RICO: Offering Co-Pay Coupons Does Not Constitute A Racketeering “Enterprise,” Rules Federal Court
Pharmaceutical manufacturer co-payment coupons have come under a lot of scrutiny recently. HHS-OIG recently warned these coupons may violate the anti-kickback statute if they encourage the purchase of Medicare Part D drugs. Manufacturers seem to be safe, however, from co-pay challenges under RICO—the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act which was originally enacted to combat organized crime. Last week, a Federal Court judge dismissed an insurance company’s claim that they overpaid for drugs in which Abbott Laboratories and Abbvie allegedly committed mail and wire fraud by offering co-pay cou...
Source: Policy and Medicine - October 14, 2014 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
Wheat Belly Total Health now in bookstores!
Wheat Belly Total Health
The new Wheat Belly Total Health is now available at all major bookstores!
Wheat Belly got the conversation started, indicting modern semidwarf wheat as the cause for an unexpected and frightening list of health conditions. That insight alone is changing nutritional thinking everywhere. But just removing this awful creation of genetics research can leave many residual health problems in its wake.
This explains why, for instance, someone with rheumatoid arthritis feels 70-80% better with wheat elimination, but still experiences occasional low-grade flare-ups. Or why a diabetic can get off insulin ...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - September 16, 2014 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly books autoimmune barley bowel flora cholesterol corn diabetes gluten-free grains hypertension rice rye Wheat Belly Total Health Source Type: blogs
Top stories in health and medicine, August 11, 2014
From MedPage Today:
Psoriasis Ups Risk of Cancer, Serious Infection. Rates of malignancy among patients with psoriasis outpaced national averages, irrespective of therapy in most cases.
Psoriasis: Screen for Fatty Liver Before MTX? What began as a case of chronic plaque psoriasis has evolved into consideration of routine testing for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) before initiating methotrexate.
New Melanomas Likely to Recur at Same Rate. A diagnosis of in situ or invasive melanoma conferred a similar long-term risk of invasive melanoma recurrence.
Glucometer Control Test Underused in Diabetes. Control solution for e...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 11, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: MedPage Today Tags: News Cancer Dermatology Diabetes Source Type: blogs
After retirement, a visit to a dermatology office
I’ve always been good at pattern recognition and my visual-spatial orientation is excellent. Photography is my hobby, so it was only natural that as a medical student and internal medicine resident, I loved my dermatology electives. Each day yielded up a new parade of interesting skin lesions and rashes, and by the end of my rotations I was confident in my diagnoses and recommendations. Contact dermatitis? Steroids! Eczema? Steroids! Psoriasis? Yep, you got it: steroids again! Pimples? Well that was a diagnosis that required antibiotics. But sometimes, when it was really bad: yes, steroids!
Continue reading ....
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 31, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Miranda Fielding, MD Tags: Physician Cancer Dermatology Source Type: blogs
What are active ingredients? The Beauty Brains Show episode 37
What are active ingredients in cosmetics? What does active even mean? And are the rest of the ingredients “inactive?” This week we give you some tips on how to spot which ingredients really work.
Click below to play Episode 37 or click “download” to save the MP3 file to your computer.
Show notes
Name that brand
We try out a new game where I ask Randy to name beauty brands based on their advertising taglines. How many of these can you name?
Look Ma, no cavities.
Because I’m worth it.
That’s the beauty of nature plus science.
99 and 44/100′s pure.
Strong enough for a man but m...
Source: thebeautybrains.com - July 1, 2014 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Perry RomanowskiThe Beauty Brains Tags: Beauty Biz Podcast Source Type: blogs
Shame on the Chicago Tribune
A blatantly pro-wheat piece ran in the Chicago Tribune that bashes the anti-grain movement. Read it here.
Written by dietitian, Marsha McCullough, it is full of the oversimplifications and partial truths echoed by the wheat industry. (So it smells and looks like something either paid for by the wheat industry to be placed in the Tribune, or Ms. McCullough was paid to write. That’s how the big lobbies work. They generally cannot rely on “organic” commitment.)
“Those with an allergy to wheat or other grains must avoid them. And the one percent of the population with celiac disease and the six percen...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - April 4, 2014 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Wheat Belly counterattacks Source Type: blogs
Ruth Ann N.
I’m an RN. I ordered Grain Brain after seeing you on FOX & Friends.
My husband had ignored my suggestions that he lose weight for years. The last week of November and first week of December 2013 he was going to have cataract surgery. I suggested he try the low-carb, gluten-free diet because his blood sugar a year before had been pre-diabetic. He was concerned about the chance of infection and loss of sight so he agreed.
During the week before Thanksgiving and the week after, he lost 10 pounds! His 2-hour post-prandial blood sugar was 98.
To date, he has gone from 215 pounds a week before Thanksgiving to 192.9 po...
