Beyond heart health: Could your statin help prevent liver cancer?
Liver cancer is hard to treat. It’s a top-five cause of cancer-related death worldwide and a growing cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Since liver cancer is often found at a late stage, when treatment has limited benefit, there has been increasing interest in prevention. That’s where statin medications might come in.
Liver cancer is usually caused by chronic liver disease, so an important way to prevent liver cancer is to treat the underlying trigger. For example, curing hepatitis C infection — an important cause of chronic liver disease — reduces the risk of liver cancer. However, if the liver d...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - January 27, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Irun Bhan, MD Tags: Cancer Drugs and Supplements Health Source Type: blogs
Test your medicine knowledge: 58-year-old man with type 2 diabetes
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.
A 58-year-old man is evaluated during a routine appointment. He is asymptomatic. He was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus 4 years ago and has hypertension, dyslipidemia, and obesity. His medications are enteric-coated low-dose aspirin, lisinopril, fluvastatin (20 mg/d), and metformin.
His calculated 10-year risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) using the Pooled Cohort Equations is 10%.
On physical examination, blood pressure is 126/78 mm Hg and pulse rate is 72/min. The remainder of the ex...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 3, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: mksap Tags: Conditions Diabetes Heart Source Type: blogs
Novartis Recalls Millions Of Samples Due To Packaging Glitch
Here is a headache no drugmaker wants to endure. Last July, Novartis began recalling a few million bottles of samples of different medicines that were distributed to physicians, because routine testing determined that a chemical used in shrink wrap packaging was found to leech into some tablets. The incident appears to be an unusual instance in which samples given to doctors have been yanked.
The voluntary recall amounted to 127 lots of samples for three blood pressure treatments - Exforge, Tekturna and Diovan – as well as the Lescol cholesterol pill and the Stalevo Parkinson’s drug, although a Novartis spokeswoman was...
Source: Pharmalot - December 20, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: esilverman Source Type: blogs
