My Experiences with Hydroxychloroquine Urge Caution and Ethical Research into COVID19 Therapies
by Keisha Ray, Ph.D.
I take the drug hydroxychloroquine, brand name Plaquenil, for an autoimmune disease. Hydroxychloroquine was once used to treat malaria and is now commonly used to treat a range of inflammatory disorders like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. If this drug sounds familiar it is likely because it has frequently been in the news as a potential therapy for COVID19. During multiple press conferences the president has touted this drug as a potential cure for COVID19. Medical professionals like Dr.… (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - April 20, 2020 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Keisha Ray Tags: Ethics Featured Posts Health Care Health Policy & Insurance Human Subjects Research & IRBs Informed Consent Pharmaceuticals Politics Public Health #covid19 #diaryofaplagueyear COVID-19 Source Type: blogs
COVID-19: Hidden Coinfections and Chain Reactions Parasitic Infectious Relationships within Us
By SIMON YU, MD, LT COL, USA (Ret)
Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), opened up a new front in the Coronavirus War by saying we don’t just need to treat the acute disease, we need to treat the underlying conditions that make people more susceptible to serious disease progression. He focused on heart disease, and managing mitigating risk factors such as CVD, diabetes, hypertension and smoking in order to increase people’s odds for recovery. The initial focus has been pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), with risk factors including asthma, chr...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 15, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 CDC chronic disease holistic care Pandemic SDoH Source Type: blogs
Drugs for COVID-19: A Publishing Epidemic
As of April 9, PubMed listed 2,868 scientific publications which incorporate the word “COVID”. 323 of these (11.3%) were related to drugs under study for treatment of the disease. No fewer than thirty-one such drugs had been proposed since this pandemic first appeared on the planet four months earlier.
Graph 1 depicts the cumulative numbers of COVID-19 infection (per 100,000 global population) and introductions of relevant drugs into the Literature during February 14 to April 3. Note that both increased by a factor of approximately 16-fold during this period.
In a...
Source: GIDEON blog - April 12, 2020 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Uri Blackman Tags: Epidemiology Graphs Source Type: blogs
Combating COVID-19 Misinformation with Disassociation
Matthew FeeneyDeadly misinformation spread across social media long before COVID-19 emerged, but amid the ongoing pandemic attempts to tackle such content are once again in the limelight. These efforts provide an opportunity for classical liberals to emphasize the importance of freedom of association and to prepare for discussions about how private institutions handle misinformation amid a crisis.Too often we think of the freedom of speech to be a freedom that protects speakers from government censorship. And while the freedom to speak is a necessary condition for a functioning liberal society it’s not the only fre...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 1, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: Matthew Feeney Source Type: blogs
Words of courage for medical students and residents
About 15 years ago, I spent a few weeks at a small community hospital in Zambia, helping to staff the primary care clinic and attend some of the rounds on the small inpatient units there. The inpatient pediatrics unit was full of young children suffering from malaria or measles, often both. One particularly stark evening, […]Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now. Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 30, 2020 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/deborah-edberg" rel="tag" > Deborah Edberg, MD < /a > < /span > Tags: Conditions COVID-19 coronavirus Infectious Disease Source Type: blogs
Podcast: Don ’ t Let Coronavirus Impact Your Mental Health
It’s often said that fear is the most dangerous virus on the planet. While a relatively small percentage of people will contract the new coronavirus, or COVID-19, the fear it provokes will chip away at the mental health of nearly everyone who hears about it. So why does COVID-19 inspire so much fear when there are other diseases lurking in the shadows? And what can we do about it? In today’s podcast, our guest Dr. David Batman, a registered medical practitioner in the U.K., discusses how this high level of unprecedented global panic is being intensified by the non-stop media, and specifically, social media.
Tune i...
