Yet More Evidence for Long-Term CMV Infection to Increase Disease and Mortality in Old Age
A few weeks ago I pointed out recent study data from a German population on cytomegalovirus (CMV) and its role in immune aging. Today I'll note a companion study of a different population of older people that focuses more on the relationship between CMV and mortality. It is the story you might expect if you've been reading on this topic for any great length of time, as testing positive for CMV infection is here found to be associated with a significantly greater rate of age-related disease and mortality. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a pervasive herpesvirus that, like its peers, cannot be effectively cleared from the body by th...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 24, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 130
Just when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia…introducing Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 130
Question 1
Lady Windermere Syndrome (named after Oscar Wilde’s play) refers to infection of the right middle lobe of the lung (or lingula) with Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) in elderly women. What predisposing activity does this eponym allude to?
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Voluntary cough suppressio...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - December 19, 2015 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Niall Hamilton Tags: Frivolous Friday Five Tocoloshe MAC exanthems heroin Rinderpest Mycobacterium avium complex Lady Windermere Syndrome Source Type: blogs
MKSAP: 52-year-old woman with a burning sensation on her forehead
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.
A 52-year-old woman had a burning sensation involving the right side of her forehead and the tip of her nose for 2 days, followed by increased redness and the development of lesions involving the tip of her nose. Medical history is significant for hypertension, and her only medication is ramipril.
On physical examination, vital signs are normal. Skin examination shows an erythematous patch on the right side of the forehead with scattered overlying grouped vesicles and a vesicle on the tip of the nose with backgr...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 21, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: mksap Tags: Conditions Neurology Source Type: blogs
Should we require HPV vaccine for school attendance?
As followers of this blog know, I hugely respect Aaron E Carroll, MD, who writes The Incidental Economist blog, and often writes for the NYT’s “Upshot” as well. In the 11-9-15 “Upshot,” he talks about the disappointing uptake of the HPV vaccine (the one that protects against sexually transmitted herpes virus, which can cause cancer […] (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - November 12, 2015 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: denasdavis Tags: Health Care syndicated Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
MPTs Combine Contraception With HIV And Other STI Prevention
The world became a better place recently when world leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a milestone United Nations statement that will shape world policy for the next 15 years to reduce poverty and set us on a more equitable and sustainable trajectory. Sewn centrally into this extensive policy fabric is improving the status of women through expanding reproductive health and rights, achievements that clearly impact equity, educational attainment, and the well-being of women and families. Women’s ability to determine the timing and spacing of children and to avoid sexually transmitted infections (STIs...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - November 2, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Bethany Young Holt and Helen Rees Tags: Costs and Spending Drugs and Medical Technology Equity and Disparities Featured Global Health Long-term Services and Supports Public Health Quality family planning HIV/AIDS Reproductive Health sexually transmitted infections sustai Source Type: blogs
Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 122
Just when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia…introducing Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 122
Question 1
What is a Clay-shoveler’s fracture and how do you get one?
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Fracture through the spinous process of a vertebra occurring at any of the lower cervical or upper thoracic vertebrae, classically at C6 or C7.
Originally described in Australia associated with (no prizes for...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - October 23, 2015 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Frivolous Friday Five adrenal crisis adrenal insufficiency botulism clay shoveler's fracture erythema multiforme rhabdomyolysis Source Type: blogs
Disruptive Idiots From Silicon Valley
By SAURABH JHA, MD
Recently, I was dining with elite radiologists. In that uncomfortable silence between dessert and the check, I said “radiology must shift the traditional paradigm by creating value streams using disruptive innovation to leverage population health to build strong ecosystems and a robust ectoplasm.”
I was experimenting if excreted verbiage hastens the check. Instead, it sparked a vigorous conversation about disruptive innovation, compelling me to drink more cognac.
In healthcare, no two words have been as mercilessly cheapened by overuse as “disruptive innovation.” This is a shame. Disruption is s...
Source: The Health Care Blog - October 22, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: THCB Source Type: blogs
Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 120
Just when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia…introducing Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 120
Question 1
What rheumatological condition does Rembrandt’s Scholar have?
