Although food-related health risks likely will be dipping a little with Americans’ outdoor feasting winding down with the summer-ending Labor Day holiday, state and federal health officials have confirmed they are investigating an outbreak of hepatitis A in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and North Carolina. At least 70 infections have been linked to tainted frozen strawberries….
Continue ReadingLiver disease
For Golden State, a $1 billion tab from Big Pharma to Treat One Disease
Californians have gotten an unpleasant taste of the policy complexities caused when Big Pharma sets sky-high prices for life-changing drugs: State health officials say they need to set aside $1 billion to pay for increasing numbers of qualified patients on the state’s Medi-Cal program to receive a costly new treatment for Hepatitis C. Two drugs,….
Continue ReadingAre physicians biased against heavy patients? Does it harm their care?
Human failings vex doctors, too, and their biases against the overweight, especially women, may be detrimental to quality of care. White practitioners also may benefit from racial bias, earning significantly more than their colleagues of color. Stat, the online health news site, delves into the less discussed issue of physicians’ prejudice against patients who are….
Continue ReadingAs uterine surgeries are planned, transplant system’s ‘gaming’ can’t be ignored
Let’s give credit where it’s due: Transplant surgery, in popular lore, has become one of modern medicine’s most miraculous practices, not only saving individual lives but also blazing new frontiers about the functions of organs in the body and providing insights of large significance into the workings of the human immune system. This progress hasn’t….
Continue ReadingStates Square Off Against Each Other in Allocation of Livers for Transplant
Rarely does the law of supply and demand have a sadder application than in the world of organ donations, and the latest case of too much need and too few resources has states doing battle with each other. According to a story on TheHill.com, “A heated redistricting battle has gripped the nation’s heartland this fall,….
Continue ReadingUnderstanding Acetaminophen and How to Make It Safer
Last week we wrote about the commercial and regulatory shortcomings concerning acetaminophen in general and Tylenol in particular. The investigative news outfit ProPublica followed up that comprehensive story with others about how the risks of Tylenol are not well understood by consumers, and how acetaminophen drugs can be made safer. Approximately 150 people die every….
Continue ReadingAcetaminophen Continues to Rack Up Casualties and Escape Regulatory Control
Readers of the blog are familiar with the risks of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. Although this widely available, over-the-counter analgesic (pain medicine) is considered to be safe when taken at recommended doses, certain ordinary uses can damage or destroy the liver. A described in a blockbuster investigative report by ProPublica.org, the FDA has….
Continue ReadingSupplement Alert—Don’t Take Reumofan!
Our August newsletter about dietary supplements included some cautionary advice about some so-called “natural” supplements that can cause significant harm. One was Reumofan, a product manufactured in Mexico and marketed as a remedy for pain. The FDA had issued a warning earlier this year about it after receiving several adverse event reports, including stroke, gastrointestinal….
Continue ReadingSafe Injection Practices Are Not a Shot in the Dark
Too many people are being exposed to life-threatening infections because clinicians fail to follow safe practices when administering medicine by injection or infusion. According to a recent study in Medical Care, the journal of the American Public Health Association, at least 130,000 patients were put at risk between 2001 and 2011 for pathogens including hepatitis….
Continue ReadingCan Baby Boomers Pass the Hepatitis C Test?
In their youth, baby boomers were perceived as the luckiest generation yet of Americans. But thanks to their unprecedented freedom and the boundary-pushing nature of post-World War II America, boomers disproportionately suffer from something nobody wants: hepatitis C. As a result, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending that all baby boomers….
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