The Story of Peyton Rous and Chicken Cancer

The Story of Peyton Rous and Chicken Cancer

How can our own body "join the other side"? It is an age old question the medical profession has been trying to answer. It seems we are getting closer and closer to determining the factors that some say predisposes one person to certain disease more than others. But are these risk factors really a solid basis for determining anything at all?

I often wonder when I see a report about a study that brings new findings to light. Are we trying to make the puzzle pieces fit the wrong picture?

Homeopathic remedies, are we just fooling ourselves?

Homeopathic remedies, are we just fooling ourselves?

How Much Money Do Drug Companies Pay the FDA?

I cannot say I was surprised to learn this information. I mean the drug companies have been out and out advertising directly to patients via TV ads for years now and it seems they push the envelope a little further every year. Have you ever been sitting there watching one of these drug ads, listening to the side effects, "..dizziness, may cause death, black lung, liver disease..", and thought to yourself,
" gee whiz! I'll take the headache instead of all those side effects?"

Anyway,
here is the article, warts and all.

How Much Money Do Drug Companies Pay the FDA?

Discount, High Quality Supplements

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I became especially curious when Dr Oz recommended it on his show. You've got to try this is you are feeling sluggish and lack energy.

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Featured Tools

Symptom Checker

Foot pain? Headache? Sore throat? Skin rash? Use the Symptom Checker to find out what's causing your symptom.

This is a real cool tool that Mayo Clinic has to look up your symptoms and see if they warrant a closer look by a physician.

Understanding Depression

Some Helpful Links:

Depression: Supporting a family member or friend

When someone you care about has depression, your support can be a big help to them. Here's what you can do.

Encourage treatment

People with depression may not recognize or acknowledge that they're depressed. They may not be aware of signs and symptoms of depression, or they may feel too hopeless to address the issue. People with depression may think that how they feel is normal and not the result of a mental health condition. All too often, people feel ashamed about their depression and mistakenly believe they should be able to overcome it with willpower alone. But depression seldom gets better without treatment and may get worse. Help the person you care about recognize the symptoms of depression and get treatment.

• Talk to the person about what you've noticed and why you're concerned.
• Explain that depression is a medical condition, not a personal flaw or weakness — and that it usually gets better with treatment.
• Suggest that the person see a professional — a medical doctor or a mental health provider such as a licensed counselor or psychologist.
• Offer to help prepare a list of questions for the person to discuss in an initial appointment with a doctor or mental health provider.
• Express your willingness to help by setting up appointments, going with the person to appointments and attending family therapy sessions.

If your loved one's illness is severe or potentially life-threatening, contact a doctor, a hospital or emergency medical services yourself.

Symptom Checker

Foot pain? Headache? Sore throat? Skin rash? Use the Symptom Checker to find out what's causing your symptom.

Protons, Electrons, and Hepatitis C

Well, technically that title should be PROTON, ELECTRON, and Hepatitis C, the first two words being the names of two recent studies of PSI-7977, a potential new drug for treating hepatitis C virus (HCV).

The Latest Findings

There’s a lot to talk about with PSI-7977—mainly in light of study resultspresented a few days ago at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) in San Francisco. So let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way before we go any further: I do not know what POSITRON and ELECTRON stand for. Nor do I know what FISSION, PROTON, and ATOMIC stand for—but more on that later. All I can tell you is that at some point in the history of drug development, pharmaceutical companies and/or clinical trial cooperative groups decided that acronyms were necessary or advantageous for some reason, paving the way for many a BLT, BOLERO and COMFORT for years to come.

PSI-7977 is kind of exciting. In the PROTON study, this drug, a nucleotide analog, was combined with the then-standard of care, pegylated interferon plus ribavirin. (Since PROTON was done, telaprevir and boceprevir were approved, changing the standard of care.) In PROTON, 96% of patients had a sustained virologic response (SVR), which is the measure of cure for HCV. Now, to balance this, is a wonderful moment of parsing the data: 96% is impressive, no doubt, but it has to be mentioned that the total number of patients in that study was 25, with 24 patients being actually evaluable. It was an early-phase study, so that small number of patients is not unusual, but most reports about the latest PSI-7977 results are highlighting that initial 96%, and it’s hard to find the actual N of the study. Here is a PDF of the full report of the PROTON study.

After PROTON delivered its encouraging results, Pharmasset, the maker of PSI-7977, launched ELECTRON, a phase II study in which a number of patients were given the experimental drug plus ribavirin. And that is the key: 10 of the enrollees received NO pegylated interferon. And guess what: the combination worked. All 10 of those HCV patients had an SVR.

Now, a couple of things to explain. First, these were patients with genotype 2 or 3 HCV. The reason why these genotypes were selected is because they tend to be highly responsive to interferon. Wait – so, why were those the people who were not given interferon? Well, the logic was that if PSI-7977 plus ribavirin didn’t work, those patients could be more easily rescued with a course of pegylated interferon + ribavirin than HCV patients with, say, genotype 1, the most difficult to treat variety of the disease. As it turned out, that rescue therapy wasn’t needed, but still, the logic is interesting when it comes to understanding drug trials.