Here’s a promising way to monitor medication adherence:

Seeking a way to confirm that patients have taken their medication, University of Florida engineering researchers have added a tiny microchip and digestible antenna to a standard pill capsule. The prototype is intended to pave the way for mass-produced pills that, when ingested, automatically alert doctors, loved ones or scientists working with patients in clinical drug trials. (University of Florida News)

Methods to increase patient adherence to medications are getting increasing attention since studies have found that up to 69% of all medication-related hospital admissions in the United States are due to poor adherence, which is estimated to cost the healthcare system $100 billion each year.

Filed under: Innovation, Science and Medicine | No Comments »

A recent study suggests that “among women living at least 1 year after a breast cancer diagnosis, aspirin use [is] associated with a decreased risk of distant recurrence and breast cancer death.”

This is a plausible premise since another recent study found that in “postmenopausal women, regular users of aspirin and other analgesics may have lower estrogen levels than nonusers” and lower estrogen levels can theoretically decrease the risk of breast or ovarian cancers.

Although more studies are needed to assess aspirin’s mechanism of action in this context, it seems like a drug with the potential to significantly reduce breast cancer deaths can be readily found at the local pharmacy.

Filed under: Science and Medicine | No Comments »

In the recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard oncologist Jerome Groopman and his colleague Pamela Hartzband talk about how the Internet is providing broader access to information, including the kind that has traditionally been available only to physicians. In doing so, the Internet may be changing the patient-doctor relationship:

As physicians, we are struggling to figure out how best to use this technology in the interests of our patients and ourselves. Although the Internet is reshaping the content of the conversation between doctor and patient, we believe the core relationship should not change. A relative recently asked us, “What can you possibly learn from your doctor that is not available on the Internet?” We suspect we’ll hear such radical sentiments increasingly in the future.

The authors make a statement similar to what I’ve written on this blog before: “information and knowledge do not equal wisdom” and to truly empower individuals you need the wisdom of an expert:

… it is too easy for nonexperts to take at face value statements made confidently by voices of authority. Physicians are in the best position to weigh information and advise patients, drawing on their understanding of available evidence as well as their training and experience. If anything, the wealth of information on the Internet will make such expertise and experience more essential.

So is all the information on the Internet empowering us as much as we think it is or is it creating what can be called an information bubble?

Writing for the Harvard Business Review Blog, Umair Haque talks about how the Internet has created what he calls a “social media bubble:”

Despite all the excitement surrounding social media, the Internet isn’t connecting us as much as we think it is. It’s largely home to weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships.

Call it relationship inflation. Nominally, you have a lot more relationships — but in reality, few, if any, are actually valuable. Just as currency inflation debases money, so social inflation debases relationships.

I think a parallel phenomenon on the Internet is creating an information bubble that debases expertise. As a patient, it’s relatively easy to get a thin understanding of the facts about a particular disease by surfing the Internet but when it comes to serious health concerns, such information can lead to unwarranted patient-anxiety and even bad health outcomes. There is a lot of medical information about specific diseases on the Internet, some good and some bad. For a nonexpert, it’s not always easy to differentiate the two. Even if one finds a reliable source, it’s not always easy to digest the information and wrong conclusions can be made.

My recommendation is to generously use the Internet for health information but before you act on any advice or self-diagnose, “please talk to your doctor” or if you have a physician like me, email him.

Filed under: Culture, Science and Medicine, Technology | No Comments »

Via GOOD Blog and John Goodman

Filed under: Culture | 1 Comment »

Google search auto-complete is a very useful feature where after typing a few words into the search bar a menu of suggestions based on other users’ queries appears. It has become an interesting way of seeing trends about search topics. A simple visualization tool called Web Seer can compare Google auto-complete suggestions for two search items. Below is what Google suggests when you type in “Are doctors” vs “Are lawyers:”

Filed under: Culture, Data Visualization | No Comments »

Filed under: Science and Medicine | No Comments »

A new study of a 2005 earthquake in Chile supports the surprising hypothesis that pregnant women who experience earthquakes during the first trimester of their pregnancies have increased risk of premature birth and slightly smaller babies. Wired Science

So the answer is yes. Earthquakes, like all other intensely stressful situations, have the potential to cause measurable health problems.

Filed under: Science and Medicine | No Comments »

A new, albeit very small, study suggests that a short period of fasting prior to chemotherapy may protect healthy cells and reduce the side effects associated with chemotherapy.

Valter Longo and his colleagues at the University of Southern California published these findings in a case series report in December in the journal Aging. They studied 10 patients, six of whom reported fewer side effects when they received chemotherapy while fasting.

In a paper published recently in Cancer Research, Longo’s team followed the human findings with a study of mice with cancer. When given chemotherapy, none of the normal-diet control group survived, while 60 percent of fasting mice lived.

Source

Filed under: Science and Medicine | No Comments »

Yesterday President Obama revealed a plan, expected to cost $950 billion over 10 years, to renew the administrations push for healthcare reform.  The plan proposes to provide coverage to more than 31 million uninsured Americans.

More details:

• The plan includes a measure designed to close the Medicare “donut-hole” gap for prescription drug coverage, which leaves seniors paying the full cost of medicines during a certain stage of the programme due to coverage limits.
• Obama proposes increasing fees paid by the pharmaceutical industry $10 billion over 10 years and above the $23-billion increase proposed under the Senate bill. Obama’s plan also delays implementation of these fees by one year to 2011.
• Obama’s plan includes provisions designed to increase access to generic drugs by giving the Federal Trade Commission the authority to address the practice of “pay for delay” agreements between brand name and generic drug manufacturers. The plan suggests prohibiting generic drug manufacturers from accepting “anything of value from a brand-name manufacturer that contains a provision in which the generic drug manufacturer agrees to limit or forgo research, development, marketing, manufacturing or sales of the generic drug.” Such deals could only be reached if the parties “demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that the pro-competitive benefits of the agreement outweigh the anti-competitive effects of the agreement.”

The plan will be debated this week at a bipartisan healthcare summit.

Source: FirstWord

Filed under: Health Policy | No Comments »

There is an emerging body of evidence on using sound waves (ultrasound) to raise temperature levels in tumors and dangerous blood clots in order to shrink or eliminate them. The technology company InSightec is at the forefront of experimenting with this modality in the treatment of certain types of cancers and the type of brain strokes that are caused by blood clots. In each case, a high intensity focused ultrasound beam with MRI for image guidance is used to target the tumor or blood clot. Once the target reaches a certain level, it breaks up or dies by a process called coagulative necrosis.

This is a noninvasive procedure that can be less toxic than radiation therapy for cancer patients and safer than the potent injectable drugs that break up clots in stroke patients.

More info

Filed under: Innovation, Science and Medicine, Technology | No Comments »