People & Power – Drug Money. This is a “MUST WATCH”!
Everyone should watch this video.
Insulin May Reduce Several Inflammatory Factors Induced by Bacterial Infection
Treating intensive care patients who develop life-threatening bacterial infections, or septicemia, with insulin potentially could reduce their chances of succumbing to the infection, if results of a new preliminary study can be replicated in a larger study.
A paper published online ahead of print in Diabetes Care reports that insulin lowered the amount of inflammation and oxidative stress in study participants who had been injected with a common bacteria, or endotoxin, known as LPS (lipopolysaccharide).
The study was conducted by University at Buffalo endocrinologists at Kaleida Health’s Diabetes-Endocrinology Center of Western New York.
Improve Patient Safety And Cut Costs With Clinical Pharmacists
What if you could improve patient safety, cut costs, broaden your medical knowledge and find 20% more time in your workday? On October 1, 2010, that is just what we can expect when clinical pharmacists move from the back room to the bedside in ten general medical units at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
As we all know, medications play an intensely complex and ever-growing role in patient care. In tertiary care hospitals, it is not uncommon for patients to take 12 to 16 medications a day. When patients return home, one-third to one-half of them don’t take medications as prescribed, and up to one-quarter never fill prescriptions at all. Furthermore, we all know that medication problems at discharge — such as prescription omissions and instructions that are incomplete, inaccurate, and difficult for patients to understand — are common. It’s no wonder medication issues are a major cause of readmissions.
In pilot studies, the presence of a residency-trained pharmacist as an active part of our medical team addressed all of these concerns. Our clinical pharmacist attended daily bedside rounds, optimized inpatient medication regimens, served as a drug information resource, performed discharge medication reconciliation, and provided discharge medication education, including, in some cases, custom-made medication lists in an easier to read calendar/pictorial format for patients with limited health literacy.
Ritalin Improves Brain Function
Methylphenidate normalizes functional magnetic resonance imaging cingulate responses and reduces impulsivity on a salient cognitive task in individuals with cocaine addiction. Above is an axial map that shows the caudal dorsal anterior cingulate (cdACC) and rostroventromedial anterior cingulate (extending to the medial orbitofrontal cortex, rvACC/mOFC) — cortical regions that showed enhanced responses to methylphenidate as compared to placebo in cocaine addicted individuals. These regions are crucial for the ability to regulate behavior, cognition and emotion.
UPTON, NY — A brain-scanning study at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, conducted with collaborators from Stony Brook University, reveals that an oral dose of methylphenidate, commonly known as Ritalin, improves impaired brain function and enhances cognitive performance in people who are addicted to cocaine. The study — to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of September 6, 2010 — suggests that methylphenidate, combined with cognitive interventions, may have a role in facilitating recovery from drug addiction.
“Previous studies have shown that methylphenidate does not decrease cocaine use or prevent relapse in addicted individuals, so it wouldn’t work to treat cocaine addiction directly, the way methadone works to treat heroin abuse,” said Rita Z. Goldstein, a psychologist who leads the neuropsychoimaging group at Brookhaven Lab. “But other studies show that methylphenidate does decrease behaviors such as risk taking and impulsivity and improves brain function and cognitive performance in a range of other conditions that also affect the brain’s prefrontal cortex, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), some forms of dementia, and certain kinds of brain injury. If it also has these positive effects in cocaine-addicted individuals, then it could be a useful component of a treatment strategy that helps increase recovering addicts’ impulse control.”
To find out, Goldstein’s group performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on 13 cocaine users and 14 healthy control subjects who were asked to perform a cognitive task after being given either a low oral dose of methylphenidate (20 milligrams) or a placebo. The task involved pushing a button to correctly identify the color of a printed word; some words had to do with drug use, others were “neutral.” Subjects received monetary rewards for correct answers.
