The United States’ Food and Drug Administration has just approved a new drug to fight HIV in combination with other antiretrovirals that are already on the market. The drug is called Edurant, and it was made by New Jersey based Tibotec Therapeutics. It works by blocking the HIV from replicating and is part of a class of drugs known as non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor.
“Patients may respond differently to various HIV drugs or experience varied side effects,” said Edward Cox, director of the office of antimicrobial products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
“FDA’s approval of Edurant provides an additional treatment option for patients who are starting HIV therapy.”
The FDA also approved a long awaited drug for the treatment of Hepatitis C, which was developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals. The drug is called Incivek, and it is so effective that the chances of a person being cured of the disease double with its’ use. This drug works in combination with others such as ribavirin and pegylated interferon. It was unanimously approved by the FDA, and Vertex founder and former CEO Joshua Boger remarked that this is “a great day for patients that we at Vertex envisioned almost 18 years ago.”
Back in December, Time released their annual list of the top ten medical breakthroughs. I completely forgot about this list until today, and figured that it was better late than never.
Have you ever wondered just how much help wearing a medical mask is? It doesn’t seem like it would be a whole lot, considering how thin they are, but a new study has shown that they provide greater help than was previously thought.
Crosstex International, a subsidiary of Cantel Medical Corp., announced today the publication of sponsored research that suggests a far greater infection prevention value of medical face masks, commonly referred to as surgical masks, than previously understood. The key outcome challenges conventional wisdom that a medical mask or respirator is most effective when worn by a person attempting to protect oneself from exposure to infectious matter. Instead, if FDA-cleared medical face masks are worn at the potential source of the infection, the level of overall protection is magnified up to 300-fold. Published in the September issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the research study, entitled “Quantifying Exposure Risk and Mask Protection”, was conducted by Keith Diaz, MD, and Gerald Smaldone, MD, PhD, at Stony Brook University Medical Center in Stony Brook, NY.
In what could be the biggest breaththrough since the invention of the Braille alphabet, Australia has revealed a prototype of a bionic eye, which was designed to restore sight to those with failing vision. The Australian government had commited $42 million in Australian dollars to the project. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said that the device could be “one of the most important medical advances we see in our lifetime.”
It is designed for patients suffering from degenerative vision loss caused by a genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa or age-related macular degeneration. It consists of a miniature camera, mounted on glasses, that captures images and sends them to a processor which is kept in the wearer’s pocket. The image is then transmitted wirelessly to a unit, which is surgically implanted in the eye, which directly stimulates surviving neurons in the retina, signalling an image to the brain.
People who received detailed audio instructions on how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) demonstrated better compression rate, hand placement and compression depth than those who did not receive recorded instructions by cell phone. The results of the study are published today online in Annals of Emergency Medicine (“Cell Telephone Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation: Audio Instructions When Needed by Lay Rescuers: A Randomized, Controlled Trial”).
A collection of sport and baby bottles potentially containing the compound bisphenol A, or BPA. The compound, commonly used in polycarbonate plastic bottles (to make them unbreakable), is also found in the linings of food cans. (Jonathan Hayward, Canadian Press)
After months of information being available on the subject of Bisphenol A, the FDA has begun to study the toxicity with novel approaches to test the subtle effects. Thus bringing BPA back into the mind’s eye, as many may have begun to forget the impact that it could have on folks around the world.
Bisphenol A (BPA) is an industrial chemical that has been present in many hard plastic bottles and metal-based food and beverage cans since the 1960s.
Studies employing standardized toxicity tests have thus far supported the safety of current low levels of human exposure to BPA However, on the basis of results from recent studies using novel approaches to test for subtle effects, both the National Toxicology Program at the National Institutes of Health and FDA have some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland in fetuses, infants, and young children. In cooperation with the National Toxicology Program, FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research is carrying out in-depth studies to answer key questions and clarify uncertainties about the risks of BPA.
This is an interesting twist of events that surprised even the researchers at the University of South Florida. Cellphone radiation may be good for you and bad for you at the same time. Tests on mice suggest that long-term cellphone use might actually help to fend off some of the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
The findings are exactly the opposite of what they expected to find. They say that exposure to electromagnetic waves from cellphones could both prevent some of the effects of Alzheimer’s if the exposure is introduced in early adulthood, or potentially even reverse some of the impairment among those already memory-impaired.
Providence Health & Services employees put together this video to generate breast cancer awareness throughout their hospital system. They had a ton of fun putting this together and hope it inspires others to join in the cause.
This is something that will likely cause shock waves in the healthcare industry. It’s likely to create scandal and will bring to mind cases where people were taken off of life-support, thinking that someone is in a coma when they actually could be completely conscious.
A man thought by doctors to be in a vegetative state for 23 years was actually conscious the whole time, it was revealed last night.
Student Rom Houben was misdiagnosed after a car crash left him totally paralysed.
The United States’ Food and Drug Administration has just approved a new drug to fight HIV in combination with other antiretrovirals that are already on the market. The drug is called Edurant, and it was made by New Jersey based Tibotec Therapeutics. It works by blocking the HIV from replicating and is part of a class of drugs known as non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor.
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