A Fisherman’s Friend… or Foe?
aka Toxicology Conundrum 052
A 64 year-old male was brought in after a collapse at home. He had been sitting on the couch with his wife when she noticed that he had gone limp and was not breathing. Bystander CPR was performed for 15 minutes until ambulance crews arrived. He received 2x DC 200J shock for ventricular fibrillation, after which he had a return of spontaneous circulation, with HR 80 sinus rhythm, BP 90/60 and GCS 3. In the Emergency department he received 300mg Amiodarone, and cooling was commenced as per out of hospital cardiac arrest protocol at that time. He had a further episode of VF arrest soon after ar...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - March 5, 2014 Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Kylie McNamara Tags: Clinical Case Emergency Medicine Featured Intensive Care Toxicology Toxicology Quiz cardiac arrest ECG Glycyrrhizic acidm hypokalemia laboratory results licorice liquorice Source Type: blogs
Surgeon General's Report Implicates Filtered Cigarettes in Increasing Cancer Risk
According to an article at Law360.com, the recently-released Surgeon General's report's conclusion that cigarette filters may actually increase the risk of lung cancer could lead to a new wave of class-action lawsuits against cigarette companies.According to the article: "The U.S. surgeon general's landmark finding last week that filtered cigarettes may actually increase the risk of lung cancer could lead to a flurry of new lawsuits against tobacco companies and even expand cigarette litigation outside of Florida, where it has flourished for nearly a decade."The Surgeon General's report concludes that: "The introductio...
Source: The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - January 27, 2014 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Clinical Care Options to Present Key Findings on Oncology/Hematology Practice Gaps and the Influence of Online Tools in Breast Cancer Assessments.
This week, Clinical Care Options (CCO) gave presentations to discuss key findings from two important education assessments. The first study provides evidence of significant lapses in oncology and hematology treatment practice; the second highlights the importance of online tools in breast cancer assessments.
CCO a leading company in the development of medical education programs and innovative education technology, reaching clinicians in 200 countries around the world.
The company focuses on specialty areas, including oncology, HIV, hematology, and hepatitis.
Practice Gaps and Barriers to Optimal Care Among H...
Source: Policy and Medicine - December 12, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
Orphan Drugs - The Seattle Times explains
The mining of rare diseasesThirty years ago, Congress acted to spur research on rare diseases. Today, we have hundreds of new drugs — along with runaway pricing and market manipulation, as drugmakers turn a law with good intentions into a profit engine.By Michael J. Berens and Ken ArmstrongHer vision failed first.Then she fell asleep at school from inexplicable fatigue. Even walking proved difficult, often impossible, as she knocked into furniture and walls. It was like an electrical switch in her body toggled without warning. Some days she was in control, most she was not.Specialists were s...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 11, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Ariad (And Its Drug) In Trouble
Ariad's Inclusig (ponatimib) is in even more trouble than it looked like, and that was already a lot. The company announced earlier this morning that its Phase III trial comparing the drug to Gleevec (imatinib) is not just on hold - it's been stopped, and patients are being taken off the drug. That can't be good news for the drug's current approved status, either:
Iclusig is commercially available in the U.S. and EU for patients with resistant or intolerant CML and Philadelphia-chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia. ARIAD continues to work with health authorities to make appropriate changes to the Iclusig produ...
Source: In the Pipeline - October 18, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Cancer Source Type: blogs
Cord blood transplant renews teen’s health – and perspective on life
This article is from Be The Match blog, http://www.bethematchblog.org/2013/06/cord-blood-transplant-renews-teens-health-and-perspective-on-life/
Teenagers are not always known for their sense of perspective. Elizabeth is the exception to the rule.
The source of Elizabeth’s perspective is cancer – specifically, acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), first diagnosed when she was 10 years old. Aggressive treatment put the disease in remission after a month, while Elizabeth continued active treatment for two-and-a-half years, pushing through the chemotherapy pills and check-ups while trying to “be a normal kid.” She was app...
Source: Cord Blood News - August 14, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: joyce at mazelabs.com Tags: Cord Blood medical research stem cells acute lymphocytic leukemia ALL blood cancer cord blood transplant Source Type: blogs
Curing Leukemia in Mice With Non-Replicating Viruses
Researchers here demonstrate a way to greatly increase the number of cancer-targeted viruses that can be safely infused into a patient. By disabling the ability of the virus to self-replicate they prevent it from causing dangerous side-effects:
The researchers used a specific method and dose of UV light to transform regular replicating viruses into unique particles that could no longer replicate and spread, but could still enter cancer cells efficiently, kill them and stimulate a strong immune response against the cancer. These particles were able to kill multiple forms of leukemia in the laboratory, including samples tak...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 14, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Dealing with the threat of Cancer from Treatment
I am essentially “cancer free”. This fall will be the 10 year anniversary of my stage 3 breast cancer diagnosis. My feeling is that once we battle cancer we need to stay vigilant. Like any formidable enemy, cancer is continuing to lurk in the shadows. I have begun to take this threat more seriously due to the loss of my father to chemotherapy related leukemia – called Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML), 10 years after he went into remission from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Treatment related cancers are always a threat to those victorious over the disease. In addition to AML, there is also another leukemia call...
