My regular readers are a sharp bunch, so you probably already know that cardiac arrest – the cessation of a pulse and of blood circulation – is very very bad for you. Most doctors don’t recommend it. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands in the U.S. every year suffer cardiac arrest outside of a hospital, frequently due to a heart attack. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was developed 50 years ago for just such situations. Decades of data strongly support that the following two factors are k...
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Progress in Type 1 Diabetes: Insulin Pumps with Continuous Glucose Monitoring
Before I review this week’s study, bear with me while I clear up some terms.
Type 1 diabetes mellitus and type 2 diabetes mellitus are completely different diseases. That they have such similar names and are differentiated only by a “type” promotes the common misunderstanding that they are subtypes of the same disease. They should just have different names to keep things clear. (I suggest “George” and “Bob”.) They have entirely different causes and treatments. Type 1 diabetes is caused by ...
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A New Medication for Weight Loss
Obesity is an increasingly prevalent problem in developed countries, and a safe and effective medication for weight loss is eagerly sought. Most weight loss medications have been plagued by serious side effects.
Fenfluramine, a medication used with phentermine in the popular “fen-phen” combination in the 1990s, was found to cause serious heart valve abnormalities and was withdrawn from the market. The two prescription medications currently available are only modestly effective and each suffer...
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Fewer Americans Dying of Cancer
This week the American Cancer Society published its annual review of cancer statistics and trends. This year the big picture was overwhelmingly positive.
The three most frequently diagnosed cancers in men are prostate cancer, lung cancer, and colorectal cancer (in that order). For women the top three are breast, lung and colorectal cancer. (See the link below to Figure 1 in the study for details.) The incidences (the numbers of new diagnoses every year) of all of these cancers have decrease...
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New Evidence Supports Prostate Cancer Screening
My regular readers know that prostate cancer screening has been an active research topic recently. (My not-so-regular readers who are interested are invited to catch up on the topic by reading my most recent post on the subject. See the link below.) Whether testing men for prostate cancer saves lives is still an open question. Large trials are currently underway that should provide a definitive answer in the next few years.
In the meantime, preliminary results from a Swedish trial give pros...
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