The head of Biogen Idec says his company will recommend a stronger warning label for a multiple sclerosis drug it hopes to return to the market. James Mullen, Biogen's chief executive and president, told The Associated Press today that the company will recommend that regulators include a warning about Tysabri's link to a rare but often-fatal brain disease.
In what some view as a pre-emptive strike against the statewide marijuana use registration program, Riverside County has temporarily banned all medical marijuana dispensaries in all unincorporated areas. County leaders say the 45-day prohibition, which has the potential to become permanent, will allow the county to put zoning in place that regulates where dispensaries can be placed. They predict that the county will see an influx of such locations as it prepares to locally implement the state ID card for patients...
But medical marijuana advocates like Lanny Swerdlow say that the broad definition of "dispensaries" will also outlaw cooperative groups of patients who grow their own.
A stock analyst has uncovered information suggesting that a recently withdrawn multiple sclerosis drug suppresses the immune system.
By modeling the individual incidence rate of MS as the sum of a familial component and a sporadic risk component, the familial excess lifetime risk was found to be 2.5% (95% confidence interval: 2.0, 3.2) among first-degree relatives of MS patients, irrespective of the gender of the proband and the relative. This percentage should be added to a sporadic absolute risk in the general population of 0.5% in women and 0.3% for men. Spouses of MS patients did not experience an increased risk of MS, suggesting no major role for environmental factors acting in adulthood.
A man who qualified for the state's medical marijuana registry cannot use marijuana to ease the pain of multiple sclerosis because he lives in a nursing home, pointing to a potential flaw in the state's 2004 law...
Starr Farm Nursing Center administrators said in a statement Wednesday that they cannot allow marijuana on the premises because the federal government doesn't recognize Vermont's medical marijuana law and the nursing home receives federal funding. That advice came from state registry officials at the Department of Public Safety, the statement said.
"A registry representative informed us that because our facility receives federal funds, and federal law prohibits the possession and use of marijuana, its possession and use in our facility is against the law, and therefore is strictly prohibited," the statement said.
Leeches, it turns out, are particularly good at draining excess blood from surgically reattached or transplanted appendages. As microsurgeons tackle feats like reattaching hands, scalps and even faces, leeches have become indispensable. And maggots clean festering wounds that fail to heal, as among diabetics, better than almost anything else, although their use in the United States has been slight, in part because of squeamishness.
But neither leeches nor maggots have ever been subject to thorough regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. So the medical advisers are being asked to create general guidelines about how they should be safely grown, transported and sold.
Two brains are better than one. At least that is the rationale for the close - sometimes too close - relationship between the human body's two brains, the one at the top of the spinal cord and the hidden but powerful brain in the gut known as the enteric nervous system.
The connection between the brains lies at the heart of many woes, physical and psychiatric. Ailments like anxiety, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers and Parkinson's disease manifest symptoms at the brain and the gut level.
Trudeau, who for years sold snoring remedies and memory enhancers through long-format commercials dressed up as talk shows, says he is a consumer advocate battling the "unholy alliance" of drug companies and government regulators. "It's all about money. The drug industry does not want people to get healthy," he says in a commercial for his book. Trudeau says he has sold about 4 million copies of the book in less than a year, a huge amount for a self-published book marketed initially only through the Internet and television infomercials.
The book -- whose back cover says "Never get sick again!" and "Learn the specific natural cures for herpes, acid reflux, diabetes ... cancer ... and more!" -- has topped the Publishers Weekly nonfiction bestseller list for the past three weeks.
Trudeau, 42, was jailed for 22 months in the early 1990s over credit card fraud -- something Trudeau dismissed as nothing more than a youthful indiscretion.
Once unmentionable, the problem of bladder control has finally come out of the water closet, and is getting much-needed attention from health-care and pharmaceutical companies, experts say.