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Scleroderma
He has a pinched nose, tight mouth, pale face with a malar flush, his hands are puffy and the joints on his right thumbs are swollen. Could this be Scleroderma? [Reference]
Question 2
When Rac...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - October 9, 2015 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Frivolous Friday Five collapse dentist FFFF hands Kluver-bucy syndrome melanoma pleural collapse rachmaninoff rachmaninov Rembrandt scleroderma TB teeth temporal lobe Source Type: blogs
Remembering Oliver Sacks, A Pioneer Of Narrative Medicine
Hasn’t he brought us through the decades, guiding us stage by stage toward the present? Hasn’t he opened the way toward a health care loyal to the singular stories of those for whom we care? Hasn’t he opened the way toward a kind of writing loyal to the singular situation of those of whom we write?
Dr. Oliver Sacks has been an always-present presence for the worlds of literature, medicine, narrative, and health. I certainly don’t know this world of ours without him in it. When he died, even though he had been so tender toward us in his gentle warnings that the end was near, I was shocked. It was as if one of th...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 30, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: Rita Charon Tags: Featured Health Professionals Narrative Matters Quality City Island Columbia University narrative medicine Oliver Sacks Source Type: blogs
Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 118
Just when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia…introducing Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 118
Question 1
The picture below is of an early piece of medical equipment from the 1930s called the “Hyman otor” What would one do with such a device?
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Defibrillate
The Hyman otor is the first example of a defibrillation device.
Electrodes with introduced into the stopped heart ...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - September 25, 2015 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Frivolous Friday Five addison's Charles Dickens FFFF frank sign hannibal lecture hyman otor john f kennedy nerve palsy polydactyly romans Sir george Savile Source Type: blogs
Getting (to the Value) of Value In Health Care
By SUSAN DENTZER
How would you judge the value of your health care? A longstanding definition of treatment holds that value is the health outcomes achieved for the dollars spent. Yet behind that seemingly simple formula lies much complexity.
Think about it: Calculating outcomes and costs for treating a short-term acute condition, such as a child’s strep throat, may be easy. But it’s far harder to pinpoint value in a long-term serious illness such as advanced cancer, in which both both the outcomes and costs of treating a given individual—let alone a population with a particular cancer—may be unknown for years. And ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 11, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: THCB PCORI Physicians Robert Wood Johnson Theranos Value value-based care Source Type: blogs
The DRACO Fundraiser Site: killingsickness
This is a year of much grassroots fundraising for longevity science, it seems, with more new projects launched and more new faces joining the community of supporters. All of these developments are collectively, hopefully, yet another sign that faster growth and more publicity are yet to come: the tipping point for public acceptance of efforts to treat aging as a medical condition is somewhere near, just around the corner. Ten years from now, people will conveniently forget that they were ever opposed to the development of therapies for aging. How silly that would be, like opposing cancer research or heart disease treatment...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 25, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs
Reinventing Home Health
Accountable care is finally coming to home health.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is launching a value-based reimbursement (VBR) pilot program for Medicare home health care agencies. The model is part of the 2016 Home Health Prospective Payment System proposed rule, which was published in the Federal Register on July 10.
In the current reality of home health care, if you are a home health provider and not part of a hospital or health system, your world looks something like this:
A hospital discharge planner (your customer) chooses which agency will care for the homebound patient (also your customer)....
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 11, 2015 Category: Health Management Authors: John Marchica Tags: Costs and Spending Health Professionals Long-term Services and Supports Medicare Payment Policy Population Health ACOs BAYADA CMS home healthcare triple aim value-based reimbursement Source Type: blogs
A Glance at the State of Virotherapy as a Cancer Treatment
The future of cancer treatments is, one way or another, all about two things: (a) the ability to identify and target common mechanisms in a broad range of cancers so that one technology platform, one research initiative, can be useful for many patients rather than just a few, and (b) targeting cancer cells so that treatments are far more effective and have few and negligible side-effects. Today's cancer treatments are highly specific to cancer types and subtypes, the result of a large number of parallel lines of development undertaken at great cost, and are also damaging to the patient's healthy tissue. At the most blunt e...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 1, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
TWiV 339: Herpes and the sashimi plot
On episode #339 of the science show This Week in Virology, tre TWiV amici present three snippets and a side of sashimi: how herpesvirus inhibits host cell gene expression by disrupting transcription termination.
You can find TWiV #339 at www.twiv.tv. (Source: virology blog)
Source: virology blog - May 31, 2015 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: Uncategorized cancer Chikungunya virus exon herpesvirus host shutoff intron IRF7 Lassa fever mosquitoes splicing transcription termination translation viral virology West Nile virus Source Type: blogs