Source: Renegade Neurologist - A Blog by David Perlmutter, MD, FACN - March 14, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: gbadmin Tags: Success cataract Cyrex psoriasis Supplements turmeric Vitamin D weight loss Source Type: blogs
Best Post of November 2013: Nanotechnology joins with cancer genomics in silencing glioblastoma oncogene
The next in our "Best of the Month" series is from November 1, 1013:Gold nanoparticles (yellow) with small interfering RNAs (green) knock down an oncogene in glioblastoma.In a study of mice released this week in Science Nanomedicine, researchers were able to reduce glioblastoma size three- to four-fold by switching off the oncogene Bcl2Like12 by means of nanotechnology-assisted delivery of small interfering RNAs. Normal (linear) nucleic acids cannot get into cells, but these spherical nucleic acids can. Small interfering RNA (siRNA) surrounds a gold nanoparticle like a shell; the nucleic acids are highly oriented, ...
Source: neuropathology blog - March 7, 2014 Category: Pathologists Tags: Best of the Month series neoplasms therapies Source Type: blogs
Itching: More Than Skin-Deep - NYTimes.com
The experiment was not for the squirmish. Volunteers were made to itch like crazy on one arm, but not allowed to scratch. Then they were whisked into an M.R.I. scanner to see what parts of their brains lit up when they itched, when researchers scratched them and when they were finally allowed to scratch themselves.
The scientific question was this: Why does it feel so good to scratch an itch?
"It's quite intriguing to see how many brain centers are activated," said Dr. Gil Yosipovitch, chairman of dermatology at the Temple University School of Medicine and director of the Temple Center for Itch (he conducte...
Source: Psychology of Pain - February 18, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Best practices to alleviate FOMO in social media listening for pharma
Today's post comes from ePharma sponsor Visible. This post is cross-posted from the Visible blog.Best practices to alleviate FOMO in social media listening for pharmaPharmaceutical companies have come a long way when it comes to social media, and most companies have acknowledged that there are rich consumer insights that can be gleaned. But a lot still suffer from a bad case of FOMO or ‘fear of missing out’ while being inundated by numerous irrelevant and spam posts. This primarily results from the fact that many people in pharma are always unsure of where to start, what to focus on, and how to analyze social med...
Source: ePharma Summit - January 29, 2014 Category: Medical Marketing and PR Tags: ePharma Summit Pharma Consumer Insights Source Type: blogs
To solve a beauty problem would you join a new drug clinical trial?
I’ll be totally honest: most of the press releases I get are boring crap about the newest flavor of lip balm or something equally banal. But occasionally I do see something that catches my eye. Case in point, this website from Healthline that allows you to search for clinical trials in your area for a specific medical condition.
What does this have to do with beauty science, you ask?
I played around with the search function a little bit and was surprised to find how many new drug trials are underway for medical conditions that would also solve beauty problems. For example, I found tests for scaly skin medication, an...
Source: thebeautybrains.com - December 18, 2013 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Randy Schueller Tags: Beauty Biz Source Type: blogs
Autoimmunity and wheat
Autoimmunity occurs when your own immune system is no longer able to distinguish friend from foe. It means that antibodies, lymphocytes, killer T cells, macrophages and inflammation-mediating proteins can’t tell the difference between, say, the protein of a fungal wall from proteins in your liver or joints. It’s as weird as a mother not recognizing her children, sometimes as tragic as friendly fire.
Depending on which tissues in which organs are attacked, the misdirected immune attack of autoimmunity can express itself as autoimmune hepatitis (liver tissue), primary biliary cirrhosis (bile ducts), type 1 dia...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - December 13, 2013 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Another PASI Calculator Mobile Medical App from Janssen: Simple, Sophisticated, But Short of a Full Deck
I just downloaded onto my iPad the "Psoriasis Severity Calculator" app, which is a PASI ("Psoriasis Area and Severity Index") calculator for use by physicians developed by Janssen Korea. It's optimized for iPad use.Another Janssen psoriasis diagnosis app for physicians that I reviewed (here) is "PASI Calculator," which was released by Janssen N.V. (Belgium). This version is optimized for the iPhone.The two apps are very different aside from the platforms they are designed to run on. The Janssen Korean iPad app, which is in English, is more sophisticated than the Janssen Belgium iPhone app,...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 18, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: PASI Apps Janssen Self-Regulation Mobile Ethics Source Type: blogs
Nanotechnology joins with cancer genomics in silencing glioblastoma oncogene
Gold nanoparticles (yellow) with small interfering RNAs (green) knock down an oncogene in glioblastoma.In a study of mice released this week in Science Nanomedicine, researchers were able to reduce glioblastoma size three- to four-fold by switching off the oncogene Bcl2Like12 by means of nanotechnology-assisted delivery of small interfering RNAs. Normal (linear) nucleic acids cannot get into cells, but these spherical nucleic acids can. Small interfering RNA (siRNA) surrounds a gold nanoparticle like a shell; the nucleic acids are highly oriented, densely packed and form a tiny sphere. (The gold nanoparticle core is o...
Source: neuropathology blog - November 1, 2013 Category: Pathologists Tags: therapies Source Type: blogs
On The Pulse - 25th October 2013
Severe forms of psoriasis increase risk of kidney disease (Source: OnMedica Blogs)
Source: OnMedica Blogs - October 27, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
