkill, former editors of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, who were fired last year in a conflict over editorial independence. Their publisher, the Canadian Medical Association, tried to exert editorial direction and the editors resisted. It was, as they say, un scandale.
The editors have risen, souls and reputations intact. Moreover, OM will be joining the growing ranks of Open Access journals with open review policies:
Open Medicine is a new general medical journal. It…
terrasig | April 25, 2007A proprietary extract of black cohosh (Actea racemosa) sold in the US and Europe as Remifemin has long been purported as an alternative to hormone replacement therapy in menopause and perimenopause. Several trials have questioned the efficacy of this herb (one discussed on this blog) and the NIH has been concerned about sporadic reports of liver toxicity associated with some preparations of the herb. In the literature, black cohosh has been described in various instances as a phytoestrogen, an antiestrogen, an estrogen-receptor modulator, or devoid of any estrogenic activity. So, even I am…
tsmith | April 25, 2007 "Wet nursing," or the practice of allowing a woman other than the mother of a child to provide milk to an infant, has been practiced for millenia. Two hundred years ago, wet nursing was common for a variety of reasons. Upper-class families could hire a wet nurse to enable the mother to more quickly become pregnant again, ensuring adequate nutrition for the newborn infant without the associated decrease in fertility that accompanies breast-feeding. In middle class families, employing a wet nurse allowed the mother to return to her job in the factory or in the field. This practice began…
revere | April 17, 2007Some of the most boring sounding parts of epidemiology are also the most important. Take the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), now in its tenth revision (ICD-10). This is a standard way to code disease diagnoses that has its origins as far back as the 1850s. It was taken over as an official function of the World Health Organization (WHO) on its founding in 1948. By then it was already in its sixth revision. Versions of ICD9 and ICD10 are used for epidemiology, national health planning and health care management, where your insurance reimbursements are governed by ICD codes. It's…
purepedantry | April 17, 2007I have talked about funding a couple of times (here and here), and I get the impression from the comments about those posts that my views are at the minimum somewhat iconoclastic. Basically, while I would prefer the government to give more to research, at the moment I don't think that the primary issue is that the government isn't giving enough.
In this area, The Health Care Renewal Blog has a great post on the funding problems facing researchers in medical schools. Here's a clue -- they don't have to do with the government's but rather the medical school's priorities:
[Dr Goldman was asked…
retrospectacle | April 17, 2007Anti-cancer vaccines seem to be a burgeoning field in immunology (for example, the HPV vaccine) and what's more, they seem to hold much promise. A recent clinical trial at UCSF Brain Tumor Research Center has tested a vaccine (vitespan, trademark Oncophage) to glioma, a tumor of glia cells in the nervous system which is always fatal. The vaccine is individually tailored to the patient: its made out of their own tumor.
All 12 patients had recurrent high-grade glioma, and all 12 showed an immune response, attacking the tumor, following administration of the vaccine. Patients who received the…
oracknows | April 12, 2007If you ever want to wonder why I'm sometimes of the mind that the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine should be disbanded and its functions distributed among the other Institutes of the NIH, you just have to consider the sorts of woo-filled studies (like the Gonzalez protocol) funded by NCCAM mixed in among the more reasonable studies of herbal remedies and other modalities that have at least a modicum of scientific plausibility. With that in mind, I came across a study that seems to be getting a fair amount of play in the press, at least around here. The study purports…
terrasig | April 12, 2007Over the last year or so, the US FDA has grown tougher on withdrawing prescription and over-the-counter drugs that have not met the modern burden of proof for safety and efficacy that was officially required by the 1962 passage of the Kefauver-Harris amendments to the 1906 Federal Food and Drug Act (WaPo overview from June 2006 here). This legislation not only gave us the modern structure of preclinical and clincal trials, but it also required that drugs sold previously between 1938 and 1962 had to meet this standard of proof of safety and effectiveness.
But, it didn't make financial sense…
revere | April 12, 2007The newswires are on it again. This one has a good hook. A flu vaccine made in insect cells. So I read the paper. And in truth, it's pretty interesting.
Genetically engineered flu vaccine made from yellow striped caterpillars instead of hen eggs has been shown for the first time to keep people from getting the flu, scientists say.
The results are preliminary but suggest the insect method could be a quicker, easier alternative to the lengthy, antiquated egg-based procedure now used and could lead to a more rapid response to a pandemic, the study authors say. (Lindsey Tanner, AP)
There's more…
sb admin | April 10, 2007By David Michaels
Labor health advocates in California are supporting legislation banning diacetyl, the flavoring chemical implicated in numerous cases of bronchiolitis obliterans, a debilitating lung disease, among workers in the food industry. The ban may never occur, but by demanding it we are getting closer to protecting workers and the public from this very toxic material.
The threat of a ban has forced the food industry into an unusual position - industry representatives are now praising the California OSHA program, which is also moving to issue regulations limiting exposure to the…
j7uy5 | April 10, 2007Here
at ScienceBlogs, and medical blogs in general, are generally
somewhat dismissive of complimentary and alternative medicine.
Every once in a while, though, something comes up that is
positive.