According to the hygiene hypothesis, being too clean is not a good thing. Infections at an early age actually trains the immune system to respond appropriately to the environment, and this protects kids against certain diseases like asthma and MS, so the argument goes. Having older brothers and sisters should raise the odds of such infections, and therefore reduce the risk of MS...
Late birth order did not cut the risk of MS, the researchers report in the online issue of The Lancet Neurology medical journal. In fact, in large families with only one affected sibling, there was some evidence that late birth order actually raised the risk, as affected siblings were slightly younger than unaffected siblings. "This study does not support the prediction of the hygiene hypothesis," the team concludes.
Under Dr. Freedman's careful watch, John coped well with the punishing treatment. But then suddenly, his liver started to give out after weeks of brutal chemotherapy. "It was a known complication that can occur when you use very high doses of that particular agent," explains Dr. Freedman. John's liver never recovered. He was just 40 when he died.
As John's family mourned his death, Dr. Freedman also struggled with the loss. "We're allowed to have I think two deaths out of the first 18 patients or something is what we figured for," he says. "Well, I was figuring on none. And I was not prepared to accept even one." Freedman says John was a hero. His widow prefers to call him a pioneer.
Disability insurance, — now carried by more than 50 million Americans — generally promises to replace at least half of a person's wages in case of illness or injury. However, in a substantial number of cases, especially those involving workers with long-term or permanent disabilities, it doesn't deliver.
The chief reason — and one that affects not only disability but also the whole universe of employer-provided benefits — is a series of court decisions dealing with the federal benefits law known as ERISA. The decisions have prevented states from extending almost any form of consumer protection to these benefits, and have severely limited individuals' ability to successfully sue their insurers.
'People who file disability claims today are worse off than they were two or three decades ago,' said Judge William M. Acker Jr., who was appointed to the U.S. District Court in Alabama by President Reagan. 'The law that was supposed to protect them has been turned on its head; the chief beneficiaries are now the insurance companies,' said Acker, who has presided over a variety of disability insurance cases and has written extensively on the subject.
Safety guidelines drawn up by the American College of Radiology in 2002 and revised last year "have no teeth and are floating out there in intellectual Never-Never Land," Tobias Gilk, a Kansas City architect who designs medical scanning rooms, said...
The most notorious accident was the death of 6-year-old Michael Colombini in 2001 at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y. He was sedated in a scanner after a brain operation when his oxygen supply failed. An anesthesiologist ran for an oxygen tank and failed to notice that the one he found in the hall outside was made of steel. As he returned, the tank shot out of his hands, hitting Michael in the head.
Immediately after the news of the high court's ruling, attorneys general in the states that have approved the use of medical marijuana emphasized that the practice remained legal under their state laws, and a telephone survey of a random national sample of registered voters, commissioned by the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project, indicated that 68 percent of respondents opposed federal prosecution of patients who use marijuana for medical reasons. Nationally, most marijuana arrests are made by state and local law-enforcement agencies, with federal arrests accounting for only about 1 percent of cases. However, soon after the decision was announced, federal agents raided 3 of San Francisco's more than 40 medical marijuana dispensaries. Nineteen people were charged with running an international drug ring; they allegedly were using the dispensaries as a front for trafficking in marijuana and in the illegal amphetamine "ecstasy."
The cannabis is placed in the chamber and heated to a temperature below that required for combustion. The balloon fills with vapor that contains the active ingredients without the tar or particulates thought to be responsible for most of the drug's adverse effects on the respiratory tract. The patient inhales the vapor from the balloon.
A new study by Scottish researchers shows evidence that the neurological disease multiple sclerosis (MS) could be linked to a viral infection. While Scotland has the highest prevalence of MS in the world, the exact factors which lead to its development still remain a mystery. A combination of hereditary and environmental factors are thought to be the likeliest explanation. Clusters of MS have previously been noted in certain areas, including the Faroe Islands, Orkney and Shetland. Researchers at Dundee University used a comprehensive register which recorded MS cases in Tayside over three decades to examine whether similar outbreaks would appear in a region where there was no prior knowledge of high incidences of the disease. The study found peaks of MS occurring in both certain years and in geographical locations, which scientists claim supports the idea that a virus is involved in the development of MS.
