Drug Side Effects and Interactions Online August 5, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in e-patient, Health 2.0, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Pharma, Web 2.0.6 comments
There are two sites I know about and regularly use that provide drug side effects and interactions, or detailed information about the drugs you have been prescribed.
The first is Surveyor Health:
The second is WorstPills:
If you know about other similar sites, please let us know.
Genetic Background of Social Drinking August 5, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in genetics, science.1 comment so far
Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, published a very interesting paper focusing on the genetic background of social drinking. Specific gene variants might increase the risk for extensive alcohol use or abuse when spending time with heavy-drinking peers. An excerpt from Medical News Today:
Drinking alcohol increases levels of dopamine – a brain chemical that causes pleasure and makes us feel good. The dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) has been shown to be involved in motivation of seeking out rewards. Research has suggested that carrying a specific form (or variant) of this gene – one that includes seven or more repeats of a certain section of the gene – may be associated with craving caused by alcohol-related cues. Psychological scientist Helle Larsen from Radboud University in The Netherlands and her colleagues wanted to investigate if this 7-repeat gene variant plays a role in how an individual responds to alcohol-related cues.
The results showed an effect between how much the confederate drank and the gene variant on volunteers’ alcohol consumption: When the confederate was seen consuming three or four drinks, carriers of the 7-repeat form of the gene drank more than twice as many glasses of alcohol than did noncarriers of the gene variant. However, when the confederate consumed only one drink, there was no difference in alcohol consumption between carriers and noncarriers. These findings suggest that individuals carrying this form of the DRD4 gene may be more sensitive than noncarriers to other people’s drinking behavior.
Health 2.0 News: ePharma Pioneers, Medical Journal Snafu and Neural Coupling August 4, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Pharma, Video, Web 2.0, What's on the web?.7 comments
Imagine a hospital that could respond to medical emergencies armed with real-time information about exactly where all its doctors were located. Inside the hospital, which cardio specialist is closest to the 4th floor? Outside the hospital – if an on-call physician is racing to get to a patient’s side, how far away are they and when can they be expected to arrive?
- Nominees for The Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award: We should all follow these people on Twitter, Linkedin and various blogs. They lead the pharma 2.0 movement.
- Good conversation results in a ‘mind meld’ (Physorg.com)
Psychologist Uri Hasson from Princeton University wanted to find out which areas of the brain were active during speaking and listening to a conversation to test a hypothesis that there is more overlap between these brain areas than generally assumed. It has been noted, for example, that people taking part in conversations will often subconsciously imitate each other’s grammar, rates of speaking and even gestures and posture.
- GSK Apologizes Over Medical Journal Snafu (blog.WSJ.com)
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time to the folks at GlaxoSmithKline: Pay a medical journal to run a special supplement about prostate cancer, which — surprise — included information about a Glaxo drug. That’s what the UK drug maker did for the May 2009 edition of Urology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Elsevier.
Students at medical schools across the country are being given the opportunity to take elective courses in patient safety and error prevention. However, there are far less that actually require these types of courses as part of their curriculums, reports the Providence Journal. This is often because there is so much medical knowledge that students need to absorb during their time at medical school that patient safety takes a backseat.
- Symposier, a medical community site, has gone through some major improvements. Check it out:
Spanish Medgadget on Spanish Webicina August 4, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Blogging, Medgadget, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, PeRSSonalized Medicine, Web 2.0, Webicina.2 comments
My friends over at Medgadget, which is the best medical blog out there, launched the Spanish version of the site:
Medical technology affects just about every person in the world in one way or another. Because we write in English, a majority of the world’s population can’t read this site, and automatic online translators simply can’t translate industry specific, professional material. We believe in expanding access to our medical content and so would like to present Spanish Medgadget. We are now professionally translating our posts into Spanish, and if you prefer Medgadget en Español, head on over to es.medgadget.com or to Medgadget Español on Facebook.
