Vaccines Are Much Safer than the Diseases They Prevent

A child develops a fever of 104 ⁰F, cough, runny nose and red eyes. A few days later she develops a red bumpy itchy rash as in this photo. Any guesses as to the diagnosis? Many of us would be stumped, having never seen this disease. This is the classic presentation of measles, which prior to the development of the measles vaccine in the 1960s affected hundreds of thousands of U.S. children annually. There is no treatment. Complications from measles caused 3 fatalities for every one thousand ca...
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A New Species of Tick-Borne Bacteria Identified in Minnesota and Wisconsin

[Lunch warning: Parts of this post are kind of gross. If you’re reading this over a meal, you have been warned.] What a depressing week. The debt ceiling debate postponed all difficult decisions, second quarter economic growth was revised so low that you need to squint to see it, and yesterday the stock market jumped off the balcony, losing all the gains it’s made over the year. We need some happy news to...
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When the Stool Hits the Sprouts

... or Technology Phobia Can Be Fatal [This post is perfectly safe for work, but may not be safe for lunch, as it mentions poop more frequently than you may find appetizing.] This post is an update about the E. coli food poisoning outbreak in Germany that I posted about two weeks ago (link 1 below). If you didn’t read that post, please do, as it explains some important terms like hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC). Using these phrases at ...
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Germany Struck by Major Food Poisoning Outbreak

Since May Germany has been plagued with a particularly nasty outbreak of food poisoning. There have been almost 3,000 people who have become sick so far and 27 deaths, with a small number of cases in other countries. The bacterium causing the outbreak has been identified, but the name of the bacterium is so convoluted that it needs explaining. The outbreak is caused by shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O104:H4 (or STEC O104:H4). Got that? Please let me ‘splain. Escherichia co...
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Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Study Criticized by Patients

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” –attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, among others

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is an illness marked by chronic disabling fatigue that is not explained by another diagnosis. Other symptoms such as non-refreshing sleep, subjective memory impairment, tender lymph nodes, and joint or muscle pain may be present. The cause of CFS remains unknown, and no consistently eff...

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News Flash: Diabetes is Not Good

Type 2 diabetes mellitus has long been known to increase the risk of stroke, heart attack, kidney disease, and eye disease. In the US diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure requiring dialysis and one of the leading causes of blindness. Diabetes is also increasing in prevalence as people become more overweight. A study in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine attempted to quantify the risk of premature death associated with diabetes. The results were dramatic, and attracted much m...
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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Nasal Decongestants But Were Afraid to Ask

… Or, You Might Think That it’s Funny, But it’s Snot As I mentioned last week, a miserable cold is striking lots of my patients, spreading grief across the land.  The typical symptoms are nasal congestion, cough and the mother of all malaise.  Since there is nothing proven to significantly decrease the duration of the common cold, the best doctors can do is treat the symptoms and encourage patience. The mainstay of treating cold symptoms is a nasal decongestant.  Besides letting you actually b...
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Echinacea Still Unproven for the Common Cold

Many of my patients have come down with a nasty cold in the last two weeks – runny nose, cough, hoarseness, sore throat and the kind of fatigue that makes lifting your head off the pillow seem unnecessarily ambitious.  And just in time the Annals of Internal Medicine published a study to give them valuable advice. The effects of echinacea on the common cold have been studied many times previously, though never as rigorously as in this study.  A definitive benefit has never been proven. This st...
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Flu Incidence on the Rise

(Please excuse this short post during this short week.  If you feel deprived of health education, I’ve listed some educational links for you below.) You better watch out.  The flu is coming to town, and it doesn’t care if you’ve been naughty or nice.  It looks like flu season is starting later this year than usual, but both the CDC data and Google Flu Trends suggest that illnesses due to the flu are increasing nationwide. The best way to protect yourself is with a flu shot.  And if you do get ...
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