Last week’s post, “Armadillos Transmit Leprosy to Humans”, generated much positive feedback, which I appreciated. You all clearly enjoy stories featuring cute mammals and very little serious science or health implications. I did my best to find a story like that this week, but the closest thing I found was that SEALs cause penetrating head trauma to a few particularly nasty humans.
But there was an important study this week about prostate cancer. My regular readers know that one of the controve...
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More Than Half of Americans Take Dietary Supplements
Did you know that the Centers for Disease Control has something called the National Nutrition Monitoring System? And apparently it’s a good thing too, since who else would monitor the nation’s nutrition?
This week the intrepid bunch at the National Nutrition Monitoring System released a report detailing how many of us use dietary supplements and which ones we use. (The link to the report is below, but be warned. It’s not scintillating.) The report’s major finding is that for the first time over...
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New Study on Estrogen Yields Confusion but Same Recommendations
This week a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed new results about estrogen use and generated major media hubbub. (See the links below for some of the media coverage, the article and an accompanying editorial.) To understand the kerfuffle it helps to review how our understanding of estrogen replacement therapy has evolved.
A generation ago, based largely on intuition and on epidemiologic studies, we were convinced that long term estrogen replacement therap...
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A Pulmonologist Defends Benzonatate
Last month I posted about benzonatate, a cough suppressant also marketed under the brand Tessalon. (See the link below for the original post.) In that post I detailed an FDA warning about the serious potential side effects of benzonatate, especially in accidental overdoses in children. I also passed along the conclusion of the Medical Letter that safer cough suppressants were available.
My colleague Dr. Roy Artal, a pulmonolo...
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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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Evidence Mounts in favor of Weight Loss Surgery
Readers who have been following my posts for a few years know that weight-loss surgery is amassing an impressive body of scientific evidence supporting its effectiveness and safety. (Links to my previous posts about weight loss surgery are below.)
This week, two studies in the Archives of Surgery attempted to compare the different kinds of weight loss surgery. An LA Times article (link below) has a clear explanation of the different kinds of surgery and summarizes the findings of the studies. T...
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An Advance in Breast Cancer Surgery
Breast cancer surgery began long before radiation therapy, chemotherapy or hormonal therapy existed. At that time surgery was the only available treatment. The standard of care was radical mastectomy – removal of the entire breast tissue with the underlying muscle and removal of all the lymph nodes from the arm pit. The surgery is terribly disfiguring and debilitating, but was the only thing standing between patients and a fatal illness. Radical mastectomy was first performed in the 1880s and re...
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Benzonatate: A Cough Suppressant So Dangerous, You’d Rather Just Cough
Benzonatate is a cough suppressant available by prescription as a generic medication or under the brand Tessalon. It is chemically related to medicines used as local anesthetics and works by numbing the nerves in the lungs which trigger a cough reflex. It was approved by the FDA in the 1950s.
A recent issue of The Medical Letter briefly highlighted an FDA warning about benzonatate. (Links to The Medical Letter review and the FDA warning are below.)
The FDA warning focused on accidental overdos...
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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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NDM-1: No Drug Matters
My longtime readers know that I’m not one to panic when the media does. I wasn’t very worried about anthrax in the mail. I didn’t think swine flu was going to be a big deal. (See link below.) And I’m not concerned about the health effects of airport X-ray back-scatter machines.
But there’s plenty of stuff that worries me. Most of it is scary on time scales longer than the typical media attention span. What scares me is stuff that will hurt us decades from now. For example, I’m very worri...
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