May 23rd, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in News
Tags: News, Pharmaceuticals, Research
1 Comment »
I was struck by two different news stories today – one in the New York Times, and the other in the Washington Post. Although the topics were different, the underlying theme was unified: drug companies (particularly Glaxo Smith Kline?) are coming clean with research data and marketing messages. Sure, it might have taken a law suit by Eliot Spitzer to shine a light on the common practice of witholding negative research information from scientists… and it also may have taken a costly failure of an over-hyped diet pill by a competitor drug company to cause GSK to take the honest marketing track with Alli… But I like this new honesty, however we got to it.
Did you know that drug companies spend billions of dollars to research the safety and effectiveness of their drugs, but then are under no obligation to share what they learn with the general scientific community? No, they share what they want to – generally the studies that show the largest effect or the greatest safety profile. But now, physicians have been given access to the raw data collected in all the trials (showing benefit, no benefit, or harm) conducted by GSK. And they’re having a field day! A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine is based on an analysis of GSK’s research, where they have found that Avandia (a popular diabetes drug) may put people at higher risk for heart attacks and heart related death.
Now here’s the devil in the details (as Dr. Charles rightly points out): the potential harm has been blown way out of proportion – the media has been citing “a 43% increase in heart attacks/myocardial infarctions and a 64%
increase in death from cardiovascular causes” when another way of stating what the authors found is that 86/14,371 patients or 0.598% of the patients taking Avandia had a heart attack, while 72/11,634 or 0.619% of people
not taking Avandia also had a heart attack. Gee… which sound bite seems more scary?
Honestly, I feel worried for the general public who are now (with the new full disclosure of drug company data) sure to be victims of an onslaught of media hype around all sorts of small differences found in research studies. Believe me, it’s important to sift through all this data to look for early signs of potential drug related health risks – but I think we should be careful before we terrify our patients with scary statistics.
Maybe in the midst of all this new honesty – we can have medical bloggers like Dr. Charles and the Revolution Health team help patients get to the bottom of things without having to have a PhD in biostatistics. We need a voice of reason to translate research data for public consumption. I’ll do my part – but since there are ~6000 research studies published per day in this world… I need some back up. Any takers?This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
May 21st, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in News
Tags: Infectious Disease, Milk, News
2 Comments »
I was interested to see this news piece about how Vitamin D may improve the body’s ability to fight off Tuberculosis. Vitamin D is found in some foods, but can also be created in your body when it’s exposed to UV light. In the 1940’s Tuberculosis sanitoriums used “heliotherapy” (sun exposure) as a modality to treat TB. I had often wondered about the utility of such treatments – with this photo etched in my mind. And now it seems that they had it right.
Of course, we don’t know how many of those patients developed skin cancers later in life… (Always a trade off, isn’t there?) In the US, milk and orange juice are fortified with Vitamin D – however in Britain they have no such requirement and they are seeing an increase in TB cases. “Got Milk?” only works if it’s “Got Vitamin D Fortified Milk?” I guess…This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
April 30th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in News
Tags: Health Insurance, Health Policy, News, Weight Loss
No Comments »
I had an eye-opening conversation with Dr. Jim Hill
today. He told me that Denver’s
Metro Mayors (Denver’s
metropolitan area is actually composed of 37 cities and towns!) are competing
with one another to see who can get their inhabitants the most fit and thin.
Why would they be so aggressive about fitness and good
health? Because they say that large
corporations considering investing in Denver
(where they’d build factories or large office buildings) know that setting up
shop in areas where the population has a lower BMI means that health insurance
costs will be lower.
That’s right my friends.
Being thin can lure investors! It
makes sense that a corporation seeking to avoid the skyrocketing costs of health
care would want to create facilities where new employees are likely to have
fewer medical issues. And BMI is a good
surrogate marker for health… so there you have it.
Do you see this approach to wooing investors as a form of discrimination
or just good business sense?
Either way, I’m going to get on the treadmill later.
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
April 27th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in News
Tags: Food and Nutrition, Health Policy, Parenting, Pediatrics
1 Comment »
Congress recently directed the Centers for Disease Control
(CDC) to undertake a study in partnership with the Institute of Medicine (IOM). The goal was to establish nutrition guidelines
for government-subsidized nutrition programs in schools nation-wide. These guidelines are meant to help combat the
growing rates of overweight and obesity in US children.
The standards may surprise you in their restrictiveness – no
beverages with more than 5 calories/serving are permitted (excluding milk or
soy milk) unless the child is involved in rigorous physical activity for more
than 1 hour in duration (then they can have a sports drink such as Gatorade). No items with more than 35% of calories from
total sugars are permitted, and all bread and cereal items must be whole grain. There are also restrictions on fat and salt
levels in the food. Artificially
sweetened drinks and caffeinated beverages are not recommended. The IOM also calls for removal of all junk
food and soda machines, and replacement with fruit, milk, and healthy snack options.
Reading these guidelines I thought, “Wow, if kids really ate
this way we probably would make a big difference in obesity rates.”
And then I wondered… “But will these kids just go home and
eat a box of oreos and a liter of coke at the end of the school day? Is it enough to have a healthy food
environment at school, but not at home?
What is the role of parents in this?”
What do you think?
Are the IOM’s recommendations likely to 1) be followed by all schools 2)
make a difference in childrens’ weights?
Is there anything else you’d recommend?This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
April 13th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in News
Tags: Animals, Cancer, International, Pediatrics
1 Comment »
The recent death of hundreds of beloved pets was traced back to a wheat gluten factory near Shanghai, China. The wheat gluten, a thickener used in pet food, was contaminated with melamine (a chemical used in plastics, fertilizers, and flame retardants). It is believed that the melamine may have been processed or stored in the same containers used for the gluten.
How did the contaminated gluten make it into over 100 brands of US pet food? Chinese ingredients are less expensive than American ones, and so large companies purchase many plant and animal products from China to save on costs. The fact that over 100 brands were recalled speaks to the pervasiveness of Chinese agricultural products contained within American food products.
A very alarming article was published by Forbes Magazine, describing the serious quality control problems that China has been having, and America’s limited ability to screen incoming goods:
Over the past 25 years, Chinese agricultural exports to the U.S. surged nearly 20-fold to $2.26 billion last year, led by poultry products, sausage casings, shellfish, spices and apple juice.
Inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are able to inspect only a tiny percentage of the millions of shipments that enter the U.S. each year.
Even so, shipments from China were rejected at the rate of about 200 per month this year, the largest from any country, compared to about 18 for Thailand, and 35 for Italy, also big exporters to the U.S., according to data posted on the FDA’s Web site.
Chinese products are bounced for containing pesticides, antibiotics and other potentially harmful chemicals, and false or incomplete labeling that sometimes omits the producer’s name.
The problems the [Chinese] government faces are legion. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are used in excess to boost yields while harmful antibiotics are widely administered to control disease in seafood and livestock. Rampant industrial pollution risks introducing heavy metals into the food chain.
Farmers have used cancer-causing industrial dye Sudan Red to boost the value of their eggs and fed an asthma medication to pigs to produce leaner meat. In a case that galvanized the public’s and government’s attention, shoddy infant formula with little or no nutritional value has been blamed for causing severe malnutrition in hundreds of babies and killing at least 12.
Assuming that Forbes has not overstated the case, Americans have good cause for concern about the safety of food that includes ingredients from China – is it only a matter of time before the pet food debacle is played out in humans? I don’t know, but I’m worried. Do you know of any other credible reports about this problem? Please share!
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
