Many of my regular readers may know that biomedical research in the United States is largely funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Please see this message from Dr. William Talman, president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), about proposed spending cuts to the NIH budget. Grant funding from the NIH is already hard to come by, and the proposed budget cuts will make it even harder.
Whether you are a scientist, a student, or a member of the public interested in the future of science and medicine, I join with Dr. Talman in asking you to call your congressional representatives and ask them to oppose HR1. Also, if you have a blog I’d ask you to repost Dr. Talman’s call to action so that your readers can join in.
Dear Colleague,
For months the new House leadership has been promising to cut billions in federal funding in fiscal year (FY) 2011. Later this week the House will try to make the rhetoric a reality by voting on HR 1, a “continuing resolution” (CR) that would cut NIH funding by $1.6 billion (5.2%) BELOW the current level – reducing the budget for medical research to $29.4 billion!
We must rally everyone – researchers, trainees, lab personnel – in the scientific community to protest these draconian cuts. Please go to this FASEB link for instructions on how to call your Representative’s Washington, DC office today! Urge him/her to oppose the cuts to NIH and vote against HR 1. Once you’ve made the call, let us know how it went by sending a short email to the address provided in the call instructions and forward the alert link to your colleagues. We must explain to our Representatives how cuts to NIH will have a devastating impact on their constituents!
Cancer of the ovary is a particularly nasty disease. It often remains asymptomatic until it has reached an advanced, incurable stage, and scientists have been unable to develop an effective screening test for the disease like the ones in widespread use for cancers of the breast and cervix.
The dismal status of ovarian cancer screening was underscored a year ago when an NIH-sponsored study showed that over 70 percent of cancers detected by transvaginal ultrasound and CA 125 biomarker testing — the two best ovarian screening tests we’ve got — had reached stage III or IV at the time the patients screened positive. That’s about what happens when women aren’t screened at all.
That wasn’t the worst of it, however. In just the first year of that screening program, positive test results obligated 566 surgical procedures which uncovered only 18 cancers. That’s an awful lot of unnecessary surgery and associated morbidity right there. Things were no better on the false-negative side of things. Overall, 89 cases of ovarian cancer were diagnosed during the NIH study, and a third of them had been missed by both screening modalities.
What’s new?
The NIH study didn’t evaluate the impact of screening on ovarian cancer mortality, but a recent study by Laura Havrilesky and colleagues at Duke did indeed address the point. Sadly, the results were abysmal. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Pizaazz*
Medical expenditures for cancer are projected to reach at least $158 billion in today’s dollars by 2020. That’s a 27 percent increase, assuming that incidence and treatment costs remain at 2010 levels, according to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) analysis of growth and aging of the U.S. population.
But new diagnostic tools and treatments could raise medical expenditures as high as $207 billion, assuming that the costs of new treatments increases 5 percent, said the researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the NIH. The analysis appears in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Recent trends reflect a 2 percent annual increase in medical costs in the initial and final phases of care, which would boost projected 2020 costs to $173 billion.Projections of expenses, assuming steady incidence and survival rates and no increase in treatment costs
Projections were based on the most recent data available on cancer incidence, survival and costs of care. In 2010, medical costs associated with cancer were projected to reach $127.6 billion, with the highest costs associated with breast cancer ($16.5 billion), followed by colorectal cancer ($14 billion), lymphoma ($12 billion), lung cancer ($12 billion) and prostate cancer ($12 billion). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
Dr. Charles Limb is an otolaryngologist, and he’s also on the faculty at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. Wanting to study creativity on the neurological level, he used fMRI to scan the brains of musicians while improvising along with them. Here he describes the experiment, including the building of an MRI-compatible electronic keyboard:
Does echinacea, the popular natural cold remedy, really work?
It depends on what you mean by “work.” Results [recently] reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that echinacea may reduce the length of a week-long cold by 7 to 10 hours and make symptoms a little less onerous. That can’t be characterized as a major effect, so many people may figure that the trouble and expense of echinacea just isn’t worth it (fortunately, side effects from echinacea don’t seem to be much of an issue.)
But others may decide that some benefit is better than none, and these results do fit with others that have left the door slightly ajar for echinacea having some effect as a cold remedy — a modest effect, but an effect, nonetheless.
A summary for patients published by the Annals summed up the situation nicely:
People who take echinacea to treat colds may experience a decrease in the length and severity of their cold symptoms but to such a small degree that they may not care about the difference. Although many studies of echinacea have been performed, researchers still disagree about its benefits in treating the common cold. This study is unlikely to change minds about whether to take this remedy.
Have you tried echinacea as a cold remedy? Has it worked? How do research findings, pro and con, affect your opinion of so-called alternative medicines?
Many of the echinacea studies, especially early on, were sponsored by companies making or selling the product. This study was supported by a grant from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.
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Cancer of the ovary is a particularly nasty disease. It often remains asymptomatic until it has reached an advanced, incurable stage, and scientists have been unable to develop an effective screening test for the disease like the ones in widespread use for cancers of the breast and cervix.
