By: Demetrios Tzimas, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
While the rest of the world was watching the rescuing of “Los 33,” I was searching for love; actually, love found me! This week, the front pages of both CNN and the New York Times online referenced a study conducted by Younger et al, from the Stanford University School of Medicine, that discussed the benefits of being with someone we love as a method of reducing pain (“Love may be as good as morphine”). The study, which looked …
By Michael Fingerhood, MD, MPH
Faculty Peer Reviewed
Last week the world’s eyes were on Stockholm, Sweden and the announcement of the 2010 Nobel Prize Awards. We here at PRIMECUTS say “Grattis” to Robert Edwards, this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, for his pioneering work on in-vitro fertilization. Edwards discovered how to fertilize and mature human embryos outside the womb and, along with Dr. Patrick Steptoe, perfected their insertion via laparoscopy to achieve viable implantation . This award separately highlights the problems …
By Lakshmi Tummala, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
While everyone is talking about the passage of further work hour restrictions, now limiting interns to 16-hour shifts in hopes of preventing or at least reducing “medical errors” let’s take a look at the other news about prevention and screening that has come out this week.
Last week in Primecuts, we read about the controversies surrounding screening for prostate cancer. This week, the Annals re-explored the idea of screening for testicular cancer . The authors were searching …
Lisa Parikh, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
This past week, genetics was the theme of the week. Genetically engineered salmon hit the headlines on several newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times and Time. The so called “AquAdvantage” (or Frankenfish) contains a growth hormone gene from a Pacific salmon species and a gene promoter from the ocean pout, an eel-like fish, that cause it to grow at a rate twice as fast as normal salmon. The maker of AquAdvantage, AquaBounty, claims that their …
By Jennifer Dong, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
In health news this past week, there has been a significant focus on the obesity problem in the United States as well as closer attention to medical education and the quality of healthcare physicians deliver in the current system.
Both the New York Times and Reuters online reported this week that U.S. advisors have rejected the new Arena weight-loss drug, Lorcaserin, which works by mimicking serotonin in the brain and suppressing the appetite. A committee of medical experts …
By Karin Warltier, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
This past Thursday the US Court of Appeals ruled that the federal financing of embryonic stem cell research could continue while the court reconsiders last month’s ruling by Chief Judge Lambert of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia (see Primecuts August 30, 2010 by Ha Na Kim, MD). As Gardiner Harris of the New York Times stated, this ruling “could save research mice from being euthanized, cells in petri dishes from starving and scores of …
By Gopi Nayak, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
This week as Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer, President Obama calls for major spending on public works to jump-start the economy, while tennis stars continue to battle it out at Arthur Ashe stadium.
In medical news, this week’s JAMA featured a prospective multicenter cohort study of women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations to estimate the risk and mortality reduction following prophylactic mastectomy and salpingo-oophorectomy, specifically stratifying risk reduction based on mutation status and prior …
By Han Na Kim, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
In the national news, a ruling came from Washington DC that shocked NIH scientists and researchers across the nation’s universities. Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against President Obama’s stem cell policy and stopped federal funding of embryonic stem cell research that destroys embryos, claiming that this violates the Dickey-Wicker Amendment regarding federal spending bills. Lamberth commented, “The Dickey-Wicker Amendment unambiguously prohibits the use of federal funds for all …
By Joshua Smith, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
As I am sure many of my fellow interns can attest, choosing to begin one’s year on the wards and as a night float at Bellevue Hospital has resulted in two predictable outcomes: an unbelievable appreciation for free time and an utter lack of knowledge regarding anything occurring outside the 10 block radius of NYU’s three hospitals. Therefore, it is with great enthusiasm that, thanks to an elective block, I have once again been able to open my …
By Ami Jhaveri, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
In the headlines this week, The New York Times featured an article describing a test capable of identifying biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid to diagnose patients with Alzheimer’s disease. This article is based on a study that was published this week in the Archives of Neurology. Previously, Alzheimer’s disease could only be diagnosed based on clinical suspicion until a definite diagnosis was available with autopsy. In the study by De Meyer et al., researchers measured levels of A1-42, total …
By Caprice Cadacio, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
Last month my fellow interns and I were enveloped by the fury that is known as July, the month infamous for shocking young interns into realizing they are now doctors. I was fortunate to have started on Ambulatory Care meaning my evenings and weekends were still mine to enjoy and in the midst of this August elective, I continue to hold on to my summer. In a few weeks, however, I will say goodbye as I am literally …
By Deborah Hemel, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
One of the many advantages of being on elective this week was that I finally had the pleasure of spending time outside and experiencing the heat wave with millions of other sweaty, malodorous New Yorkers. Our sultry plight, however, was dwarfed by far graver weather problems in other parts of the world: record floods in Iowa, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China have killed hundreds, if not thousands of people, while a destructive heat wave has swept over Russia, a …
