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Stem Cell Research & COVID-19
On May 8th, 2020, Pluristem announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved their PLX cell therapy as an Investigational New Drug (IND) for a Phase II clinical trial in the treatment of severe COVID-19 cases complicated by Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). The study will be a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of intramuscular injections of PLX-PAD cells for the treatment of severe COVID-19. The patients will be treated with PLX cells, allogeneic mesenchymal-like cells derived from human placentas after the delivery of fu...
Source: Cord Blood News - April 27, 2021 Category: Perinatology & Neonatology Authors: Chaya Rothschild, Andrologist Tags: Cord Blood medical research stem cells cordblood covid stemcells Source Type: blogs

Drug Prohibition Leads to Unnecessary Deaths
David BoazI wrote an op ‐ed aboutending the drug warin the New York Times in 1988. It ’s taking the world a long time to come around to my position. Meanwhile, the effects of prohibition persist. I complained in 1988 about 824,000 arrests a year. It wasmore than 1.6 million in 2018. I noted that the federal government was spending $3.9 billion a year on the drug war, and the figure is far higher now, thoughestimatesvary.This week ’s newspapers have reminded me of some of the less immediately obvious effects of prohibition. As with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, it’s not enough simply ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 24, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs

Non-Surgical Solution for Fecal Incontinence: Interview with Miles Rosen, CEO of Pelvalon
Fecal incontinence can be extremely challenging for those who suffer it. The condition can be embarrassing, making it difficult for people to tell others or even their doctor about it, and it is more common than you might think. Fecal incontinence can affect anyone, but a key group of patients includes women during menopause, in whom it is often associated with previous pelvic trauma, such as that which occurs during child-birth. Treatment options are relatively limited and either tend to be minimalist, such as lifestyle changes, or pretty intense, such as expensive surgical implants. There was a gap for a low-risk and ...
Source: Medgadget - April 21, 2021 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Exclusive GI Ob/Gyn Source Type: blogs

Does J & J ’s Covid‐19 Vaccine Pose Fewer Risks than Oral Contraceptives?
Michael F. CannonEarlier today, I wrote about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ’srecommendation that federal and state governments stop administering Johnson& Johnson ’s Covid‐19 vaccine because the agency was “reviewing data involving six reported U.S. cases of a rare and severe type of blood clot …called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST).” Here, I thought I would do a back ‐of‐the‐envelope comparison of this risk to that of another category of products on which the FDA has not placed a hold: oral contraceptives.According to oneliterature revi...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 13, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Michael F. Cannon Source Type: blogs

Blocking J & J and AstraZeneca Vaccines Shows the FDA Has Not Changed Its Stripes
Michael F. CannonThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration is recommending the federal government and state governments stop administering Johnson& Johnson’s Covid‐19 vaccine. Some 7 million Americans have received the vaccine, whose regimen requires only one dose. The FDA issued the recommendation afterreports that six women between the ages of 18 and 48 developed blood clots after taking the vaccine. One of the women is in a hospital in critical condition. Another died. While the FDA’s recommendation is merely advisory, it is likely to halt vaccinations at federal facilities. Statesincluding Ohio, New York, andC...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 13, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Michael F. Cannon Source Type: blogs

Evaluation of the Surgical Specimen After Neoadjuvant Systemic Therapy
ConclusionPostneoadjuvant systemic therapy histopathological changes are complex, and careful systematic review of the specimen is required for accurate diagnosis and follow-up treatment. For pathological complete response to be used as an indicator of response to novel therapies, it is essential to have a standardized way in which residual disease is measured and reported. We designed the recommendations specifically for the clinical trial setting; however, they can be optionally incorporated into routine practice because, in our opinion, standardization is most effective when uniformly applied. Hopefully, such standardiz...
Source: Oncopathology - March 23, 2021 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast Breast Biopsy Procedure breast cancer Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, March 22nd 2021
This article expresses sentiments regarding medical technology and human longevity that we'd all like to see more of in the mainstream media. At some point, it will come to be seen by the average person as basically sensible to work towards minimizing the tide of suffering and death caused aging and age-related disease. It has been, in hindsight, a strange thing to live in a world in which most people were reflexively opposed to that goal. Death and aging constitute a mystery. Some of us die more quickly. We often ask about it as children, deny it in youth, and reluctantly come to accept it as adults. Aging is uni...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 21, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

