women's health
terrasig | February 10, 2010From Monday's issue of The Press in York, England:
A breast cancer patient from York says she is "disgusted" by a shortage of the drug she and hundreds of other women rely on to reduce the risk of the disease returning.
Mother-of-two Marion Barclay, 45, said the situation became so serious last Friday, she faced the prospect of missing her daily dose of Arimidex tablets.
This story is one of several reports on sporadic, worldwide shortages of Arimidex®, the brand of anastrozole sold by AstraZeneca. Anastrozole is a competitive inhibitor of the cytochrome P450 monooxygenase isozyme known as…
terrasig | January 19, 2010This past weekend's international science communication conference, ScienceOnline2010, also saw the first, final hardback copies of Rebecca Skloot's long-awaited book make it into the hands of the science and journalism consuming public. Moreover, an excerpt of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has just appeared in the new issue of Oprah Winfrey's O Magazine. And already, those online science communicators who left the conference with Skloot's book are registering their praise via this Twitter feed that was so active it was a trending topic at the science aggregator, SciencePond.
The story…
terrasig | December 28, 2009
In discussing the Christmas birth of a son to ScienceBlogs launcher and science journalist Christopher Mims and his wife, I neglected to note another addition to our tribe of science, from a science blogger specifically.
ChemicalBiLOLogy blogger, Arlenna, gave birth on Christmas Eve to a beautiful girl, pictured here with Mr. Arlenna. In her brief post, "I had a baby!," Arlenna posited:
. . .whoever invented epidurals and started using them in childbirth should win the Nobel Prize.
Despite my lack of training in anesthesiology or obstetrics, I thought I might look into this a bit. I had…
terrasig | August 26, 2009[Sort of a repost from the last three years, updated appropriately - APB]
Seven years ago at 11:24 am EDT (1524 GMT), your humble blogger was handed the keys to a whole new vocabulary of love.
The gift came in the form of a 7 lb 13 oz (3,544 gm), 20.5 inch (52 cm) bundle of drooling, peeing, meconium-pooping bundle of baby girl, yanked from an incision in PharmGirl's abdomen.
The lessons of compassion and unconditional love I have been taught by these two women have comprised the most formative experiences of my life.
In return, PharmGirl has suffered tremendous indignities on my behalf:…
tqa | June 3, 2009
James Kirchick has an op-ed up in today's Wall Street Journal that addresses the reaction to the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Or so he might want to believe. In actuality, Kirchick is responding to the portion of the reaction that he wants to see, and not to the range of opinion that is out there.
There is no appreciable number of people in this country, religious Christians or otherwise, who support the murder of abortion doctors. The same cannot be said of Muslims who support suicide bombings in the name of their religion.
Not only has Kirchick clearly missed the moral munchkins…
thusspakezuska | May 22, 2009In response to my recent post on being mauled by the PA at my annual gyn exam, reader Danimal was moved by my saying this
I say if it hurts, you should feel free to yelp. And no doctor or PA should be shushing you. I am ashamed to say that when my PA shushed me, I let her make me feel embarrassed, and I actually apologized to her. That is just messed up.
to comment thusly:
You disappoint me Zuska. On the bloggesphere you have no problem barfing over someones shoes, usually when appropriate, including mine. Yet here it was entirely appropriate, yet you did not. Come on, you can do better.…
palmd | January 21, 2009I'm one of those wacky idealists for whom January 20th was a great day. But with those high hopes, I have some fairly high expectations of our new president, one of the first of which is to repeal the Church Amendment, an HHS directive allowing health care providers to abandon proper ethics without consequence.
I've done quite a bit of blogviating about so-called conscience clauses, the rules that would allow health care providers to deny patients care not because it is outside the standard of care but because it bothers the personal beliefs of the provider. In case my previous writings…
terrasig | August 26, 2008[Sort of a repost from the last two years, updated appropriately - APB]
Six years ago at 11:24 am EDT (1624 GMT), your humble blogger was handed the keys to a whole new vocabulary of love.
The gift came in the form of a 7 lb. 13 oz. (3,544 gm), 20.5 inch (52 cm) bundle of drooling, peeing, meconium-pooping bundle of baby girl, yanked from an incision in PharmGirl's abdomen.
The lessons of compassion and unconditional love I have been taught by these two women have comprised the most formative experiences of my life.
In return, PharmGirl has suffered tremendous indignancies on my behalf: the…
terrasig | March 27, 2008Only time for a short post today but many news outlets are just now picking up on a 12 March WaPo article by David Segal on the 10th anniversary of the US FDA approval of the erectile dysfunction drug, Viagra. As we noted in yesterday's post, the active ingredient in Viagra, sildenafil, is so popular that even dietary supplement manufacturers are doping their products (illegally) with it and other related compounds.
While some may be cracking silly jokes today, Segal's article focuses primarily on the complexities of the female side of sexual relationships and the challenges in psychology…
terrasig | February 12, 2008There are responsible ways to present medical information and irresponsible ways. I will say at the outset that I have no ethical issues with discussing complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) with cancer patients, as long as the information presented is based in fact.
