The use of Motrin, Aleve and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) is associated with erectile dysfunction, according to a study by scientists affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
The apparent link surprised the scientists. They had hypothesized that the commonly used pain-killers would actually reduce the risk of erectile dysfunction since NSAIDS protect against heart disease, which has in turn been linked to the troubling condition.
To reach their surprising conclusion, Steven Jacobsen and colleagues used data from Kaiser’s HealthConnect EHR, an associated pharmacy database, and self-reports about NSAID use and erectile dysfunction from an ethnically diverse population of 80,966 men between the ages of 45 and 69.
After controlling for age, ethnicity, race, body mass index, diabetes, smoking status, hypertension, high cholesterol and coronary artery disease, the scientists found that men who used NSAIDS at least 3 times per day for at least 3 months were 2.4 times more likely to experience erectile dysfunction than those who did not consume them on a regular basis. The link persisted across all age categories.
Remarkable in its own right was the finding that overall, 29% of the men in the study reported some level of erectile dysfunction.
The authors emphasized that their findings do not prove that NSAID use causes erectile dysfunction. For example, the study findings could have been confounded by factors not considered by the scientists (such as subclinical disease or the severity of the comorbid conditions that were studied), and the chance that NSAID use was actually an indicator for other conditions that caused erectile dysfunction.
In addition, the scientists recognized that their study had some limitations. These included an inability to temporally link NSAID use and the development of ED, and possible selection bias.
As a result, they cautioned men against discontinuing NSAIDs based solely on the findings of their study. “There are many proven benefits of non steroidals in preventing heart disease and for other conditions. People shouldn’t stop taking them based on this observational study. However, if a man is taking this class of drugs and has ED, it’s worth a discussion with his doctor,” Jacobsen said in an interview.
I recently wrote a paper on social media with some of my colleagues at Kaiser Permanente: Ted Eytan, MD @tedeytan, Rahul Parikh, MD @docrkp, Vince Golla @vincegolla, and Sara Stein, MD @sarasteinmd. In the article, “Social Media and the Health System,” we argue that the benefits of engaging patients and colleagues in social media outweigh potential risks.
The two most common reasons that physicians resist participating on blogs, Twitter and Facebook are: 1. Fear of liability. 2. Lack of compensation for the time invested.
If we would like more physicians to be part of the conversation, then we’ll need to find ways to overcome these barriers.
What has your experience been like interacting with physicians on social media? Is there a place for physicians on sites such as Twitter and Facebook?
For physicians reading this post, you can also join the over 160 others who have commented on this article on Sermo.
A recent post on the Health Affairs blog proclaimed “The End of Internal Medicine As We Know It.” What the post is really asking about is the future of primary care in the world of healthcare reform and the creation of accountable care organizations (ACOs). While doctors should be naturally concerned about change, I don’t completely agree with this article.
ACOs are organizations that are integrated and accountable for the health and well-being of a patient and also have joint responsibilities on how to thoughtfully use a patient’s or employer’s health insurance premium, something that is sorely lacking in the current health care structure. These were recently created and defined in the healthcare reform bill.
Yet the author seems to suggest that this is a step backwards:
Modern industry abandoned command-and-control style vertical integration decades ago in favor of flatter, more nimble institutions.
Not true. Successful organizations are ones that are tightly integrated, like Apple, FedEx, Wal-Mart, and Disney.
The author talks briefly about how Europe in general does better than the U.S. in terms of outcomes and costs and has a decentralized system. All true. However, contrasting Europe and America isn’t relevant. After all, who isn’t still using the metric system? Therefore solutions found outside the U.S. probably aren’t applicable due to a variety of reasons. Americans like to do things our way.
What I do agree on is that doctors need to be part of the solution and ensure that the disasters of decades ago — like labeling primary care doctors (internists and family physicians) as “gatekeepers” rather than what we really do — never happen. Read more »
When it comes to understanding medical information, even the most sophisticated patient may not be “smarter than a fifth grader.”
In one of the largest studies of the links between health literacy and poor health outcomes, involving 14,000 patients with type 2 diabetes, researchers at the University of California San Francisco and Kaiser Permanente found that more than half the patients reported problems learning about their condition and 40 percent needed help reading medical materials. The patients with limited health literacy were 30 to 40 percent more likely to experience hypoglycemia — dangerously low blood sugar that can be caused if medications are not taken as instructed — than those with an adequate understanding of medical information.
Now, federal and state officials are pushing public health professionals, doctors, and insurers to simplify the language they use to communicate with the public in patient handouts, medical forms, and health websites. More than two-thirds of the state Medicaid agencies call for health material to be written at a reading level between the fourth and sixth grades.
A new federal program called the Health Literacy Action Plan is promoting simplified language nationwide. And some health insurers, doctors’ practices, and hospitals have begun using specialized software that scans documents looking for hard-to-understand words and phrases and suggests plain-English replacements. Read more »
I love the sliding baby and the smoking father. The X-ray tech is unfortunately dead now since he wore no protective shield for the high tech $25,000 machine . And who wouldn’t want the pneumatic tubes for sending records?
This hospital was $2 million. The cost of building a hospital in 2009 is $2.5 million per bed. And that doesn’t include electronic medical records. Bring back the pneumatic tube.
It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…
I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…
I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…
When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…
I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…
The apparent link surprised the scientists. They had hypothesized that the commonly used pain-killers would actually reduce the risk of erectile dysfunction since NSAIDS protect against heart disease, which has in turn been linked to the troubling condition.
A recent post on the Health Affairs blog proclaimed “