The Clot Wars – New Rivals to Warfarin as Blood Clot Preventer
For investors who have been asking themselves whether medium-size pharmaceutical companies can survive in an industry that has had recent mega-mergers, the answer seems to be yes. At least for Bristol-Myers Squibb.
The company’s experimental anticoagulant drug apixaban worked better than aspirin in preventing stroke and systemic blood clots for patients who have an irregular heart rhythm disorder called atrial fibrillation, according to new study data presented on Tuesday at a cardiology conference in Stockholm.
Investment bank analysts have estimated that a new generation of stroke prevention drugs like apixaban, if approved by the Food and Drug Administration, could generate $10 billion or more in annual global sales.
Multivitamin Use Doesn’t Impact Colon Cancer Outcomes
Patients with colon cancer who used multivitamins during and after being treated with post-surgical chemotherapy did not reduce the risk of the cancer returning or their dying from it, according to researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
In a study of patients with stage III colon cancer — characterized as cancer in the large bowel area with some cancer cells in a few nearby lymph nodes — the researchers found that while multivitamin use had no beneficial effect on patients’ outcomes, it also did not have a detrimental effect.
The findings are reported online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and later will be published in a print edition.
Disclaimer
Pages
Newsletter
Blogroll
Hot Off The Press
- New Medicines: PAC10 To Summarise Significant Recent Releases, Australia September 10, 2010One of the final sessions of PAC210 in Melbourne this year will also be one of the most important for pharmacists trying to keep abreast of fast-changing developments in medicines... […]
- Pharmacists May Help Patients Prevent And Detect Heart Disease September 9, 2010In honor of Cholesterol Education Month, The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) would like to highlight the increasing role of the pharmacist in communities nationwide... […]
- CDC Ramps Up Production Of New Three-In-One Flu Vaccine September 8, 2010Health officials say that there will be plenty of flu vaccine available this year, now that the H1N1 pandemic has ended, The Washington Post reports. "The World Health Organization declared an end to the pandemic last month, based on indications that the H1N1 flu was transitioning to a more seasonal virus... […]
- Urgent Action Needed To Ensure UK Patients Get Their Medicines, UK September 7, 2010Urgent action is needed to tackle the worsening problems UK patients are facing when trying to receive their medicine prescriptions... […]
- Almost Half Of All Americans Use Prescription Drugs Each Month September 6, 2010Nearly half of all Americans used at least one prescription drug per month in 2008, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Bloomberg reports. That's a 10 percent increase over the preceding decade. Over that time, yearly spending by Americans on drugs doubled to $234 billion. "The two biggest-sellers last year were […]
- Prescription Drug Use Rises 10%, Spending More Than Doubles In One Decade September 3, 2010The number of people in the USA who took one prescription medication in a one month period rose 10% during the decade up to the end of 2008. Americans spent US234.1 billion on prescription medications in 2008, more than double the figure in 1999, according to a report published by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)... […]
- Nearly 1 In 10 Doses Of Prescribed Medication Missed In Hospital, UK September 3, 2010New research based on a study at Bradford Teaching Hospitals, shows that hospital inpatients are, on average, likely to miss out on almost 10% of their medication doses. The study, will be presented at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's annual conference 5-6th September. Overall, 9.7% of prescribed medicines were omitted... […]
RSS Feed
RSS Feed
Subscribe to my news RSS feed to get my news articles delivered directly to your desktop.
To view our feed in your RSS reader, copy and paste the following URL into your reader:
http://edhayes.com/?feed=rss2
What Is RSS?
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is designed for sharing news and other Web content. RSS allows a person's computer to fetch and display this shared information in a simple format. My feed is updated each time I post a new news article.
How Do I Get an RSS Reader?
There are a number of free RSS readers (also called RSS aggregators) that you can download. In addition many newer browsers have built-in support for RSS feeds.
Archives
ISSN
© 2001 - 2009 Edmund's Home Page.
All Rights Reserved.
ISSN: 1535-1599