By Maura RZ Madou, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
When the New Jersey legislature approved a measure to legalize the use of marijuana for patients with chronic illnesses early this year, multiple sclerosis (MS) patient Charles Kwiatkowski, of Hazlet, N.J., rhetorically asked the New York Times; “The M.S. Society has shown that this drug will help slow the progression of my disease. Why would I want to use anything else?”1 New Jersey was the 14th state in the nation to…
Introduction to Cases:
During the upcoming weeks, we will post a series of cases addressing the appropriate treatment for patients with stable coronary artery disease. We will be focus on indications for revascularization in stable angina. In all of the cases, the patients will be at high enough risk that stress tests and coronary angiography will be performed.
There has been recent data and recommendations on the appropriate indications for revascularization in stable angina. These recommendations are based on…
Jeffrey Mayne MD
Faculty peer reviewed
Dr. Okonkwo’s post this past summer to PrimeCuts summarized ongoing research in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia affecting 15 million individuals worldwide and more than 5 million in the United States. It is a disease marked by cognitive deterioration that slowly breaks down one’s ability to perform activities of daily living and leaves individuals unable to care for themselves.
Briefly, the diagnosis of AD is based…
David Shabtai
Faculty Peer Reviewed
In a bold move, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently changed their breast cancer screening guidelines – recommending beginning screening at age 50 and even then only every other year until age 75. Bold, because the Task Force members are certainly aware of the media circus that ensued when in 1997, an NIH group issued similar guidelines, prompting comparisons to Alice in Wonderland. The new guidelines, recommend “against routine screening mammography in women…
Emily Stamell
Faculty peer reviewed
As a well-trained fourth year medical student, I inquire about smoking habits as part of almost all my patient encounters. Yet, I do not recall properly counseling a patient on smoking cessation aside from the one liner “You know you should quit, right?” During first and second year of medical school we are taught the stages of change model, which is just as obscure two years later as cell signaling pathways. I was recently…
Jeffery Mayne MD
Faculty peer reviewed
Dr. Okonkwo’s post this past summer to PrimeCuts summarized ongoing research in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia affecting 15 million individuals worldwide and more than 5 million in the United States. It is a disease marked by cognitive deterioration that slowly breaks down one’s ability to perform activities of daily living and leaves individuals unable to care for themselves.
Briefly, the diagnosis of AD is based on…
Michael Chu MD
Faculty peer reviewed
Case:
A 44-year old female presented to the emergency room with complaints of a lower extremity rash and swelling. The patient had been in her usual state of health when she presented to her primary care physician with complaints of palpitations, weight loss and insomnia. Lab tests were performed and she was given a diagnosis of hyperthyroidism. She was started on propranolol and methimazole, which the patient took intermittently due to…
Diana Hubulashvili, Pharm.D.
Edited by Tania Ahuja, Pharm.D., BCPS
Faculty peer reviewed
Bronchiectasis is an uncommon condition that is characterized by irreversible dilation of the bronchi. Chronic pulmonary infections and airway inflammation cause bronchial damage through destruction of the muscular and elastic layer of the bronchial…
Devyani Kothari, MD
Patients are already talking about a New York Times front page article highlighting the risks associated with statin use as a preventive measure for cardiovascular events in relatively “healthy” people. The piece examines the newest FDA indications for the use of Crestor along with the controversies surrounding the drug.
Last month, the FDA approved Rosuvastatin Calcium, marketed as Crestor by AstraZeneca for use in a new patient population , based on the JUPITER trial. Crestor now…
Molly Cason
Faculty peer reviewed
In a city of over 8 million people, New York City has an annual tuberculosis case rate of 11.4 per 100,000 people, which is more than twice the national average. Seventy-one percent of these cases occur in people who were born outside the United States.1 As a student, I had a patient (Y) who was being evaluated for active tuberculosis because he is a household contact of a person (X) known to have active…
Rushi Parikh
Faculty peer reviewed
Cardiac biomarkers have historically been a mainstay of the diagnostic criteria of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Previously utilized cardiac biomarkers include aspartate aminotransferase (AST), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and myoglobin; now more often troponin and to a lesser extent creatine kinase-MB are the principal biomarkers used to diagnose ACS.1
Myocardial necrosis and the subsequent loss of cardiomyocyte membrane integrity lead to the release of cardiac biomarkers into the peripheral circulation. Biomarkers, however, do…
Marisa Mizus
Faculty peer reviewed
Clopidogrel (Plavix) has been the standard of care for patients with coronary artery disease following percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for the past decade. Although it is a successful antiplatelet treatment in many patients, like any hero, it has a weakness: formation of its active metabolite depends on two hepatic cytochrome P450 (CYP450)-dependent steps. Clopidogrel resistance, or non-response, is correlated with an increased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events, including reinfarction and stent thrombosis.(1) It…