The Popular Science Media Fails to Distinguish Between Potentially High Yield and Probably Low Yield Treatments for Aging
It is of great importance to distinguish, where we can, between promising and poor approaches to the treatment of aging. If only poor approaches are developed, then we'll age, suffer, and die on much the same schedule as our grandparents. In the article here, metformin and senolytics are crammed together side by side, as though the same thing. They are very much not the same thing. Metformin is almost certainly a poor approach to the treatment of aging. The animal data is terrible, while the human data shows only a modest effect size. Senolytics are most likely a promising approach. The animal data is amazing: robus...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 16, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

A Plan to Conquer U.S. Drug Shortages
By JESSICA DALEY and WAYNE RUSSELL COVID-19 has focused the nation’s attention on the risks associated with complex, global supply chains, particularly related to healthcare products and prescription drugs. While supply disruptions of personal protective equipment (PPE) captured headlines, the pandemic also compromised the drug supply chain. With much of the United States’ generic drugs manufactured overseas, exportation bans coupled with increased global demand created significant challenges for U.S.-based providers to secure basic, life-sustaining and life-saving therapies. As an “easy” solution, many ar...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 4, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Pharmaceuticals The Business of Health Care Drug shortages Jessica Daley Premier Wayne Russell Source Type: blogs

The Feds ’ Sorry Record on COVID-19
David BoazThey say journalism is the first rough draft of history. With the Covid pandemic now a year old, we are starting to seebooks on the topic. And variouslibertarianstudies andarticles, critically examining government andprivate-sector responses to the crisis, have appeared. But some of those rough drafts in the major media add up to a pretty strong critique of government failure by themselves. Just consider the disappointing, even tragic, analyses that have been appearing over the past year:The federal government hadreports andwarnings andwar games aboutpandemic danger at least as far back as 2001, butwas apparently...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 24, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs

How to Get Away with Immunity: FDA's Emergency Use Authorization Scheme and PREP Act Liability Protection in the Context of COVID-19
William Martinez, How to Get Away with Immunity: FDA's Emergency Use Authorization Scheme and PREP Act Liability Protection in the Context of COVID-19, Loyola Consumer L. Rev. (Forthcoming): The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plays a vital role in... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - February 9, 2021 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 8th 2021
This study was divided in two phases: CALERIE-1 and CALERIE-2. CALERIE-1 study was performed to assess the possible effects induced by a reduction of 10-30% of caloric intake on body composition parameters and lipid profile after 6 and 12 months in a population of middle-aged non-obese subjects. CALERIE-1 results showed an improvement in lipid and glycemic profile and a reduction in body weight (BW) and fat mass. CALERIE-2 was the largest multi-center study on CRD. A total of 220 subjects were enrolled randomly with a 2:1 allocation into two subgroups: 145 in the CRD group and 75 in the ad libitum group. The CRD gro...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 7, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Theorizing that Too Much Propionate Contributes to Alzheimer's Disease
Proprionate is generated by gut microbes, and is generally thought to be beneficial, acting to improve measures of health. Thus it has been lumped in with butyrate and a few other metabolites as beneficial outputs of the gut microbe that decline with age as the microbial populations shift. Researchers here instead discuss the possibility that excessive manufacture of proprionate by the aged gut microbiome can contribute to neurodegeneration. All compounds have a dose response curve, and too much can be just as bad as too little. This commentary on proprionate is an interesting viewpoint: one of the challenges in Alzheimer'...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 5, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Next: Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy?
How ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry (Nature): … The Imperial study was one of a spate of clinical trials launched over the past few years using illicit psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and MDMA (3,4‑methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as molly or ecstasy) to treat mental-health disorders, generally with the close guidance of a psychiatrist or psychotherapist. The idea has been around for decades — or centuries in some cultures — but the momentum has picked up drastically over the past few years as investors and scientists have begun to champion the approa...
Source: SharpBrains - February 4, 2021 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Books lysergic acid diethylamide MDMA mental health disorders psilocybin psychedelic psychiatrist psychotherapist Psychotherapy Source Type: blogs