Random Thoughts

From the Tennessean Newspaper

Studies say physicians are being influenced drug

By STEVEN G. GABBE, M.D. • February 18, 2008

At 8 a.m. on Aug. 8, 2007, during their very first week of medical school, Vanderbilt medical students heard a lecture from Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, professor of law and pediatrics, about potential conflicts of interest faced by practicing physicians, including those related to pharmaceutical and medical device companies.As the students left the lecture hall, they passed by tables of bagels, juice and coffee set up for another lecture next door where the audience of faculty physicians and residents listened to a noted expert on heart disease review the latest research on a new treatment.
Advertisement

These types of lectures, commonly known as grand rounds, represent a tradition of how physicians at academic medical centers like Vanderbilt stay up to date on the very latest medical discoveries and their application to patient care.

However, students noticed that, at the end of the breakfast table was a display of pens, notepads and pamphlets all prominently bearing the name of a new and highly effective drug brought to the market by a pharmaceutical company whose representative was sitting behind this table.

During their first week of medical school, these students faced their very first professional dilemma: Does the presence of marketing materials and the offer of a free meal by a pharmaceutical company representative create a potential conflict of interest for physicians in the care of their patients because they may be more likely to prescribe a specific drug as a result of this exposure?
Prescribing behavior is affected

Many physicians believe their level of professionalism and integrity would not allow such a small token to influence their medical judgment. Recent studies, however, have shown that the prescribing behavior of physicians may be more highly influenced by meals and gifts than physicians often realize. These studies are consistent with years of marketing research that show how all of us are affected by product advertising.

That’s why many medical centers, including Vanderbilt, have for years had some level of restriction on the value of gifts and meals that companies could provide physicians and employees.

However, as recently reported in The Tennessean, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has joined a growing number of academic medical centers across the country by establishing a policy that no physician, staff member or trainee shall accept a personal gift or meal from an industry representative regardless of the value of the gift. This new policy is based upon the understanding that physicians and other health-care providers have a special obligation to their patients to make medical decisions based solely upon the best scientific evidence available.

These decisions should not be compromised by even the slightest appearance of any conflict by industry marketing practices. If we are going to teach medical students, beginning in their first week of medical school, about their obligations as a professional, we must make sure their teachers are modeling the behavior we are teaching. It’s the right thing to do for our students and our patients.

Steven G. Gabbe, M.D. is dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Is this true?

A Chemical That Improves Memory (and Cures Loneliness)
from: http://io9.com/347030/a-chemical-that-improves-memory-and-cures-loneliness

Social isolation makes people stressed out and forgetful, but soon a drug could cure this problem. Late last year, scientists isolated a brain enzyme that triggers the “loneliness” feelings during periods of solitude. Replenishing that enzyme in the brain could enhance memory and relieve stress when you’re spending a lot of time by yourself working (or space traveling).

Researchers at the University of Illinois kept several mice in isolation from each other to see what chemical changes took place in their brains. Turns out the lonely mice experienced reduced levels of a brain enzyme that helps create a stress-relieving neurosteroid called allopregnanolone. A release from the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, where the researchers’ paper was published, explained:

Such alterations in the synthesis of allopregnanolone may account for the anxiety, aggression, and memory impairments that result from social isolation, the authors suggest.

It’s possible that boosting the enzyme that helps create allopregnanolone could relieve feelings of loneliness that trigger memory blocks. Or perhaps simply administering allopregnanolone would do it too. Either way, further research might uncover a drug that would make it possible for humans to undergo intensive periods of aloneness without going mad.

Image is of a fluorescent neuron.

I know there have been a lot of new developments lately, including a hormone or chemical or something that erases the need for sleep, and genes that may cause addictions. IS this true too?

Meditation Techniques for the Busy or Impatient

If you are reading this then you probably recognize some value in meditation, in slowing down, and reducing stress. At the same time you probably struggle with fitting meditation into your daily routine. The good news is that establishing a daily meditation practice is easier than you may have thought.

In order to make this work, it will be helpful to:

1. Lower your expectations of meditation. Often the reason we are impatient about meditation is we want instant gratification. Replace that expectation with a desire to experience a “slow melt” of your stress.

2. Be open to non-traditional meditation. Meditation doesn’t have to be done in a seated position. Any activity in which you can slow down your mind, become more inwardly focused and more rooted in the present moment will pass the test for meditation.

1. Be kind to yourself. At all levels, give yourself credit and praise for all your goodness. Don’t berate yourself for not being “good” at meditating. That defeats the purpose. If you make the effort to meditate, then by default, you are good at it. It’s more a “do or not do” thing versus a “good or bad.”

2. Commit to slow down your mind for 10 minutes each day. You can obviously do this for longer if you want, but just take your time in building this habit by starting with 10 minutes per day.

