By David Hormozdi, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
As Thanksgiving fast approaches and you enjoy the last stretch of fall weather, Primecuts is here to offer you the latest medical news making headlines.
Proton pump inhibitor (PPI) use in patients on anti-platelet therapy is again in the news. A new joint document released by the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG), American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology Foundation (ACCF) supports the use of PPIs in…
By Verity Schaye, MD and Ishmeal Bradley, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
This past week we saw yet another significant election in modern American history. The Republicans, with significant Tea Party support, managed to wrest control of the House from the Democrats, but the Democrats held on strong to the Senate. One of the central issues of this midterm election was health care and the monumental reform that was passed by Democrats earlier this spring. While the voting public emphatically chanted that…
By Lucy Doyle, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
Perhaps no greater health-related headline shook the world this week as much as news of a deadly cholera outbreak afflicting our neighbor to the south, Haiti. As efforts are still underway to contain this epidemic, let’s take a look at the news on cholera from the medical journals.
Last month, Science published a piece on the public health obstacles to implementation of a cholera vaccination program in countries that…
By Chris Tully, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
As New York City begins to feel less and less like summer, and more and more like fall, Primecuts is here to welcome the fall foliage with another edition.
Making headlines across the major media Health sections were long-term follow-up studies on two common cancers, breast and colon cancer. Publishing in JAMA , the Women’s Heath Initiative investigators (WHI) reported on the 11-year follow-up of the initial study that examined…
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…
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 .…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