And the Spanish Medgadget is featured in PeRSSonalized Medicine, the customizable collection of selected Spanish medical blogs, journals, news, Twitter users and more on Webicina.com which means you can follow the best Spanish medical blog in the simplest way. Click here for more selection and languages.
Museum in the Human Body August 3, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Anatomy, Art, Medicine.12 comments
The Dutch Corpus Museum takes you into the human body and shows how our organs work. A fascinating idea and a great visualization. An excerpt from Amusing Planet:
The Corpus Museum takes you on a fantastic journey through a giant model of the human body during which you can see, feel and hear how the human body works and what roles healthy food, healthy life and plenty of exercise plays. The tour through the museum starts with an escalator ride into an open sore on your giant victim’s leg and ends among the pulsing neurons in his brain. Between those two points, you will watch cheese being digested in the intestines and explore the ventricles of the heart. Kids can bounce up and down on the rubber tongue (with burping noises in the background) while you take in various scents wafting through the giant nose. Perhaps the most unusual display is the hologram of sperm fertilizing an egg, viewed via 3D glasses.
Click here for more pictures.
Pharma embraces open source models: Finally! August 3, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Collaboration, Health 2.0, Pharma, Web 2.0.7 comments
In the social media era, when there are so many opportunities for collaborations, we just had to wait until pharma companies realize that and find some ways to work together for better drugs or methods. A recent Nature Biotechnology article written by Stephen Strauss features some major steps in this area.
On May 19, two large pharmaceutical companies participated in the unprecedented deposition of hundreds of thousands of potential leads for new malaria drugs into an open source database. The two companies, London-based GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Novartis of Basel, together with the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, submitted the chemical structures of 328,100 compounds active against the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum to a European Bioinformatics Institute ChEMBL Neglected Tropical Disease archive. This willingness to cooperate in nonproprietary collaborations goes beyond diseases neglected by commercial developers to other aspects of drug discovery research. A recent flurry of open source collaborations have sprung up recently aimed at extracting value out of precompetitive information. Merck, of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, signed up with Sage Bionetworks, a Seattle-based nonprofit collaborative information platform run by former Merck scientists and executives, and New York-based Pfizer has entered into a similar arrangement. These and other deals mark the beginning of a radical reconfiguration of the initial stages of the drug discovery process that were traditionally carried out within companies.
And click here to see a table containing selected open source collaborations involving pharma.
DNA Mutations in Real Time: Video August 3, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in DNA, genetics, science, Video.add a comment
One of my favourite blogs, Spoonful of Medicine, just posted a great video which shows that mutations in E. coli bacteria can be tracked in real time. The method was published in Current Biology.
The key to this approach is using a fluorescent-labeled derivative of MutL, a protein involved in DNA mismatch repair. The accumulation of this fluorescent protein signals the occurrence of a mutation in a population of replicating E. coli bacteria. Even more significantly, this method allows the visualization of mutations that do not result in recognizable phenotypes. That means that it could be used to alert researchers to DNA errors they are not even looking for. The video below shows 180 minutes of E.coli growth compressed to 12 seconds:
National Society of Genetic Counselors: Interview with Elizabeth Kearney August 2, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Genetic testing, genetics, Health 2.0, Interview, Web 2.0.2 comments
Elizabeth Kearney, the President of the National Society of Genetic Counselors in the US, gave me an interview this weekend, and commented on how direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomic companies should provide their customers with genetic counseling, which is a crucial part in the whole process.
As President of NSGC, Liz Kearney is responsible for leading the association and serving as the chief spokesperson. Liz is committed to promoting the many benefits genetic counselors bring to other healthcare professionals and patients. Liz received her genetic counseling degree from the University of Michigan in 1996 and practiced in a variety of settings, including prenatal diagnosis centers, a general genetics department, and a diagnostic laboratory. She also earned an MBA from Northwestern University in 2006, and in 2007.