Source: Life with Breast Cancer - July 3, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Kathy-Ellen Kups Tags: Breast Cancer Source Type: blogs
Stem Cell Transplants for Leukemia Showing Improved Outcomes
Researchers recently published a set of encouraging data resulting from the use of stem cell transplants in the treatment of forms of leukemia. Once a particular new technique is adopted in medical practice, further progress is often a matter of steady incremental improvement. Here that improvement is quite considerable over the past decade, a reflection of the pace of medical science in general:
Survival rates have increased significantly among patients who received blood stem cell transplants from both related and unrelated donors. [The] study authors attribute the increase to several factors, including advances in HLA ...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 30, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Bone Marrow Transplant Countdown: 86 Days to Remission
In previous articles I recounted my friend Fred’s battle with acute myloid leukemia and his search for a donor willing to carry through on an earlier pledge to provide life-saving stem cells. Here is the rest of Fred’s story.Contributor: Sharon Gloger FriedmanPublished: May 24, 2013 (Source: Most Recent Health Wellness - Associated Content)
Source: Most Recent Health Wellness - Associated Content - May 24, 2013 Category: Other Conditions Source Type: blogs
ICG Europe starts w/ "Omics & the future of man" & sticks to men the rest of the time
Fun. Another day. Another YAMMGM (yet another mostly male genomics meeting). This one is the International Conference on Genomics Europe 2013. I have copied the program as it is now here and then highlighted the men and women as far as I can tell. And, well, it is not very balanced. It starts off, ironically, with "Omics and the future of man" and then stays on both omics and alas, men, for most of the meeting. The first woman does not talk until 5 pm on the first day. Nothing against BGI per se. But they seem to be repeat offenders in having meetings with mostly male s...
Source: The Tree of Life - May 14, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
Bespoke (i.e, Customized) Cancer Treatment; Cancer "Cures" and the Media
Patients with cancer need to seek the most sophisticated care that they can obtain these days, which is usually found in cancer centers and academic hospitals (see: Patients with a Cancer Should Seek Treatment in Cancer Hospitals). Not only is treatment in such centers usually state-of-the-art but they also provide ready access to the best diagnostic tests including genomic analysis of both the patient and the tumor. They also provide ready access to controlled clinical trials where new drugs are being evaluated. Here's an excerpt from a recent article about how cancer centers are racing to map patients' genes with...
Source: Lab Soft News - April 28, 2013 Category: Pathologists Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Laboratory Industry Trends Medical Consumerism Medical Education Medical Research Source Type: blogs
Experimental Immune Therapy Kills Leukemia Tumors in Five Patients
Memorial Sloan-Kettering researchers were able to treat people with recurrent B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) using an experimental immune therapy
technique. T cells were extracted from five patients, genetically modified to target the cancer cells, and returned to the patient's body. Scientific American reports that the researchers found the patients were rapidly cleared of the tumor after the modified T cells were reintroduced.
The study was published here in Science Translational Medicine. A
U.S. News story says the experimental treatment is called adoptive T-cell therapy. It is still in its early experimenta...
Source: HealthNewsBlog.com - March 22, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: cancer leukemia t-cell-therapy Source Type: blogs
Nora Ephron’s Final Act - NYTimes.com
At 10 p.m. on a Friday night in a private room on the 14th Floor of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital on 68th and York Avenue, my mother was lying in her bed hallucinating, in that dream space people go on their way to being gone.She spoke of seeing trees, possibly a forest. And she mentioned to Nick, my stepfather, that she had been to the theater where her play was showing and that the audience was full. In reality, she had not left the hospital in a month, and the play, "Lucky Guy," was nearly a year away from opening.My brother, Max, and I stood there in disbelief. Though it had been weeks since her blood count showed any ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - March 9, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
ABT-199 Clinical Trial Suspended (Updated)
Abbott - whoops, pardon me, I mean AbbVie, damn that name - has been developing ABT-199, a selective Bcl-2-targeted oncology compound for CLL. Unlike some earlier shots in this area (ABT-263, navitoclax), it appeared to spare platelet function, and was considered a promising drug candidate in the mid-stage clinical pipeline.
Not any more, perhaps. Clinical work has been suspended after a patient death due to tumor lysis syndrome. This is a group of effects caused by sudden breakdown of the excess cells associated with leukemia. You get too much potassium, too much calcium, too much uric acid, all sorts of things at once, ...
Source: In the Pipeline - February 15, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Cancer Source Type: blogs
