Are you ever skeptical when you see drug claims? One of my first questions when I read about a new drug or a statistic of some kind is: How do they know that? When I read about two new weight loss drugs presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Stockholm, Sweden (19-23 Sept), my antennae went up. Here’s the story. Drug...
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CLL or Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia results from a mutation in B lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell that develops in the bone marrow. B-cells produce antibodies, an important part of the immune system. CLL can be slow growing, with small slow changes in the blood counts over years or fast growing, where cancerous B-lymphocytes crowd out the bone...
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Prior to the 20th century, most people lived about 47 years in the developed world because of infectious diseases. In 1940, the first use of penicillin to treat infectious diseases occurred and penicillin became available in 1945 to the general public. Science and research conducted throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, created more antibiotics so that life...
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Dr. Kelly Shanahan is a doer. As she wrote about her treatment for early stage breast cancer, “Even the four months of i.v. chemo needed because of one positive lymph node didn’t slow me down: I scheduled chemo for Thursdays, did surgery…on Fridays, threw up on Saturdays, ached from Neulasta® on Sundays, and was back in the office on...
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Thirty-eight states in the US have passed “Right To Try” laws. These are laws that are created to give terminally ill patients who have run out of options access to experimental drugs that have not completed the FDA approval process. There is an effort underway to pass this type of legislation on a federal level. On February 8, the #LCSM (Lung...
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Did you know that May 20th is International Clinical Trials Day. It commemorates the first “clinical trial” by James Lind, a Scottish surgeon in 1747. In trying to figure out what caused scurvy, a disease characterized by loss of teeth, bleeding gums and hemorrhaging, he conducted experiments. Twelve men with scurvy were divided into...
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In two previous posts, What Do You Think About Clinical Trials? and What Do You Think? Medivizor’s Clinical Trials Perception Survey Results, we learned your perceptions of clinical trials. As a follow-up, we have a short, very useful explainer video produced by the European Patients’ Academy (EUPATI) describing some of the key features of...
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In June, we published a post called What Do You Think About Clinical Trials? The post included the results of several surveys about perceptions of clinical trials including the results of a study conducted by MaPS/Millward Brown Analytic and Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSKCC). Medivizor’s Clinical Trials Perception Survey Results In our post...
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Please take this short survey on Clinical Trials…then read on! Surveys on Perceptions of Clinical Trials If you are like most people, you may not have a very positive opinion of clinical trials. At least that is what a recent survey conducted by MaPS/Millward Brown Analytic and Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSKCC) suggests. Only 40% of those...
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