November 27th, 2011 by HarvardHealth in Health Tips, Research
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Good vibrations may work for dancing on the beach or for romance, but they don’t seem to do much to strengthen bones.
Results of a clinical trial published in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that older women who stood on a vibrating platform for 20 minutes a day experienced just as much bone loss over the course of the year-long trial as women who didn’t use the platform.
The results are a disappointment for older women and men looking to strengthen their bones without exercising, not to mention to the companies that have sprung up to sell whole-body vibration platforms as an easy way to halt osteoporosis, the age-related loss of bone.
The idea behind whole-body vibration makes sense. Like walking, running, and other weight-bearing physical activities, whole-body vibration Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
April 4th, 2011 by M. Brian Fennerty, M.D. in Health Tips, Opinion
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H. pylori dominated the GI news in the 1990s, and despite it disappearing from the front pages, it remains a common and important clinical problem. The dominant recommended initial treatment strategy has been a clarithromycin-based PPI triple therapy, with either amoxicillin or metronidazole as the third drug. This approach was based on clinical studies, ease of use, and tolerability factors. Bismuth-based quadruple therapy (a bismuth agent, metronidazole, tetracycline, and a PPI), despite demonstrating excellent activity, was usually relegated to second-line therapy because of the complexity of the dosing as well as compliance and tolerability issues.
However, duringthe last decade, the widespread use of macrolides in the general population has led to rising resistance to clarithromycin (by 30% or more of H. pylori strains in some areas), and when clarithromycin resistance is present, the efficacy of clarithromycin-containing triple therapy falls from about 80% to 50% or even lower. However, clarithromycin resistance does not affect the efficacy of bismuth-based quadruple therapy, and that efficacy of those regimens remains at about 90% when patients are compliant with the treatment.
So the questions for you to consider are:
1) Do you know what the clarithromycin resistance rate in H. pylori is in your community?
2) What first-line H. pylori treatment regimen do you use?
3) Are you planning to change your H. pylori treatment strategy now that clarithromycin resistance rates are rising?
Let us know what you think.
*This blog post was originally published at Gut Check on Gastroenterology*