Source: World of Psychology - March 26, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: The Psych Central Podcast Tags: Anxiety and Panic General Health-related Interview Podcast The Psych Central Show Source Type: blogs
Hydroxychloroquine reduces viral load in COVID-19 patients
Chloroquine (and a derivative, hydroxychloroquine) has been used for years in the treatment of malaria. The drug is also known to block the entry of many viruses into cells. A small clinical trial has revealed it to be effective in reducing viral loads in COVID-19 patients. Entry of enveloped viruses into cells requires fusion of […] (Source: virology blog)
Source: virology blog - March 19, 2020 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: Basic virology Information antiviral chloroquine coronavirus CoV COVID-19 hydroxychloroquine malaria SARS-CoV-2 viruses Source Type: blogs
Technology and Cooperation Help Fight the Pandemic
Chelsea FollettThe pandemic caused by the new coronavirus (COVID-19) from Wuhan, China, is now a serious and global problem. And that problem has been made even worse by a culture of constant alarmism making it hard to distinguish real threats from exaggerated claims, as the well ‐known science writer Matt Ridley has pointed out. But even when faced with the genuine threat of a pandemic, there are reasons to take heart and think that humanity will rise to the challenges ahead.First, humanity has never been better prepared technologically to deal with a pandemic. We are fortunate to live in an age o...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 13, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: Chelsea Follett Source Type: blogs
Credit Card Sized Diagnostic Lab Plugs into Smartphone
Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have developed a tiny portable diagnostic device that can detect the presence of specific pathogens in a saliva sample, and relay the results to a doctor when plugged into a smartphone. The device can potentially diagnose a wide array of diseases, including malaria, HIV and Lyme disease, and could be useful for point-of-care testing and even self-testing. A custom app can relay the results of tests to one’s doctor for nearly instant diagnostic results.
The technology includes single-use plastic chips that a user places in their mouth to load a saliva sample before pluggi...
Source: Medgadget - February 7, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Diagnostics Pathology Psychiatry Source Type: blogs
Two doctors I met in Paris
Not in person, as both are rather historical, but when in Paris, I encountered:Dr Alphonse LaveranandDr Paul GachetDr Laveran has a square named after him, adjacent to the Ecole de Val de Grace, a school of military medicine, where he worked after serving in the army as a physician, and where his father had held the same post. Paris is good at telling you who a street is named after, so the street sign tells you he was the first French winner of theNobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology. He won it for identifying both malaria and sleeping sickness as caused by parasites.Dr Gachet has aportrait in the...
Source: Browsing - January 20, 2020 Category: Databases & Libraries Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 20th 2020
This study provides strong evidence that following a healthy lifestyle can substantially extend the years a person lives disease-free."
Commentary on Recent Evidence for Cognitive Decline to Precede Amyloid Aggregation in Alzheimer's Disease
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2020/01/commentary-on-recent-evidence-for-cognitive-decline-to-precede-amyloid-aggregation-in-alzheimers-disease/
I can't say that I think the data presented in the research noted here merits quite the degree of the attention that it has been given in the popular science press. It is interesting, but not compelling if its role is ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 19, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Theorizing on Historical Trends in Body Temperature, Burden of Inflammation, and Life Expectancy
In this study, we analyzed 677,423 human body temperature measurements from three different cohort populations spanning 157 years of measurement and 197 birth years. We found that men born in the early 19th century had temperatures 0.59°C higher than men today, with a monotonic decrease of -0.03°C per birth decade. Temperature has also decreased in women by -0.32°C since the 1890s with a similar rate of decline (-0.029°C per birth decade). Although one might posit that the differences among cohorts reflect systematic measurement bias due to the varied thermometers and methods used to obtain temperatures, we believe thi...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 17, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Another Candidate for the Micro-Sample Diagnostics Market; CBC Results in Minutes
The Theranos fiasco (see:The rise and fall of Theranos, the blood-testing startup that went from Silicon Valley darling to facing fraud charges) served to cast a pall over the micro-sample diagnostics market. Now comes news about an Israeli company with a similar strategy but this time with an instrument providing a complete blood count (CBC) and a green light from the FDA (see:Unlike Theranos, startup ’s blood test device ‘delivers on promise’ with FDA nod). Below is an excerpt from the article:Israeli startupSight Diagnostics has received US Food and Drug Administration clearance to market a blood test device...
Source: Lab Soft News - December 11, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: AI Clinical Lab Testing Diagnostics Food and Drug Administration Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Medical Research Point-of-Care Testing Source Type: blogs
Top 10 Technologies We Are Excited About
We cover a lot of news and announcements about digital health technologies to provide context for you. Even within The Medical Futurist team, there are favorite technologies and trends. And we thought it would be time to share the technologies we’re excited about! With advancements in exoskeleton technology, A.I.’s ever-increasing importance in healthcare and technologies like 5G and quantum computing soon going mainstream, there’s much to be excited about! Without further ado, let’s jump in!
1. Quantum Computing: faster, cheaper and safer
Late last month, Google claimed “quantum supremacy” and made the c...
Source: The Medical Futurist - December 3, 2019 Category: Information Technology Authors: Prans Tags: Future of Medicine digital health Healthcare technology digital technology Source Type: blogs