The job of being a modern patient includes not only decision making, of course, but often coordinating doctors, medical records and procedures, as well as negotiating with insurance companies, who are often the ultimate arbiters over which treatment options will be covered...
This is the blessing and the burden of being a modern patient. A generation ago, patients argued for more information, more choice and more say about treatment. To a great extent, that is exactly what they have received: a superabundance of information, often several treatment options and the right to choose among them.
As this new responsibility dawns on patients, some embrace it with a sense of pride and furious determination. But many find the job of being a modern patient, with its slog through medical uncertainty, to be lonely, frightening and overwhelming.
Will Wisconsin Allow Pot As Medicine?
Most citizens support its legal use, but politicians may be too afraid
When support for an issue approaches 80% among Wisconsin residents, you would think that our state representatives would be falling all over themselves to follow the will of the people. But when the issue is legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes, things get complicated...
A package of used hypodermic needles delivered to [Wisconsin] Assembly Speaker John Gard's office last week has highlighted a political battle over stem-cell cloning for diabetes research. It's also caused Gard to question Gov. Jim Doyle's judgment in sanctioning the political stunt.
A Door County woman gave the used medical waste to Doyle on July 14 with a plea that he forward it to Gard as a statement about the suffering of people with diabetes. Five days later, Doyle staffer Patrick Guarasci dropped off the bag at [Gard's] office. Capitol police were called to Gard's office to remove the needles after maintenance staff refused to touch it.
Physician John Foley has known for years that his multiple sclerosis patients experience different symptoms and severities of the disease, and respond in varying ways to treatments.
Now a groundbreaking Mayo Clinic study backs up that perception. The findings, published in this Saturday's issue of The Lancet, are the first evidence that MS is not the same disease in all patients and that MS treatments likely need to be more individualized.
It takes some effort to come up with something nice to say about the hot summer we're having, but I got it: the sweet corn around here has been impossibly good. It's so sweet, you can eat it raw (though I prefer plenty of olive oil and salt). Only rarely is there anything left for the dog.
The largest awards ever made for research aimed at protecting and reversing neurological damage and restoring function in people with multiple sclerosis (MS) are going to four teams in the U.S. and Europe, who will use $15.6 million from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society to lay the groundwork for clinical trials over the next five years. These awards are part of the National MS Society's Promise 2010 Campaign, a nationwide effort to raise at least $30 million for targeted areas of research and patient care that hold great potential in the fight to end the devastating effects of MS but which have so far been under-explored.
One of the first things I did was write haiku about getting an MRI. One of them goes, 'ya ya ya ya ya / ya ya ya ya ya ya ya / ya ya ya ya ya.' That's one of the sounds the MRI machine makes. When you're lying inside its tube, the sound is deafening. Instead of being annoyed by it, I try to appreciate it. I do the same thing with my symptoms. Instead of being freaked out by my twitching thumb, I think, Wow, that looks so weird.
Our yellow lab, Micko, loves hanging out at my dad's cabin, especially when there are other dogs about. Like most labs, he loves to swim, and has been known to criss-cross the lake in pursuit of a fishing boat (usually mine). He also loves bounding up and down the hill, chasing assorted vermin, shaking his muddy coat next to outdoor diners and sunbathers. In short, there's a lot for a lab to do.
This past weekend, my wife and I were up North at my dad's cabin. It's on a smallish, weedy lake, with lots of trees, an eagles' nest, and the occasional loon. It's been hot up there, too; the corn looks sickly, and the fishing has been moribund. Nevertheless, I spent hours in the canoe, changing from live bait to lure to other lure. Pickings were slim, but I saw lots of wildlife, and got my fill of peace and quiet. It was hot up there, but the stiff breeze from the south made things tolerable, especially when we put an air conditioner in the bedroom window.