This is from American Family Physician, and is openly available.
href="http://www.aafp.org/afp/20070401/1027.html">Peppermint
Oil
BENJAMIN KLIGLER, M.D., M.P.H., Albert Einstein College
of
Medicine of Yeshiva University, Bronx, New York
SAPNA CHAUDHARY, D.O., Beth Israel Continuum Center for Health and
Healing, New York, New York
Peppermint leaf and peppermint oil have a long history…
tqa | April 9, 2007
During a weekend that was marked by the release of another of the IPCC's summaries for policymakers, the hottest topic here at Scienceblogs was (still) the Nisbet/Mooney "Framing Science" paper. (It's also a bit of a water-cooler debate topic here at UH right now, and I suspect the same is going to be true at other universities.) This is, of course, not unexpected. It's a touchy topic among scientists, and has been for some time. One paper is not going to change that overnight.
Some good points have been raised by people on both sides of this debate, but there's also been a hell of a lot…
omnibrain | April 9, 2007Some interesting findings have popped up in the most recent issue of the Archives of Neurology.
It seems that when comparing individuals who have developed Parkinson Disease with family members who have not - the people with PD are less likely to have smoked or drank coffee on a daily basis.
Check out the abstract below:
Smoking, Caffeine, and Nonsteroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs in Families With Parkinson Disease
Dana B. Hancock, BS; Eden R. Martin, PhD; Jeffrey M. Stajich, PA-C; Rita Jewett, RN; Mark A. Stacy, MD; Burton L. Scott, PhD, MD; Jeffery M. Vance, PhD, MD; William K. Scott, PhD…
mementomori | April 9, 2007[Editor's Note: As promised in the mission statement of this blog we strive to bring our readers the brightest and the best in contemporary medical writing. Our latest entry (and painstakingly researched we might add) is the first of a series about the history of the healing arts.]
1889: Dr. William Osler, Chairman of Clinical Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, leaves Philadelphia to become Physician-in-Chief at the newly created Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Regarded as the 'Father of Modern Medicine' and one of the greatest teachers of all time, Osler quickly…
signout | April 5, 2007My fellow Scibling (cute, huh?) Bora is an incredibly friendly, warm, and funny blogger. He's also incredibly proficient: in addition to blogging at A Blog around the Clock, he's put together an anthology of science blogging, and a freaking conference of science bloggers. The man has the energy of a toddler on crank.
Bora just tagged me with the "Why Do I Blog?" meme, wherein I am meant to tell my volumes of readers why I blog.
That's easy:
1) I love to write.
2) I love to be read.
As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. I never pursued writing seriously because my folks…
revere | April 5, 2007Bird flu is spreading in poultry in Bangladesh. And Kuwait has had bird flu in its poultry but is hoping its cull of 1.7 million birds has stopped it. But not until four Bangladeshis working on the cull were hospitalized with possible bird flu infection. Isolation was undertaken because of blood tests. The Kuwaiti cullers are said to have received prophylactic Tamiflu and these workers were not reporting symptoms, but "preliminary tests" were positive (via crof's blog). More definitive tests are to come:
Preliminary tests for bird flu were positive on four Bangladeshi workers who had been…
revere | April 4, 2007Just as we are preparing to wind up our marathon series of posts on a mathematical model of antiviral resistance, a new paper has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) with data on antiviral resistance from Japan, the country that uses more Tamiflu and Relenza (the two available neuraminiase inhibitor antiviral drugs) than any other. It turns out the accompanying Editorial in JAMA specifically mentions the modeling paper and its results as a key to understanding the significance of this work. So all our labor has not been in vain. Here's more.
Our eye was caught…
cortex | April 3, 2007A recent study in The Archives of General Psychiatry suggests that 25 percent of all Americans diagnosed with depression are actually just dealing with the normal disappointments of life, like divorce or the loss of a job. Their sadness is being treated like a medical condition. They were given drugs, when what they really needed was support:
The study also suggested that drug treatment may often be inappropriate for people who are experiencing painful -- but normal -- responses to life's stresses. Supportive therapy, on the other hand, may be useful -- and may keep someone who has been…
thusspakezuska | April 2, 2007Well, just when I think I might be getting the migraines under control, I go and lose a whole week due to some mystery illness. It wasn't a cold and it wasn't the flu, but it sure did nail me to the floor for a week. I'm just getting back on schedule in my life. I'll try to get the Joy of Science summaries posted tomorrow but discussion posts may not be till Thursday.
Anyway....I wanted to call your attention to a nifty post on the "life as a leak" subject over at Fairer Science. And back on March 20, Science Woman wrote a post on Why We Leave that is very good. The discussion in the…
oracknows | March 30, 2007It is with some trepidation that I approach the latest target of Your Friday Dose of Woo.
No, it's not because the woo is so potent that it has actually struck the fear of You-Know-Who in me (I leave it up to readers to determine whether I was referring to God or Valdemort), although it is indeed potent woo. Nor is it that the woo is boring woo (there's a reason why "power of prayer" kind of woo usually doesn't make it into YFDoW unless there's a really entertaining angle to be targeted). No, it's because this particular woo seems to combine genetics with systems biology (I kid you not),…