How to Easily Incorporate Meditation into Your Day (read more from this great article at Meditation Techniques for the Busy or Impatient - Dumb Little Man )

Merck recalls 1.2 mln doses of children’s vaccines
from: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071213/hl_nm/merck_vaccine_dc_4

Wed Dec 12, 9:54 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Merck & Co Inc on Wednesday voluntarily recalled about 1.2 million doses of its widely used children’s vaccines after quality-control checks found production equipment may not have been properly sterilized.
ADVERTISEMENT

The vaccines protect against Hib disease (Haemophilus influenzae type b), which used to be the leading cause of bacterial meningitis in children less than 5 years old, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Merck said it recalled 11 lots of PedvaxHIB vaccine and two lots of its Comvax vaccine due to lack of assurance of product sterility. Both of the recalled vaccines protect against Hib and other conditions. Comvax also prevents hepatitis B.

The vaccines were manufactured in West Point, Pennsylvania, and distributed starting in April 2007. All but one lot was distributed in the United States, the company said.

“The potential for contamination of any individual vaccine is low, and, if present, the level of contamination would be low,” Merck said.

Sterility tests of the vaccine lots subjected to recall did not turn up any contamination, said Merck, which added that the recall does not affect any other vaccines it manufactures.

Children who have received the affected vaccine do not need to be revaccinated because efficacy was not compromised, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

She advised parents to look for signs of infection at the site of the inoculation in the days following the injection.

“After a week, you would definitely be out of the woods,” Schuchat said.

Before vaccination became common, Hib struck one child out of every 200 in that age group, causing permanent brain damage in a quarter and killing 1 in 20.

The CDC has recommended that children receive Hib vaccine for nearly a decade. Fewer than 100 documented Hib cases currently are reported in the United States each year.

Health officials said they have urged Sanofi Pasteur, Sanofi-Aventis’ vaccine business, to boost supplies in a bid to fill the gap caused by the recall.

The United States requires about 14 million doses annually to fully vaccinate babies and toddlers, and officials said they planned to tap vaccine stockpiles to help meet the need.

“We do expect there to be a shortage. The extent of that we’re trying to find out,” said the CDC’s Schuchat. She added that the recall does not pose an immediate health risk because more than 90 percent of U.S. children have received the vaccine.

“We have a cushion of protection as we go into the recall,” Schuchat said.

In November, Merck agreed to pay $4.85 billion to settle most claims that Vioxx, its withdrawn painkiller, caused heart attacks and strokes in thousands of users.

Shares in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based Merck lost 68 cents, or 1.1 percent, to close at $59.72 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine, Maggie Fox and Lisa Baertlein, Editing by Gary Hill, Richard Chang)

From yahoo news / Reuters

 Genes found that slow both aging and cancer

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Sun Oct 14, 4:48 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have identified a batch of genes that not only prevent cancer but slow the aging process in worms, and say they are now looking to see if the genes have the same properties in humans.

Many of the genes in the worms are already known to have counterparts in humans, and the team at the University of California, San Francisco, say they hope to better understand some of the processes that cause both aging and cancer.

Drugs that mimic the effects of these genes might help people both avoid cancer and also live longer, they wrote in Sunday’s issue of the journal Nature Genetics.

Biologist Cynthia Kenyon is perhaps best known for discovering that a change in just one gene, called daf-2, could double the life span of small roundworms called Caenorhabditis elegans.

She and graduate student Julie Pinkston-Gosse screened as many genes as they could that were affected by daf-2. They looked at 734 in total, and found that 29 of them either stimulated tumor growth or suppressed it.

Some caused cell proliferation — which goes haywire to help a tumor grow and spread — while others initiated a programmed suicide process called apoptosis, used by the body to destroy faulty cells, including tumor cells.

“About half of these genes also affected normal aging, thereby linking these two processes mechanistically,” the two researchers wrote.

“There is a widely held view that any mechanism that slows aging would probably stimulate tumor growth,” Kenyon said in a statement.

“But we found many genes that increase life span, but slow tumor growth. Humans have versions of many of these genes, so this work may lead to treatments that keep us youthful and cancer-free much longer than normal.”

The genes that stimulated tumor growth also accelerated aging, Kenyon found. The genes that prevented tumor growth slowed down the aging process and extended life span in the worms.

Kenyon said the findings strengthen theories that the controls of life span and cancer have deep, common roots.

Small creatures that researchers work on, such as the C. elegans roundworm, often share genes with humans, and these genes often underlie key biological processes.

Alright, so lets get on with it. Gene therapy should already be available to the masses. More money should be put into research with gene therapy. Healing, age defying, and more is possible today, and few people have any idea it’s a reality. Fixing cancers, healing the body, hmmm. which is more important stem cell research or war? Let’s get our financial priorities straight people!