Search results

The U.S. Government doesn't want to hear the message: The Centers for Disease Control and the Veterans Administration published practice guidelines on the prescription of opioid pain relievers in 2022 that they knew were unsupported by science and harmful to public health. The Department of Health and Human Services is stone-walling repeated demands for a senior staff review of these issues.

Answer: It could be. Stress kills. Rarely, but not never. And then there is anxiety, which subsumes a host of related diagnoses. The terms are often co-mingled, with the latter tending to diffuse the dangers of the former. Let’s take a deeper look.

VUCA?
Race in science
Pass the ammo
Sushi and lateral transmission

This could be big. All physicians or cancer researchers have been taught forever that a certain class of cancer drugs works by stopping mitosis, hence cancer cell division. However, a group at the University of Wisconsin discovered that everything we thought we knew about drugs like Taxol and vincristine - decades of textbooks - is wrong. The ramifications could reshape cancer drug research.

Roadside drug tests are unreliable, so why are they so widely used in the U.S.? Meanwhile, researchers who make "health disparities" the focus of their work sometimes misrepresent their results. Here's a textbook example from a study that used pulse oximetry to measure disparities in COVID-19 treatment.

At the beginning of the year, the CDC and FDA noted “a preliminary safety signal for ischemic stroke among persons aged ≥65 years” who had received the COVID bi-valent vaccine, as well as a similar but "higher" signal in individuals receiving the influenza vaccine at the same time. Now, a study has confirmed that safety signal.

Curiosity is the insatiable hunger for knowledge and understanding that fuels our exploration of the world. Each of us has curiosity to varying degrees, often for one topic more than another. Curiosity, as with many of our biological drives, has a dynamic quality: waxing and waning. Some researchers were curious.

In order to accurately capture the nuance of an article, especially those about scientific and medical matters, headline writers and editors should read the piece before composing a headline.

It seems like a bit of common sense: the higher the viral load – in this case of COVID – the greater chance you have to transmit the disease to another. As it turns out, one of the ways we may characterize “infectivity” is when viral load peaks. Omicron infections peak later, and that has clinical implications.

Cato Institute's Dr. Jeffrey Singer, in an opinion piece in USA Today, writes that for years we've been buying and using an ineffective, potentially dangerous decongestant. Why? Just another futile attempt to restrict access to illegal drugs, in this case, methamphetamine. With phenylephrine off pharmacy shelves, the ACSH advisor explores what this means.

A recent, bizarre murder case in Minnesota involved a physician (a poison expert) accused of poisoning his wife with a toxic gout drug called colchicine. The fact that she didn’t have gout, and that he had taken out a $500,000 life insurance policy, won’t help Dr. Connor Bowman‘s defense much. And a little lesson on the risks of using toxic drugs therapeutically.

Tracking our health is all the rage. Advancements in technology have catapulted our understanding of how our bodies work and continue to provide new opportunities for healthcare. But while constant monitoring of our physical health sounds great, there may be drawbacks to our mental health and how we relate to our bodies and other people.

Check it out: Our Life with Self-checkout
Short, fat, juicy ones
Regulating guns
Want to make some money? Consider horror films

Garlic is an enormously popular spice and food ingredient. But have you ever noticed that hours after someone eats it, their breath starts to smell strangely funky? And there's no sense in grabbing for the mouthwash; it won't do a thing. What is going on here?

Many cancers are treated with DNA-damaging drugs. But one, testicular cancer, responds so well to the drug cisplatin that the cure rate for early-stage disease is about 100%. Even if the cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes, there is a five-year survival of 74%. What makes this combination of a particular drug and cell type so unique?

The COVID-19 pandemic has virtually – but not entirely – disappeared from public concerns. Nevertheless, new variants are being examined, as are new vaccines intended to counter them.

Over the last decade, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) launched several initiatives tied to incentives to “providers” to improve care. A peer-reviewed study spins out to interested clinicians the clinical benefits and financial costs of an initiative to reduce cardiovascular disease. The full report to CMS spells out the failures.

As we age, bones creak, hearing wanes, and cognition diminishes. Promises of rejuvenation have always besieged a vulnerable market seeking the fountain of youth. Now, there seems to be a clinically tested elixir that promises to restore lost brain power – a simple Chinese herbal remedy. So, does it work?

Our behavior seems to be built by evolution, and it's sometimes paradoxical. To borrow from the hard sciences, our behavior exhibits complementarity. We are largely felicitous to our family and friends, yet stand-offish (if not aggressive) to “others” we may encounter. Willful ignorance straddles that complementarity borderline. A new study offers insight into what's really going on.

Long COVID has long been a syndrome in search of a disease and, more importantly, an underlying explanation. A new study in Cell tries to use Occam’s Razor to find the underlying cause. While not truly causal, it is an interesting hypothesis – with lots to unpack.

Alzheimer’s disease is a stealthy killer, quietly and slowly stealing a half million new American minds yearly. The disease should present a major public health emergency, but serious governmental efforts to address the problem began only recently. Sadly, the problem also presents a marvelous marketing opportunity. Leave it to pharma and its affiliates to try and exploit a frightened, nervous, and vulnerable public.

Not content with content
Is the Rat Czar necessary?
Food, Glorious, Food
John Oliver weighs in on Food Safety

Either of two phenomena may be at work -- the "placebo effect" or the "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" (after this, therefore because of this) fallacy.

The FDA seems intent on imposing a ban on menthol cigarettes and cigars, despite evidence from Europe that it only fuels a black market. And despite evidence in the U.S. that it may worsen inequities in law enforcement.

Why did so many people opt not to get COVID boosters? That is a significant public health question. A newly reported survey provides some answers.