Late last month, I put up a quick post, New-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression, that addressed a PLoS published metastudy of interest.I was careful to use the phrasing from the paper as the title of my post, and to provide only the author’s summary, because I knew this was a tricky issue. I could have read the paper carefully and reported my opinion on it along side the information from the paper (a practice known as “blogging on peer reviewed research), but I did not have the time or interest to do so, yet I knew many of you would want to know about this.This is the beauty of PLoS, by the way. Regular people can read the original paper because it is an Open Access journal.Anyway, it turns out that this study was misinterpreted by the press more than most, and this has lead to the production of a commentary by Andrew Hyde on the PLoS site: Continue reading Prozac and Placebos
Tag Archives: Health
Las Vegas Clinic was Typhoid Maryesque
A public service announcement for those of you living in or passing through Nevada:
Vegas Clinic May Have Sickened Thousands from PhysOrg.com
(AP) — Nearly 40,000 people learned this week that a trip to the doctor may have made them sick. In a type of scandal more often associated with Third World countries, a Las Vegas clinic was found to be reusing syringes and vials of medication for nearly four years. The shoddy practices may have led to an outbreak of the potentially fatal hepatitis C virus and exposed patients to HIV, too.[…]
Costly Placebo Works Better Than Cheap One
Given two pills, one that costs ten cents and the other that cost $2.50, with both being simple sugar pills with no possible medical benefit, the more expensive pill works better to ameliorate certain conditions. I’m sure that the pharmaceutical companies will like this! Continue reading Costly Placebo Works Better Than Cheap One
Can kids be scared off drugs?
In 1986, 22-year-old Boston Celtics forward Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. This week, DrugMonkey argued that Bias’ death–as opposed to educational programs like DARE–was the major reason why self-reported rates of cocaine use by 20-year-olds dropped from 20% in the mid-1980s to 7% in the early 1990s.
Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin
Common Sense Tells us to try this drug:Thank You British NHS. We needed th is.
Gitmo As Hot Zone Research Center?
Interesting editorial in PLoS Genetics:
Reports that the Bush administration has expressed an interest in closing the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility in Cuba [1], colloquially known in the US as “Gitmo,” could stimulate a new chapter in US foreign policy. By converting Gitmo into a biomedical research institute dedicated to combating the diseases of poverty in the Western Hemisphere, we can tap into a little known, but highly effective tradition of vaccine diplomacy that we first began 50 years ago at the height of the Cold War [2],[3].In the 1950s, polio epidemics were ravaging the major urban centers in the United States and in the Soviet Union. Children were the chief victims in both countries. The devastation wreaked by the polio outbreak spurred the establishment of new polio research laboratories in Moscow and in the US at Jonas Salk’s laboratory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and at Albert Sabin’s lab in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Hotez PJ (2008) Reinventing Guantanamo: From Detainee Facility to Center for Research on Neglected Diseases of Poverty in the Americas. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 2(2): e201 doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0000201
Evolution of the Flu Virus
The flu is caused by the influenza virus, of which there are several types. H1N1 is known as the “Spanish Flu,” H2N2 as the “Asian Flu” and so on. These funny letters and numbers refer to specific genotypes. The H1N1 is the version of the flu that caused the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which was responsible for the death of between 50 and 100 million people.Considering that the difference between a bird or pig flu that may be hanging around in the background and a human pandemic causing flu can be a few dozen changes in the genome, understanding the evolutionary patterns for Influenza A viruses seems important. Continue reading Evolution of the Flu Virus
Two Cell Level Animations
Ricin
At this moment, there is a guy laid up in the hospital in Vegas with ricin poisoning. A stash of ricin has been found in his hotel room/apartment. His dog is dead (not sure why but probably due to lack of water and food) and a couple of other pets are either dead or not doing well (details are blurry).Details, sketchy as they are, here. So what is ricin? Continue reading Ricin
SARS comes from bats
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is caused by a coronavirus that is now believed to have originated in bats. In 2004, thousands of palm civets (a cat like carnivore) were killed off in China because it was believed that they were the main reservoir of this disease. Ooops. Continue reading SARS comes from bats
Are emerging diseases emerging more?
Or is it just that they are more often recognized. Or more sensationally reported. A recent study suggests that “emerging” diseases such as HIV, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus and Ebola are more common. Continue reading Are emerging diseases emerging more?
The Coming Plague
You have probably heard that the current flu vaccine matches the current flue strains in the US very poorly, perhaps at about a 40 percent rate. Flu and the vaccine mismatch is a post at Effect Measure that will update you on this important issue. This is especially important because you need to understand what vaccines do, how they work and how they don’t work.
The simultaneous news of widespread flu and the mismatch of two components of this year’s seasonal vaccine (see here and here) seem to have synergized. That’s not so good in the view of many flu experts, who believe (correctly) that it leads to a misunderstanding of how the vaccine works (or doesn’t)
Then there’s the bird flu: Continue reading The Coming Plague
New-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression
In this open access publication in PLoS it is
…suggest that, compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression, but show significant effects only in the most severely depressed patients. The findings also show that the effect for these patients seems to be due to decreased responsiveness to placebo, rather than increased responsiveness to medication. Given these results, the researchers conclude that there is little reason to prescribe new-generation antidepressant medications to any but the most severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have been ineffective. In addition, the finding that extremely depressed patients are less responsive to placebo than less severely depressed patients but have similar responses to antidepressants is a potentially important insight into how patients with depression respond to antidepressants and placebos that should be investigated further.
Here is the original article. You don’t need to be special to read it, since it is published in an Open Access journal.
Jarvick … Lipitor … Something did not seem right…
So a few weeks ago, we were over at Amy and Danny’s for dinner, and somehow Lipitor came up (no, it had nothing to do with the dinner Amy was cooking!). Anyway, Amy said “Why is Jarvick a good person to promote a drug. I mean, that heart didn’t work, right?”Hmm…. Good point, I thought.And now, today’s news makes it all the more interesting… Continue reading Jarvick … Lipitor … Something did not seem right…
Heath News
Angst-ridden teens have different brain structures: study from PhysOrg.com
It turns out your mother was right: angst-ridden teens really do have something wrong with their heads.[…]
Who benefits from antidepressants? from PhysOrg.com
A new study published today in PLoS Medicine suggests that antidepressants only benefit some, very severely depressed patients.[…]
A Quick Comparison of the Clinton and Obama Health Care Plans is at The Scientific Activist.