June 14th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in News
No Comments »
This is a really gory series of photos (via KevinMD) of what happened to a man’s hand after he was bitten by a spider. The venom created a necrotic reaction that burst open his skin and caused a gaping wound to appear by day 10.
What can you do to avoid a similar fate? Well, first of all, most spider bites aren’t poisonous. It looks like the man in these photos was bitten by a brown recluse spider – a nasty arachnid found in the central to midwestern United States. As their name suggests, these spiders are non aggressive and tend to remain secluded – and they don’t bite unless you disturb them or handle them in some way.
But if you are bitten, there’s no good treatment (no anti-venom). Ice, steroids, and antibiotics can be used to reduce inflammation and protect against bacterial super infections. But basically, the severity of your reaction to the venom depends upon your body’s personal sensitivity. Some people don’t mount a serious response, and others, like the unhappy fellow above, have a violent tissue-ravaging reaction. Scary stuff.This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
May 29th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in News
No Comments »
There’s a new contact lens solution scare this week. Last year it was fungus, this year it’s parasites. Apparently there has been an increase in amoebic infections in the eyes of those who use a type of moisturizing contact lens solution. These amoebas are pretty common (and relatively harmless?) in the water supply, but put them in your eyes with a few moisturizing drops and you’ve got yourself a dangerous infection that can even result in blindness. Scientists are puzzled as to why this mixture might increase the risk for infection – some speculate that the moisturizing chemical sticks to the amoebas and keeps them in the eye (rather than having them drop out in your tears). But at this point, no one really knows why there have been increased infection rates, or what the contact lens solution has to do with it.
I guess my advice would be – never put tap water in your eyes or on your contact lenses, and switch to a different brand of contact lens solution than Advanced Medical Optics, Inc.’s Complete Moisture Plus until further notice.This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
May 21st, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in 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 8th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in News, Quackery Exposed
No Comments »
The number one Google news item today is a report of a mouse study (published in Nature Medicine, but apparently still embargoed to the public as it is not listed on their website) that suggested that an herbal supplement could (in combination with antibiotics) “eradicate” urinary tract infections.
In usual fashion, the buzz preceded the science, and now we have thousands of people on the lookout for forskolin (a root extract of coleus) tablets from the local health food store. Do these have any possible merit?
A recent review of the literature about this herb was conducted by the good docs at Harvard, and turned up “no conclusive evidence for its [forskolin’s] use for any health condition.”
My friend Dr. Charles also read the reports of this “miraculous” new cure – which posits that recurrent urinary tract infections are caused by pockets of bacteria that hide inside bladder walls. Dr. Charles rightly points out that there are many different points of entry for bacteria, and that an herb which (and we don’t know that it even does this) relaxes bladder walls would surely not affect the alternate routes of entry, hence it cannot be curative in all cases.
So my friends, I’m sorry to say that there is little justification for enthusiasm yet. But we will follow the research with interest, in case human subjects do indeed show benefit in the future.
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
March 21st, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in News
No Comments »
As spring approaches, we can expect a new onslaught of pollen, bugs, and mud puddles. Mosquito eggs will hatch in stagnant water, and a new generation of hungry little disease vectors will be lurking in wooded areas, awaiting their first meal.
Luckily for those of us who live in North America, those annoying mosquito bites are unlikely to infect us with malaria.
A team of scientists committed to eradicating malaria (one of my personal favorite parasites) has taken a new approach to reducing transmission rates: creating a strain of malaria-immune mosquitoes.
I had been under the mistaken impression that mosquitoes lived in perfect harmony with malaria parasites, but apparently the organisms can make them quite ill as well. Not ill enough to die immediately (hence their ability to spread the disease) but ill enough to die prematurely.
So if we could create a malaria immune mosquito, we could give them a survival advantage over their peers, thus slowly influencing the mosquito population in favor of the new strain. This could result in a new population of mosquitoes who could not harbor malaria.
In humans, malaria parasites have learned how to attach themselves to red blood cell proteins and incubate inside the cells. In mosquitoes, the parasites latch on to a protein (called SM1) on the surface of epithelial cells of their gut lining. Through the miracle of genetic engineering, we’ve managed to alter the SM1 proteins in certain mosquitoes, making them immune to invasion by parasites they ingest through infected blood.
Although the immune mosquitoes are not ready for prime time release in malaria endemic countries (the research only showed that the scientists could genetically engineer resistance to one strain of malaria), it sure would be interesting to see if we could use mosquitoes themselves to fight a disease that claims the lives of over one million people per year.
This is a rare case of a problem becoming the solution!
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
