Tetramethylenedisulfotetramine, a banned yet still available rat poison, is considered a potential terrorist weapon, largely because there is no specific antidote. Poisoning causes status epilepticus and death. Perampanel may be an antidote, researchers found.
Researchers are looking at how cannabidiol interacts with traditional anti-seizure drugs. It appears to have a synergy with one but an antagonistic effect with others.
In cardioverting a patient with atrial fibrillation, physicians accidentally overstimulated an implanted vagal nerve stimulator, harming the patient.
Obese people are generally less healthy than those of normal weight, but that should not be a barrier to liver transplantation, researchers said at the 2015 Liver Meeting (AASLD) in San Francisco, CA.
Donor livers are scarce, donated organs are precious, and transplant surgeons make the final call on whether to transplant. When the question of whether to give a liver to a patient who uses marijuana, drinks too much alcohol, or even smokes tobacco comes up, the issue gets tricky.
The high costs of direct-acting antivirals to treat hepatitis C infection is no secret, but neither is the fact that the drugs are cost-effective. Pennsylvania researchers found insurers were lagging in approving payment for the drugs in their four-state region, with Medicaid programs the worst offenders.
Patients with persistently active systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) benefit from repository corticotropin injection (RCI).
Sudoku puzzles may serve as a "brain workout" but in a case reported in Germany, the exercise proved too strenuous. Solving the puzzles gave a 25-year-old man seizures.
AbbVie's hepatitis C antivirals now come with a warning. In a Q&A with MD Magazine, Barry Bernstein, MD, the company's vice president for infectious disease product development, discusses the ramifications. It's not just AbbVie, he says, more post-market reports on other companies drugs are likely coming.
Drug kills parasites but too late to prevent heart myopathy in Chagas Disease.
Raised lesions of dysplatic Barrett's esophagus (BE) are treated with endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR) before ablation. But the procedure causes bleeding in 10% of cases.Mayo Clinic researchers said they found a way to reduce those adverse events.
Could treating patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) be as simple as changing their diet?
Pennies, chicken bones, and dishwasher cleaning powders. Gastroenterologists who work at hospitals are likely to get called in when people either accidentally or purposefully swallow something they should not. At the American College of Gastroenterology Annual Scientific Meeting in Honolulu, a physician at NYU Langone Medical Center offered a treatment primer.
Pancreatic cancer is hard to cure and even diagnosing it is challenging. Among the eagerly awaiting research topics to be presented at the American College of Gastroenterology Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii are reports on new developments in detecting malignancies.
In the UK's National Health Service, physicians are "bare below the elbows" meaning they wear scrubs and not white coats, dress shirts and ties. At ID Week, in an entertaining but serious debate, two infection control specialists tackled the question of whether US physicians should also go bare.
Overuse of urinary catheters is a common problem in all hospitals. Intervention is possible.
Cats and dogs can be vectors for an eye parasite, a multi-center team in the US Southwest reports. The parasite is called Onchocerca lupi. Six cases, believed to be the first in the US, are reported.
Patients who are morbidly obese need a revised dosing protocol when getting vancomycin.
Even when staph bacteria are not drug resistant, clinicians face prescribing drugs that could cause an adverse reaction including kidney injury. A Pittsburgh team looked at the comparative risk of nafcillin vs. oxacillin.
Live cell therapy--an unproven treatment involving injections of live fetal cells from sheep--is legal in Germany. A group of New Yorkers who went there to make them younger and healthier got Q fever instead, the CDC reports.
The landscape of medicine continues to change which means doctors also have to change how they approach their practice. The United Hospital Fund is one organization looking at how to best make those changes.
A Canadian company announced it would invest $100 million (US dollars) in Jamaican marijuana research and development. A Colorado company also plans to invest there. Though marijuana has long been grown in Jamaica and exported illegally, the island's government decriminalized medical use in February.
In heart failure patients with diabetes and/or chronic kidney disease, a new, non-steroidal mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist called finerenone was no more effective than the currently approved MRA eplerenone in reducing the heart failure biomarker N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide. But it had other benefits.
With a rallying cry of "Hands off Our Legs" protestors are due to picket the US Department of Health and Human Services over a proposed Medicare rule change that would affect amputees.
Heart failure may be one of the most common conditions a cardiologist sees on a daily basis but there are also many misconceptions about its treatment and diagnosis. Whether on the football field or running an endurance race there are also other issues doctors are working to address across the scope of the cardiology field.
As female patients get older their needs from their healthcare professionals change drastically through the various life cycles. From their first experience with menstruation through bladder incontinence later in life there is a lot that doctors can do to help ease their patients through the transition.
As hepatitis C becomes a curable condition and fatty liver disease becomes a growing problem hepatologists are being forced to shift their focus to help a new patient population without some of the tools they have become used to having at their disposal.
New antivirals that can cure hepatitis C infection have changed more than patients' prognoses. MD Magazine interviewed a liver transplant specialist, a transplant recipient, a patient cured by the new antivirals, and their physicians.
Like many urban centers in the Northeastern US, Philadelphia has a chronic shortage of donor livers. But the advent of new antivirals that eradicate hepatitis C infection is starting to change that picture. In a visit to Hahnemann University Hospital, MD Magazine spoke to specialists and patients who are seeing what a difference those drugs can make. Video interviews follow the article.
Boston researchers say they have found the direct cause and potential cure for neurodegeneration following traumatic brain injury.The culprit, they write, is a misshapen and toxic brain protein, one they say they can destroy with a targeted antibody.