So it was no surprise to me and actually quite alarming to read a recent report suggesting that while only 1 in 20 breast cancer websites offer incorrect information, CAM-focused websites were 15 times more likely to contain inaccurate or incorrect information. The study to which I refer will appear in the 15 March issue…
purepedantry | November 13, 2007Heidi Ledford at Nature covers a recent presentation at the American Heart Association of data showing that oral contraceptive use increases the amount of plaques in women's arteries over years of use. This is part of several studies that have shown that the use of oral contraceptives may have some health consequences for women, particularly women in high risk groups.
However, I like this article because it emphasizes the reticence with which most women should take these findings. Results with oral contraceptives are ambiguous, and they are confounded by the fact that most of the studies…
terrasig | October 15, 2007Perhaps not a cure but certainly another critical tool in the anticancer armamentarium.
If you've ever read our introduction to the left in my profile as to why this blog is called Terra Sigillata, you'd know that the first trademarked drug was dirt itself (or soil to be exact). Terra Sigillata was a special fatty clay harvested from the Greek isle of Lemnos and then punched into planchets with a special seal. Because it contained kaolin, a component of Kaopectate, it was useful for treating gastrointestinal disorders, and its high mineral content was useful for treating deficiencies that…
terrasig | August 26, 2007[Sort of a repost from last year, updated appropriately - APB]
Five years ago at 11:24 am EDT (1624 GMT), your humble blogger was handed the keys to a whole new vocabulary of love.
The gift came in the form of a 7 lb. 13 oz. (3,544 gm), 20.5 inch (52 cm) bundle of drooling, peeing, meconium-pooping bundle of baby girl, yanked from an incision in PharmGirl's abdomen.
The lessons of compassion and unconditional love I have been taught by these two women have comprised the most formative experiences of my life.
In return, PharmGirl has suffered tremendous indignancies on my behalf: the…
purepedantry | June 28, 2007Madam Fathom has a great piece on the results of fellow Sinai researcher John Morrison's study into cognitive improvement with estrogen treatment. (I would note, however, that hormone replacement therapy is still not recommended for anything other than the acute treatment of menopause because of negative cardiovascular side-effects associated with it.) (OVX = ovariectomized)
A new study by John Morrison at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine investigated this issue by OVXing old and young rhesus monkeys, and treating half of each group with estrogen. The group then tested the monkeys on a task of…
purepedantry | June 4, 2007God, what is with me today and women's health? You would think I had girls on the brain.
I happened across this the other day, and it is simply the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. They are now selling chewable mint-flavored birth control.
Perhaps, the women out there can chime in on this, but is there any reason you would want your birth control to be chewable? Would you want your birth control to in any way resemble Flintstones vitamins?
It's kind of stupid too because they are advertising this for the woman on the go, but if you chew it you have to drink a glass of water right…
purepedantry | June 4, 2007This falls into the rather broad category of things I will post but about which I will not comment. This is in part because I think the results are relatively self-explanatory. Maybe it is because I am a big prude. But mostly it is just because I am not touching this. No way...not with a ten-foot pole... (Just visualize me trying to decide whether I should put a photo of cleavage in this post.)
Anyway, here is your brief synopsis of breast-related news:
ABC details an interview with Elisabeth Squires, author of Boobs: A Guide to Your Girls, wherein she discusses appropriate cleavage for…
purepedantry | February 21, 2007In June, we talked about a new human papiloma virus (HPV) vaccine that was being opposed by a Christian group in Colorado on the grounds that it might promote premarital sex. HPV is a virus that commonly infects the female reproductive tract. It has many strains, and some of those strains confer a risk for cervical cancer.
Merck produced a vaccine to the high risk strains called Gardasil. It had been shown that for the vaccine to be effective in preventing infection in those strains it was important to administer the vaccine before the girls begin sexual activity -- HPV is transmitted…
purepedantry | January 31, 2007There is a big controversy among doctors and patients as to the wisdom of C-section vs. vaginal delivery. It is a complex issue.
For the first birth, there is no evidence that I am aware of that C-section or vaginal delivery are superior to one another with respect to the child's health. Still, this is a point that is endlessly disputed in malpractice proceedings against obstetricians. You can always argue that the failure to do a C-section resulted in this or that problem in the baby. (We'll get back to that.)
From the mother's point of view, C-section can have numerous and severe…
terrasig | January 16, 2007Brazilian researchers have been experimenting with an gel containing an algae-based anti-HIV compound designed for use by women to prevent the spread of the virus.
Derived from the Brazilian brown alga, Dictyota pfaffii, two papers are available the describe the isolation and biological activity of the most active of the components, the dolabellane diterpene 8,10,18-trihydroxy-2,6-dolabelladiene. The compound does indeed appear to inhibit HIV reverse transcriptase at concentrations (about 16 micromolar) that can be maintained in a vaginal gel preparation.
Human trials are expected to being…
terrasig | December 21, 2006As we discussed briefly on Tuesday, trial results published in the Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that alternative botanical supplements containing black cohosh were without benefit relative to placebo in treating the vasomotor symptoms (e.g., hot flashes, night sweats) of peri- and postmenopausal women.
The Cheerful Oncologist followed up with a post entitled, "Oh M'Gosh! Black Cohosh Squashed and That's No Bosh!, where Doc Hildreth cited another 2006 study from Mayo Clinic investigators demonstrating lack of efficacy of black cohosh extracts against hot flashes. (He noted later that…