1) Recent news have been focusing on regulations around DTC genomic companies such as 23andMe, Pathway Genomics or Navigenics. How do you think DTC genomics should be regulated?
The NSGC would support regulation that requires the involvement of a qualified healthcare provider in ordering, interpreting, and delivering genetic information. In the mean time, the NSGC strongly recommends that consumers talk to a genetic counselor prior to having genetic testing to discuss what questions or concerns they have. A genetic counselor has specialized training in both medical genetics and counseling and will review a person’s family and medical history in light of the person’s specific questions to determine if there is appropriate testing available.
2) We, genetic bloggers, have been writing a lot about the potential problems with these genetic tests and the harm they can cause to laypeople. Is genetic counseling the solution for this?
Seeking genetic counseling prior to genetic testing is an excellent way to protect against potential harm to consumers who do not have much knowledge or experience with genetics. Sometimes tests will provide helpful information and sometimes the information is either not helpful or even alarming.
For example, if you have concerns about a history of diabetes, a genetic counselor would review the family history in detail before ordering any genetic testing. It may be that the family history is sufficient to raise concerns about your chances to develop diabetes, and then the genetic counselor would recommend you talk to your primary care doctor about regular diabetes screening. Additional genetic testing may only confirm what is already known (through reporting an increased chance) or falsely reassure you (through reporting a lower chance) because the genetic factors tested are not the ones causing diabetes in your family.
On the other hand, genetic tests can reveal powerful information. For example, a 30 year-old male with shortness of breath saw his doctor, who performed an ultrasound detecting a thickening of the heart muscle (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy). This thickening can be an inherited and treatable condition. The cardiologist worked with a genetic counselor to order the appropriate genetic testing, and the genetic counselor explained the positive results which allowed identification of other relatives at-risk to allow surveillance and earlier treatment. The testing may have helped save or prolong the lives of the individual and/or his relatives, but the doctor and patient needed the help of the genetic counselor to identify the right test for him and explain the results.
3) How can I contact a genetic counselor after ordering DTC genetic tests? As I can order such tests online, could I also contact genetic counselors the same way? What about patient privacy?
Patients who have DTC genetic testing can absolutely contact a genetic counselor to review the results afterward. You can find a genetic counselor by visiting www.nsgc.org, and clicking on the “Find a Counselor” link on the left-hand side of the homepage. The drawback of waiting to contact a genetic counselor until after ordering testing is that you may pay for genetic testing that is not helpful in answering your specific questions or may reveal alarming information that you weren’t expecting to receive.
Recent legislation, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), protects people from discrimination by their employer or insurer based on genetic information in the absence of manifestation of disease. Therefore, consumers can be comfortable sharing genetic test results with a genetic counselor or other healthcare provider if it is in the context of their medical care.
4) Genetic counseling is the most important part of the whole DTC genomics process. Do you think DTC genomic companies do their best to provide their customers with the possibility of speaking with a genetic counselor?
Each company is different, but consumers should look for companies that employ genetic counselors and strongly encourage or require speaking with a genetic counselor prior to genetic testing.
The Future of Medical Imaging August 2, 2010
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in eHealth, Health, Innovation, Invention, Medicine, Medicine 2.0, Video, Virtuality, Visualization.1 comment so far
Have you every wondered what happens if you combine a 3D TV with virtual reality in medical imaging? Well, the device described in the video was developed by the University of California, San Diego and costs around $10,000. CoolestGadgets commented on this:
HUVR “couples a consumer 3D HDTV panel with a half-silvered mirror to project any graphic image onto the user’s hands and/or into the space surrounding them”. Apparently, the user’s head is tracked in order to get the correct perspective, and there is a haptic feedback device on hand for manipulation. I noticed that their haptic device looks a lot like a Novint Falcon, which I believe was designed for 3D gaming.
And as a second step, if you think it will lead to even more complicated interfaces, well, see what Hitachi developed, a gesture-based interface:
