Archive for the ‘Hormone Physician’ Category
Nutrafol Pioneers Hair Wellness Industry with New Study that Reveals it Safely and Effectively Improves Hair Growth in Menopausal Women – PRNewswire
NEW YORK, Oct. 12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Nutrafol, the award-winning hair wellness supplement backed by top physicians, celebrities and hairstylists alike, announces the positive results from its new clinical trial, an industry-first study presented on hair growth in menopausal women. The 6-month double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study assesses the safety and efficacy of Nutrafol's Women's Balance formulation in improving hair growth and quality in perimenopausal, menopausal and postmenopausal subjects with self-perceived thinning hair. This milestone establishes Nutrafol as the only hair supplement brand to present research specifically for menopausal women and continues to solidify Nutrafol as an innovator and trusted leader in hair science.
Forty percent of women experience hair loss by age 40, and that number continues to increase as women age.1 Nutrafol created Women's Balance - which first launched in 2019 - in response to the complex hormonal needs of women who are going through or have gone through menopause. It is the only hair wellness supplement clinically formulated to address the root causes of hair thinning in perimenopausal and menopausal women. Featuring a patented Synergen Complex Plus, it includes clinically effective natural ingredients like saw palmetto, ashwagandha and maca, known to support hormone health before, during and after menopause.
"There is unfortunately a lack of research for the physical and emotional effects that menopause has on women," said Dr. Sophia Kogan, Nutrafol's co-founder and Chief Medical Advisor. "At Nutrafol, our mission is to empower women to take control of their hair health, and hormones. After years of research, rigorous clinical testing and the accumulation of unsurpassed data, we have a proven and effective option with our Women's Balance formulation."
To assess the safety and efficacy of Women's Balance for perimenopausal, menopausal and postmenopausal women, Nutrafol conducted a 6-month randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Results were significant for objective measures of hair growth, including terminal, vellus and total hair counts. There was a progressive increase in hair counts for Nutrafol subjects compared to placebo at three and six months. Additionally, daily administration of Nutrafol resulted in significantly less shedding compared to placebo. This was accompanied by significant visible clinical improvement in hair growth and quality in the active group, as assessed by a blinded physician investigator. Conclusively, the study verified that the daily intake of a novel supplement with bio-optimized phytoactive ingredients to specifically address multiple underlying factors that compromise hair growth was safe and effective in improving hair growth and quality in women going through menopausal transition. The Primary Investigator of the study was Dr. Glynis Ablon, MD, FAAD and founder of the Ablon Skin Institute & Research Center, an independent clinical research site specializing in dermatology clinical trials.
"Menopause is a disruptive time for women between the hormonal shifts and changes in their bodies that are out of their control," said Dr. Glynis Ablon MD, Primary Investigator on the clinical study. "Nutrafol has pioneered a new way of thinking about the science of hair wellness as it relates to menopause. With safety and efficacy at the forefront of everything the brand does, the published data supports the clinical effectiveness of the Women's Balance formulation for menopausal women. This provides physicians with a solution for their patients, and gives menopausal women the opportunity to take control of their menopausal transition and beyond."
To learn more about Nutrafol and Women's Balance, please visit http://www.Nutrafol.com or speak with your Healthcare Provider.
About NutrafolNutrafol pioneered the hair wellness category with its integrative approach to hair health, using a first-of-its-kind patented formulation of clinically effective, natural, medical-grade ingredients to support whole body wellness from within. In multiple clinical studies, Nutrafol has been shown to improve hair growth in both men and women by multi-targeting root causes of thinning hair, including stress, hormones, environment and nutrition. Nutrafol's team of doctors and researchers continue to seek out scientific advancements at the forefront of genetics, anti-aging medicine, phytoactive and biotechnology to remain on the cutting-edge of hair health innovation. Nutrafol has been adopted by over 2,700 Healthcare Providers across the U.S. for its trusted, reliable results and has received numerous prestigious accolades.
1American Academy of Dermatology
PR ContactBehrman Communications / Gianna Cesa[emailprotected] 212.986.7000
SOURCE Nutrafol
Q+A: Katherine Crew, MD, on the Many Advances in Breast Cancer and What’s to Come – Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Katherine Crew, MD, is a physician-scientist whose work in breast cancer risk, prevention, and screening has helped move the needle in breast cancer research. Dr. Crew is a member of the Cancer Population Science research program at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, associate professor of medicine and of epidemiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and a medical oncologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
Weve made a lot of strides in the past few decades and part of that is because we are detecting breast cancer a lot earlier with improved screening and due to our improvements in treating breast cancer, says Dr. Crew. There are always more improvements to make along the way but overall survival for breast cancer, since the 1980s, has improved by about 40%, and its due to all of those efforts, including increased advocacy and increased awareness of this disease.
Where are we now in treating breast cancer?Through epidemiological studies, we have a better understanding of the main risk factors for breast cancer, whether it be age and reproductive factors that influence exposure to the hormone, estrogen, and were learning a lot more about genetic risk for breast cancer.
Back in the mid-1990s it was all about BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations but now, in the past several years, were testing for multiple genes that can predispose to breast cancer as well as other cancers. And with next generation sequencing, were able to sequence the whole genome much more cheaply and much more quickly. This has led to an increase in our understanding about genetic susceptibility to breast cancer in particular.
Once a person knows about her genetic risk factors or that they are predisposed to breast cancer, what then?We know if a woman has a genetic predisposition, she has the option for enhanced screening, with not just mammography, but more sensitive screening tests like breast MRI. If she has a high penetrance gene she may opt for prophylactic mastectomy. Certainly when Angelina Jolie wrote her Op-Ed in The New York Times about getting a bilateral mastectomy after she found out she had a BRCA1 mutation that really helped to increase awareness.
Now that were finding these more moderate risk genes it has becoming harder to know where to draw the line. We dont want women to do unnecessary surgery or to do unnecessary procedures because that may be potentially harmful. I think were still learning what to do with that information. Knowing more about a persons genetic risk has definitely helped to make breast cancer risk much more personalized and we are always trying to provide the right intervention for the right level of risk, per individual.
There are many types of breast cancer. Can you give us the lay of the land of the main subtypes?The different subtypes of breast cancer all behave differently and we treat them differently. The most common is the estrogen receptor positive breast cancer, which counts for about 70% of all breast cancers and we know that these types of breast cancers respond very well to anti-estrogen therapy. More recently weve been using a class of drugs called aromatase inhibitors in post-menopausal women. In many ways thats been one of the most effective targeted treatments that weve had for breast cancer we can see up to a 50% to 65% relative risk reduction in breast cancer relapse with these drugs.
There is HER2-positive breast cancer and recently, theres been an explosion of new drugs for treating this subtype. Within just the past few years, at least four or five additional drugs have been approved for HER2-positive breast cancer. Although it is a more aggressive form of breast cancer, it is also a type of breast cancer that responds well and is very sensitive in general to chemotherapy and targeted therapy. Even in patients who have metastatic disease, women are living longersometimes for more than five yearswith advanced breast cancer.
The most challenging type of breast cancer to treat is triple negative breast cancer, meaning that it is negative for the two hormone receptors estrogen and progesteroneand also negative for the HER2 receptor. We cant treat it with anti-estrogen therapy and we cant treat it with any HER2 targeted therapies. In this case the main treatment option is chemotherapy, which has its own set of side effects associated with it.
Is this a focused area of research right now?Yes, its an area very ripe for new discovery and research. Recently there was drug approval for immunotherapy for triple negative breast cancer, particularly in combination with chemotherapy. Immunotherapy is a very new type of therapy thats gotten a lot of attention in the press and in the oncology world.
Tell us how immunotherapy could impact breast cancer.Currently, immunotherapy is approved in patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer but there are a lot of clinical trials that are looking to expand the use of this medication for other breast cancer subtypes. Typically in cancer in general we test these new drugs in patients with advanced cancer who have fewer treatment options and in those cases we may only prolong their survival by a few months. Its much more exciting when we can then take these drugs, if theyre found to be safe in patients with early stage disease, to see if we can improve cure rates. There are ongoing trials testing immunotherapy in patients with early-stage breast cancer, especially if they have high risk disease, to see if we can prevent a relapse and therefore cure them.
What are the other exciting areas of breast cancer research right now?A big trend within oncology and within breast cancer in particular is the de-escalation of therapy. Can we spare some patients from unnecessary treatment? We dont want to over treat breast cancer. We want to treat the high-risk patients but the ones with a more favorable breast cancer, we want to spare them some of the side effects of chemotherapy, for example.
One major breakthrough is as we understand the biology of these tumors a little bit better, we can better classify patients. There are different molecular tumor tests we can use now, including Oncotype Dx, MammaPrint, breast cancer index all of these new tumor tests gives us the opportunity to personalize a womans breast cancer care. Based upon a womans tumor biology, we can assess who needs chemotherapy, who may benefit from extended hormonal therapy, who can do well with just five years of anti-estrogen therapy, and then we can spare them from a lot of the side effects that weve seen from some of these drugs. I think that de-escalation of care has helped cut costs and certainly reduces long-term side effects in our breast cancer patients. We dont want to keep adding on expensive treatments on patients who dont necessarily need it.
You run the High-Risk Prevention Clinic. Whats new in prevention?Similar to the breast cancer treatment field, in the preventive setting you have to look at this not as a one-size-fits-all for women. We can now better refine what a womans risk is and give individualized guidelines for them. Prevention is getting more complex. We dont just test for BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes; there are multi-gene panels that we can test for. Now theres a lot of interest in polygenic risk scores (PGS), so rather than looking at one gene we can look at a bunch of genetic variants sometimes hundreds of genetic variations and come up with a risk score based upon those hundreds of variants. Based upon that score, we place women on a spectrum of risk and then use that to make recommendations about screening, lifestyle modifications, preventive surgeries, and even medications. For example, anti-estrogen drugs have also been shown to be effective in the prevention setting.
How has screening for breast cancer evolved or changed?There are major advances on the screening front as well. For a long time we mainly only had 2D digital mammography and now we have 3D mammography, or tomosynthesis. Rather than just having two views of the breast you can have serial slices of the breast and that can help to increase the sensitivity of the mammogram, particularly in women who have dense breast tissue because having dense tissue can lower the sensitivity of the mammogram for early detection.
There is actually a lot of controversy around screening. Just as we know there are more than one type of breast cancer and more than one level of risk, were trying to adopt less of this sort of one-size-fits-all for breast cancer screening. For instance, not all women need to get yearly mammograms, maybe just higher risk women with dense breast tissue could get enhanced screening with either ultrasound or MRI. But for the majority of women who are not high risk, perhaps we can think about cutting back on mammography screenings. Current guidelines are that if you are average risk you can wait until youre 50 to get mammograms every two years, rather than yearly. Maybe less frequent screenings can also reduce some of the harms of screenings, like increased biopsies.
What does the future hold for breast cancer research and treatment?All of the new drugs and targeted therapies have definitely incrementally advanced the field.
The most exciting is this idea of precision medicine, both for prevention and for treatment, and using genetic information to assess breast cancer risk, having the genetic information of the tumor tissue to assess the aggressiveness of the cancer and being able to tailor treatments specific for individual patients is what we are working towards. I think that more than anything else having that genetic information tailoring our carehas really put more tools in our tool box in terms of what we can offer patients.
-Interview by Melanie A. Farmer
Related:Five Questions with Dr. Eileen Connolly: 'Less is More' Adage Signifies Shift in Breast Cancer Radiotherapy
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Q+A: Katherine Crew, MD, on the Many Advances in Breast Cancer and What's to Come - Columbia University Irving Medical Center
What you need to know about breast cancer and screenings – The Denver Channel
This article is the part of a monthly series of stories focused on cancer issues. Denver7 is proud to partner with the American Cancer Society, Cancer Support Community, Colorado Cancer Coalition and Sarah Cannon Cancer Institute at HealthONE to bring you these stories, tips and resources.
DENVER -- This year, the American Cancer Society estimates that 4,530 women in Colorado will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020 and 640 women will die from the disease.
Breast cancer screening is important and can detect the disease when symptoms appear, or before there are any signs. The following American Cancer Society guidelines are for women at average risk:
For more information on screening and risk factors, visit https://www.cancer.org/cancer/breast-cancer/screening-tests-and-early-detection/american-cancer-society-recommendations-for-the-early-detection-of-breast-cancer.html
If a patient had to reschedule their screening in the midst of the pandemic or are due for their screening, they should talk to their healthcare team. Providers can discuss balancing the risks and benefits of being screened now or postponing for a later date, considering personal and family history, other risk factors, and the timing of the last screening test.
Signs and SymptomsIts important to know how breasts normally feel and to be aware of any changes. A common symptom is a new lump or mass, but other things to be aware of include:
If you notice any changes, contact your doctor. For details visit https://www.cancer.org/cancer/breast-cancer/about/breast-cancer-signs-and-symptoms.html
Mammogram Q&AI'm pregnant or breast-feeding and due for a test. Should I wait?
I have a breast implant. Can I still get a mammogram?
What else should I know?
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What you need to know about breast cancer and screenings - The Denver Channel
6 science-backed health benefits of ginger and how to add it to your diet – Business Insider India
Ginger is a plant that has been used to treat ailments for thousands of years. Not only is ginger a delicious addition to cooking because of its spicy and unique flavor, but it's also great for your health.
Here are six health benefits of ginger and how to add it to your diet.
A small 2017 study tested the antioxidant effects of ginger in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. Those who received a daily ginger extract had higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of oxidative stress than the placebo group.
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Typically, inflammation goes away once your body repairs itself. But, when you're experiencing oxidative stress, it can cause chronic inflammation. This causes your body to damage healthy cells, tissues, and organs. Chronic inflammation may lead to diseases like heart attacks or chronic pain like arthritis.
Ginger contains a compound called gingerol. Gingerol is known for improving gastric motility the passage of food through the body and suppressing muscle spasms. This can help settle the stomach and reduce symptoms of nausea and vomiting.
Ginger is also a safe and effective herbal remedy for pregnant women with morning sickness. A small 2009 study tested the effectiveness of ginger capsules on pregnant women experiencing nausea and vomiting. Pregnant women who took four 250mg ginger capsules daily for four days experienced less nausea and less vomiting than women who received a placebo.
In a 2015 study, scientists reviewed previous research looking at the effects of ginger on menstrual pains and concluded that 750 to 2000mg of ginger powder can help relieve pain during the first three to four days of the menstrual cycle.
There is also some evidence to suggest ginger can help control blood sugar levels in people with diabetes by increasing glucose uptake in muscle cells without insulin.
Ginger stimulates digestive enzymes responsible for moving food through the body more quickly, which prevents gas. "[It] helps the body break down gas and get rid of gas more effectively," Ankewe says.
According to Anekwe, you can easily incorporate ginger into your diet by:
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6 science-backed health benefits of ginger and how to add it to your diet - Business Insider India
Why Am I So Tired In The Afternoon? 13 Reasons Why – Parade
Youre powering through your day like a boss. A Zoom meeting here, a report thereyup, youre feeling unstoppable. Nothing can bring you down. That is, until its 4 p.m., and all of a sudden, you want to take a nap. You wonder where your energy has disappeared to as you slog through email after email, wishing that quitting time wasnt a whole hour away.
If youve experienced this phenomenon, youre far from alone.Several studies have confirmed the so-called afternoon slump, including one from The National Sleep Foundation that pointed a sharp drop in circadian rhythm that plummets between 2 and 5 p.m. every day.
Tiredness is a fact of life, no matter what time of day it is. Max Kerr DDS, D-ABDSM, a dental sleep expert with Sleep Better Austin, emphasizes that its extremely common for people to feel tired, even if it goes beyond the afternoon slump.
First, give yourself a break, he says. Life is tough. We have a million commitments and not enough time. Relax and take care of yourself. You have to make your health a priority, because no one else will.
Dr. Kerr adds that although its normal to feel tired, you dont have to keep pushing through that afternoon fatigue when there are options available to you. He advises, Seek out a sleep coach, ask your primary care physician for a Home Sleep Test, get your blood tested, and give yourself the gift of purposeful movement. Conquering fatigue can open up life and joy in a most profound way as well as positively impact everyone around you.
It can also help to know why you face afternoon tiredness each and every day. Here, three medical experts address the question: Why am I always so tired in the afternoon? Here are 13 possible reasons why.
Dr. Ilene Ruhoy, MD & PhD, and Gut Council Member for the probiotics company Jetson, believes that our energy states greatly depend upon our hormone levels, such as glucocorticoids, leptin, melatonin, and more, she says. These hormones can be impacted by our sleep and eating habits.
Dr. Ruhoy explains, In the mid-afternoon, levels of these hormones are low. However, the absolute levels and the control of secretory rhythms can be influenced by meal and sleep patterns. Sleep fragmentation, poor sleep hygiene, and sleep deprivation all contribute to the feeling of fatigue in the mid-afternoon when hormones are low.
If you suffer from depression, you know how hard it can be to get out of bed some mornings. Pushing yourself through the day can naturally make you feel depression-related fatigue in the afternoon. The insomnia you experience from depression can also cause you to lag mid-day.
Dr. Abe Malkin, M.D. M.B.A. of Concierge MD LA says, Studies have shown that 75% of people suffering from depression show symptoms of insomnia while the other 25% suffer from hypersomnia, which is excessive daytime sleepiness.
Many of us simply forget to drink water throughout the day if we dont make it a priority. All those meetings and phone calls can push hydration way down on your to-do list, but if you want to beat that afternoon slump, drinking up is key.
Water is the main component of our bodys structure, Dr. Kerr notes. When we are habitually dehydrated, it can affect the normal functioning of our body. The harder our body has to work for its normal functioning, the more energy is needed. The less efficient we are, the more tired and fatigued we become.
In other words, regularly sipping that H2O might even make you more productive.
Related: Can You Drink Too Much Water?
Dr. Ruhoy details, Excessive food consumption, sugar and processed food intake, and poor eating habits, such as eating too many meals, doing stressful eating, or doing hurried eating, contribute to fatigue. Minimize or eliminate sugar and processed foods. These foods contain substances that promote inflammation and can disrupt the hormonal balances that impair our rhythms.
She says that in simpler terms, the post-sugar crash is a real thing. You may want to rethink that 2 p.m. doughnut if you want to stay energized through the afternoon.
In addition to what youre eating, it also comes down to when youre eating. Lunch in the middle of the day could be contributing to your lethargy, and you may need to tweak your mealtimes.
Leptin levels, the hormone that suppresses hunger, is low at noon and lowest at approximately 4 p.m. of our 24-hour cycle. Meals in the morning and early evening, over time, will help the daytime fatigue. Studies have shown fasting improves energy state and it may be that it is not truly fasting at all but rather a more natural meal pattern, Dr. Ruhoy states.
If youre someone who feels anxious as soon as your alarm goes off, its no wonder that you feel depleted in the afternoon.
Dr. Malkin says, A chronic anxiety sufferer will still feel exhausted even after a full nights rest because of constant fear when there is no real danger. It is best to schedule an appointment with your doctor to help pinpoint the issue and get treatment to help combat the anxiety.
Related: What Is Social Anxiety?
Our body uses sugar for energy, Dr. Kerr says. The carbohydrates that we eat are converted to glycogen and transported throughout our body in our blood. Insulin will move the sugar from our blood to the cells that need it. If our insulin metabolism is off, which can be caused by diabetes, then our blood sugar can be too low or too high. This can impact the sugar available to our nervous system in order for it to function appropriately. When this happens, we will become very fatigued and sometimes very disoriented. Insulin metabolism is negatively impacted by poor diet and poor sleep.
Heres some major motivation to get your sweat on: exercise just might eliminate your afternoon slump altogether. Exercising regularly can help combat fatigue, Dr. Ruhoy says. Exercise promotes mitochondrial efficacy and it does not require triathlons or climbing Mount Everest. Daily movement helps maintain systemic blood flow and natural levels of adrenal and hypothalamic hormones throughout the day.
Book a morning spin class, sneak in a lunchtime run, or do some calming-yet-calorie-burning yoga at the end of the day.
Related: Best Workout Apps 2020
Dr. Ruhoy explains that sunlight is a huge component of setting proper circadian rhythm, the biological process that regulates our sleep-wake cycles. That means that your body is craving a noon walk in the sunshineor even better, get out to walk in the sun as soon as you wake up.
She says, We often focus on sleep, which is important to be sure, but part of that cycle includes wake, which is one reason why regular meal patterns can be crucial. But getting outdoors each day is important to simulate that rhythm. It does not have to be a sunny day as all that is needed is natural light.
If youre a coffee-drinker, youre likely already aware that if you guzzle a few cups in the morning, it could result in an afternoon crash fueled by a lack of java. And according to Dr. Malkin, the pandemic has been marked by an increase in caffeine all around.
The standard morning cup of coffee became morning, afternoon, and evening joe to help us stay up for Netflix binges and try to function during a Zoom call the next day, he says. Im all for a shot of espresso, but in moderation. When taken in excess, [caffeine] will quickly give you the ultimate jolt but remember what goes up must come down.
To pace yourself, he says that a good rule of thumb is to drink a glass of water equal to your cup of coffee or other caffeinated beverage.
When you find yourself with a few free minutes during the day, were guessing that youre scrolling through social media. Although this can provide an entertaining, or even mindless, diversion, it could result in exhaustion later. Too much screen time isnt good for anyone, Dr. Malkin says. Our brains are actively working to absorb all the images, but lets not forget that the brain is the bodys command center. It gives out all the instructions for when its time to eat, sleep, or work. This is our personal computer which also needs time to reboot just like an athletes body after a rigorous workout.
There are some health conditions that can lead to overall fatigue, the afternoon slump included, and one of those disorders is narcolepsy.
Dr. Kerr says, Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder characterized by overwhelming daytime drowsiness and sudden attacks of sleep. People with narcolepsy often find it difficult to stay awake for long periods of time, regardless of the circumstances. Narcolepsy can cause serious disruptions in your daily routine.
If you suspect that you may have narcolepsy, its a good idea to schedule an appointment with your doctor.
Stress is a natural, albeit less-than-desirable, part of everyones lives. And needless to say, for many reasons, stress has become even more rampant during the pandemic. When youre stressed out, it can definitely take its toll on your daily energy level.
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Dr. Ruhoy shares, Emotional, physical, and mental stress can wear us down and make us less motivated to accomplish tasks or engage in social activities, and over time, the effects of stress can fatigue our cells. Stress has real physiologic effects that can ultimately cause fatigue.
Next up, find out if weighted blanket really help with insomnia.
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Why Am I So Tired In The Afternoon? 13 Reasons Why - Parade
A tiny particle collider yields new evidence for a type of ‘quasiparticles’ called anyons – Massive Science
The president has had a life-threatening, infectious disease for over a week, and he and his doctors havent been very transparent about the timeline and course of his affliction. In lieu of detailed disclosures, reporters have to piece together his condition based on the treatments hes been receiving.
Trump was started off on an experimental therapeutic an antibody cocktail and then advanced to another remdesivir. The other biomolecules coursing through Donald Trump's system (and this week's headlines) are corticosteroids, called dexamethasone.
You may have heard of cytokine storms, where the body's immune response to severe COVID-19 bombards healthy cells, making the illness worse. Trump has been given dexamethasone, an immuno-supressant that doctors prescribe to temper that effect. Unlike the other experimental treatments, dexamethasone is common and somewhat easy to access. However, it is rarely administered to a patient with a case as (self-)reportedly mild as Donald Trumps. In an interview with New York Magazine's Intelligencer, the co-author of a recent study testing dexamethasone elaborates:
That lack of evidence is concerning as Trump heads into a critical point in the course of his illness. COVID-19 is known for being a bit of a roller coaster, with intermittent fevers, mysterious symptoms, and rapid declines. Abraar Karan, a physician with experience treating patients with COVID-19, told Monique Brouillette at Scientific American that some people have turned corners and left the hospital, only to come back feeling much sicker, with even worse oxygen levels and possibly other harm to the bodys organs.
It is theoretically possible that the early steroid treatment may ward off a dangerous auto-inflammatory reaction. But beyond the inherent risks of immuno-supression, corticosteroids may also cause behavioral side effects in the President. Trump's cognitive and behavioral state has been a point of concern for years. Potent steroids such as dexamethasone are known to increase appetite, decrease restful sleep, and bring about heightened "maniacal" energy states.
As the nation enters the weekend, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is rolling out a 25th amendment commission, Trump is boasting a miraculous recovery with a Fox News doctor, and the rest of us continue to wait and learn how biology will run its course. For better or worse, the side effects our president experiences may prove to have historical consequences. To my knowledge, roid rage has never been a factor in nuclear geopolitics.
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A tiny particle collider yields new evidence for a type of 'quasiparticles' called anyons - Massive Science
Senate Bill May Give More Authority to the FDA for Drug Recall – Med News 365
Beta blockers are often prescribed for high blood pressure, especially if the patient has suffered a heart attack. A new study shows they may not be as effective as once thought.
The study was done in Italy at the University of Bologna. According to researchers, it appears that these beta blockers may not be as effective in women patients as they are in men. Data indicated that women had a higher rate of heart failure than men when they had angina or a heart attack.
The study had 14,000 participants from 12 different countries in Europe. Each one had a diagnosis of high blood pressure, but none of them had a heart disease diagnosis. According to the research, women may have an almost five percent higher risk for having heart failure after a heart attack when taking beta blockers. For those who didnt take the medications, the rate of heart failure was about the same for both men and women.
Researchers dont know the cause for this possible difference. One theory is in the interaction between the beta blockers and hormone replacement therapy. It is obvious that more research focused on women is needed. According to doctors and scientists, research often leads to blanket statements that may not hold true for both men and women.
Women present differently with heart issues than men. They also have a unique physiology from men, which leads to the idea that they may react differently to the same medications as men. Other researchers say that beta blockers pose a risk for anyone, whether the patient is a man or woman.
Beta blockers do their work by blocking the transmission of the hormone epinephrine, which is better recognized as adrenaline. These medications slow down your heart rate as well as the force with which it beats. The result is that your blood pressure is also lowered.
The medications have a secondary job which is to open up the veins and arteries for better blood flow. Not all beta blockers work the same. Some focus on the heart rate while others also impact the blood flow. Some popular brand names of beta blockers include Sectral, Corgard, Zebeta, Toprol XL, Tenormin and Inderal.
Beta blockers arent usually the first line of defense against high blood pressure. Diuretics are often prescribed first. Beta blockers may be prescribed if other medications arent effective and with other drugs designed to lower blood pressure.
Doctors may prescribe these medications for angina, heart attacks, irregular heart rhythm, and migraines. They are often given with other medications.
Beta blockers arent usually recommended for people with asthma because it may trigger an attack. It is also not the first choice for people with diabetes because it can mask signs of low blood sugar.
Until more research is done, it is important to discuss medications like beta blockers with your physician and to tell them everything about your medical history to ensure it is the right choice for your health condition.
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Senate Bill May Give More Authority to the FDA for Drug Recall - Med News 365
Akron Dish: For first time, B&K drive-in staying open through winter in Cuyahoga Falls – Akron Beacon Journal
Katie Byard| For the Akron Beacon Journal
Weve got big news about this little root beer stand that has persevered.
For this first time in its 67 years, the B&K Root Beer drive-in in Cuyahoga Falls, a neighborhood staple, will stay open all year. Previously each year since 1953 the stand closed in the fall.
Loyal customers who in years past have stocked up on pints and quarts of coney dog sauce for the winter are rejoicing.
Weve weathered the storm. Alot of these smaller businesses have not made it," through the COVID-19 pandemic, said Scott Reynolds, who, along with his wife, Christy, owns the old school place at 737 Munroe Falls Ave.
The Reynolds purchased the business in 2015, becoming independent operators of the B&K that years ago was part of the long disbanded B&K drive-in chain.
This has been our best year ever, Reynolds said, noting he wants to keep the momentum going. Weve been very fortunate with all our loyal customers and new ones that discovered the places coney (Spanish) dogs, kraut dogs, hamburgers that are made fresh upon ordering, soft-serve ice cream and more.
I can walk here if the weather gets too bad, said customer Larry Dean, 79, who became a regular about four months ago, after moving nearby to the stand, tucked in a neighborhood.
Last week, Dean, a retired warehouse and inventory manager, drove to the B&K to pick up lunch for himself and his wife. He got his regular order: one coney dog ($2.40), one kraut dog ($2.40), a hamburger ($2.80) and fries ($1.65 for a small order; $2.25 for a large).
Americans are craving more comfort foods during the pandemic, food industry officials say, and the B&K offers familiar eats.
Familiar but upgraded Reynolds says.
Since taking over in 2015, Reynolds, 45, and his wife have kept the vintage vibe freshening up the familiar orange and brown paint while making changes.
The stand now serves one-third pound burgers (larger than before the Reynolds took over) that are formed with the hamburger press that Christy Reynolds grandmother used.
Buns are from Lakemore's Ideal Bakery.
They stand up to our burgers, Scott Reynoldssaid.
Hamburgers previously only offered on Tuesdays are now on the daily menu.
Also joining the daily menu is soft-serve ice cream. One flavor is offered each week.
I am happy to report I have added the B&K to my list of fave area burger places. I brought a couple of cheeseburgers home (including one with grilled onions) for my hubby and me to eat. The stands burgers are straightforward and filling. And, yes, I enjoyed the bun that melded nicely with the cheese and meat, but did hold up.
We also enjoyed a kraut dog (a hotdog topped with homemade sauerkraut that has a sweet flavor), a coneydog (topped with homemade coney sauce) and french fries.
Sides including french fries, tater tots, onion rings, mozzarella cheese sticks are now deep fried. Previously, they were cooked using an air method without grease. Reynolds said customers wanted that classic fried taste.
The stands side of sauerkraut balls isfrom Akron-based Ascot Foods, with roots in the formerBunny B Sauerkraut Balls & Ice Co.
It was rough for the first few years after the couple bought the stand in 2015, Reynolds said.
He noted the business finances were stretched with the purchase of new equipment, including new freezers and refrigerators.
We didnt really know what we were doing at first, he said.
Reynolds, a maintenance supervisor at the Ford Motor Co. plant in Brook Park, and his wife, Christy, a nurse, were looking for an investment when Christy spotted an advertisement saying the stand was for sale.
The idea of running a family business appealed to them. Their children Scott, a fireman;Brian; and Madison, a college student, all work at the stand.
Brians availability to work full-time at the stand now is helping to drive the decision to stay open all year.
The stand is one of three independently operated B&Ks in the area.
Initially the stands were part of the B&Kchain, which began in Michigan City, Ind., in the 1940s. B&Kstands for Bergerson & Kenefick.
Sheila Trombka, a part-time cook at the Cuyahoga Falls stand, is a daughter of Al and Cathy Emich, who acquired the stand in 1958 and sold it in 1996 toVic and Dixie Davis, who sold the stand to Scott and Christy Reynolds in 2015.
Trombka has worked at the stand for virtually her whole life. She learned to wash root beer mugs when she was 5 years old and when she was 9, she ran the register. By the time she was 11,she was a carhop. Now her sons, James, 22, and Jonathan, 18, work part-time there.
She showed us the ropes. We love her to death, Scott Reynolds said.
I came with the building, Trombka said.
About B&K in Cuyahoga Falls
Address: 737 Munroe Falls Ave.
Hours: 11 a.m. to 8:30 pm. Tuesday through Saturday - now, all year.
Phone: 330-922-3355
See the stands Facebook page for specials.
New downtown eatery
Evelyns Coffee & BnhMi has opened at11 E. Exchange St., inthe space behind the Goodwill blue boutique on Main Street in downtown Akron.
The space previously housed coffee shops, including Wholly Joe.
So what is a bnh mi?
Bnh mi is the Vietnamese word for bread, and also in this case refers to the popular Vietnamese baguette sandwich (think sub sandwich on crusty, light bread), typically featuring a meat and pickled vegetables.
French colonists introduced the baguette to Vietnam, but the Vietnamese have made the sandwich their own, creating many versions.
At Evelyns, I enjoyed a chicken bnh that included pickled carrots, cucumber and cilantro ($5.50). You can also get a beef or meatball bnhmi.
Eveylyns also offers kimbap, a Korean dishof seasoned rice with fish cakes, carrots, egg and spinach rolled in seaweed. Other offerings include smoothies, papaya salad and a Vietnamese salad made with shredded cabbage, chicken, carrots and onion. It comes with a sweet and tangy dressing.
The shop offers Vietnamese iced coffee (made with sweetened condensed milk), along with a variety of other coffee drinks.
Vinh Nguyen, a local physician, opened the place this summer, taking advantage of the Start Downtown program operated by the nonprofit Downtown Akron Partnership. The program provides six months of support, including rent subsidies, in the 42-bock Special Improvement District in downtown Akron.
Evelyns is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.
Phone is 330-849-5080.
See Evelyns web page --https://www.evelynscoffee.comfor more information and to order online.
West Side Bakery's Apple Week
This week is Apple Week at the West Side Bakery in Akron, celebrating 25 years in business this year.
Barb Talevich, who owns the bakery with her husband, Steve, said she expects to go through some fiveor six bushels of Golden Delicious apples from Bauman Orchards in Rittman to make a variety of apple treats.
Available now: Apple cobbler, apple hand pies, caramel apples, apple cobbler tea bread, apple coffee cake, cinnamon apple cheesecake and apple-frangipane galette (an apple tart featuring an almond pastry cream).
Apple fritters will be available this Friday and Saturday.
Its the only time of the year these fried treats are available.
Talevich happily reported that the bakerys employment roster is now back up to more than 20 full- and part-time workers.
For a time during the ongoing pandemic, she and and her husband were the only workers, and the shop was only open on Saturdays.
The shop, at 2303 W. Market St., is now open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday pickup only. Phone is 330-836-4101.
ThaiSoul Fusion Grill relocates
ThaiSoul Fusion Grill has moved to 992 Kenmore Boulevard in Akrons Kenmore neighborhood.
Thats the space that previously housed Lil Bit Cafe, which closed earlier this year. It apparently was not able to withstand the negative financial impact of the ongoing pandemic.
Well have more soon on ThaiSoul Fusion Grill, which, as its name suggests,offers Thai eats, as well as soul food.
Owners are Tawon and Patricia Burton. They most recently operated the eatery in Stark County, after running it out of space on Romig Roadnear the site of the former Rolling Acres Mall.
Phone is 330-937-8846. Online ordering is athttps://www.thaisoulfusiongrill.com.
The restaurant is only open for pickup at this time.
Wise Guys' clambake
Wise Guys Lounge & Grill in Akrons North Hill will offer a clambake from 3 to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Cost is $55 for clams, mussels, crab legs, potato, a half check, corn and clam chowder.
Add lobster for $10.
Guys, known for its wide selectionof wine, is at 1008 N. Main St. Phone is 330-922-3006.
Harvest Mart at Lock 3
Harvest Mart featuring food and non-edible items will debut at Lock 3 park off Main Street in downtown Akron on Saturday.
Itll run from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, and from 1 to 5 p.m. Oct. 24.
See the Harvest Mart at Lock 3 Facebook page for more information.
Akron'sJ Hudson, an experienced organizer of markets, is coordinating the event.
Hormone-free chicken, turkey, pork, lamb and beef, as well as pumpkins, gourds, apples, late-summer produce and more,will be available.
Cast your vote for favorite burger
You can vote for your favorite burger among two choices at Bob's Hamburg in Akron.
In its "Keeping Burgers Great 2020" election, you vote by buying the quarter pound burger with Swiss cheese and jalapenos or the burger with American cheese, ketchup, onions and mustard. A portion of each saleeach burger costs $6.35 will go to Akron Children's Hospital.
Voting continues through Nov 2. The winner will be revealed Election Day, Nov.3.
Bob's is at 1351 East Ave., near Interstate 76.
Last call at Louie's
As reported by Beacon Journal staff writer Alan Ashworth last week, Louie's Bar & Grille at 739 E. Glenwood Ave. in Akron's North Hill is closing this month. The 28-year-old Louie's, known for its burgers, cited COVID-19 restrictions in its decision to close.
Last day for customers is Saturday.
Thanks for the memories.
Send your local food news to Katie Byard at msakron@sbcglobal.net.
Read more from the original source:
Akron Dish: For first time, B&K drive-in staying open through winter in Cuyahoga Falls - Akron Beacon Journal
What Was That? Coronavirus, Chaos and Democracy By Michael Fine PART 1 – GoLocalProv
Monday, October 12, 2020
Dr. Michael Fine, Author
View Larger +
Justice Brett Kavanaugh
The full audiobook can be downloaded here.
"Boys and girls like beer"
-- Brett Kavanaugh, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court
Every morning at 5 AM, three or four white minivans leave from a parking lot on Cowden Street in Central Falls, Rhode Island for factories all across southern New England. Each minivan is densely packed with 10 to 15 mostly undocumented immigrants who live two or three or five people to a room in the ramshackle wooden frame triple-deckers that are crammed into every available square foot in this old mill city. The people in the minivans are from all over the world - from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, from Cape Verde, the Dominican Republic, Colombia; and Puerto Rico refugees from Hurricanes Maria and Dorian who cant find other jobs here. The vans are run by labor contractors who find and supply unskilled labor to the low-wage employers who need bodies for the hot, dirty, smelly and dangerous jobs no one else wants, in the factories, construction sites, meat-packing plants and fish-houses of Southern New England. The vans charge each worker $5 to $10 a day. The work pays minimum wage - $10.50 an hour in Rhode Island, $12.00 an hour in Massachusetts, $11.00 an hour in Connecticut. Theres lots of wage theft on these jobs sometimes workers only get paid for eight hours when they work 12 or 14, or get told the labor contractors havent been paid yet and then never get paid, or are paid piece work using a scale that means they earn $5 or $6 dollars an hour, when they were promised $20 an hour but youd have to produce at an impossible pace to generate that much income.
Yes, we drank beer. My friends and I. Boys and girls. Yes, we drank beer. I liked beer. Still like beer. We drank beer, said Judge Brett Kavanaugh during his testimony to the US Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing.
This testimony provided a unique lens on American culture and mores. A preening conservative President, pandering to his base, chose an undistinguished juror to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. The opposition party, powerless to stop Kavanaughs confirmation, used accusations about the nominees behavior in high school as the bulwark of their objections to his nomination.
By the time Judge Kavanaugh testified, the process of Supreme Court nomination and confirmation had already been defiled. The nomination to the Supreme Court of Judge Merrick Garland two years earlier had been blocked by the Senate Majority leader, just because he had the power to do that. This occurred just six years after a President had forced through health care insurance reform, because he had the power to do that. Health care insurance reform was unanimously opposed by a minority party, even though the reform itself was based on the ideas of that minority party, which objected only because it was in their perceived political interest to resist the reform, the hell with what the country wanted and needed.
Any pretense of government of, by and for the people, and of governing for the good of the nation had fallen by the wayside years ago. The U.S. Government has long been controlled by special interests, the consequence of the over-centralization of capital, itself a consequence of changes in banking and securities regulations that had been sought by the banking and securities industries themselves. The notion of a common good, of Americans as one people with liberty and justice for all was replaced by narcissism, consumer capitalism, and greed. Brett Kavanaugh is a shallow self-satisfied man - the pure product of a culture without compass or meaning. He now sits on our highest court, appointed for life. I worked hard, he said. I played basketball. I got into Yale and Yale Law School. I got ahead. And yes, I like beer.
These are the values we brought with us into a pandemic.
The nomination and confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh posed a simple question. In the words of another time - have we no sense of decency or responsibility to ourselves as a people?
The story of SARS-CoV-2 and of Covid-19 makes the answer to that question clear. We let loose a pandemic in the US that will cost at least 250,000 lives because we have lost our sense of dignity, our discipline, our courage and our pride.
Almost all the deaths from Covid-19 were preventable. Any fingers to be pointed must be pointed directly at us at ourselves, our culture and our politics. No one did this to us. We did this to ourselves.
Sometime in September or October of 2019, a bat, a pangolin or some other wild animal in China coughed, sneezed, or cried out, perhaps in pain from being caught or slaughtered, or just breathed near a human being. Out of that animal came a virus or more likely a thousand or more viral particles from the family of viruses called Coronavirus - that hung in the air for a moment. Then a human being nearby inhaled. The virus entered the nasal passages and perhaps the lungs of that person, an event likely happens millions or even billions of times a day.
The transfer of viral particles from animals and other human beings is a common, even trivial, event in the human experience. Those particles are always in the air we breathe and they are what our nasal passages, our lungs, our respiratory secretions and our immune systems work to protect us against almost always effectively. Most of the billions of viral particles we inhale or introduce into the body by touching eyes, nose or mouth have no significant impact on the health of individuals. Many viral particles that infect other species plant viruses, insect viruses, frog and toad viruses and bird viruses - have cellular architecture that is slightly different from the cellular architecture of human cells, so most of those viruses are unable to attach to human cells or cause infection. Most of those viral particles are quickly destroyed by the immune system. Most are just dust.
But the virus that entered a human body in the fall of 2019 was different. That virus, which likely evolved in another mammal, had a mechanism that allowed it to attach to specific proteins in certain human cells, cells that line the nose, are present in the lungs and heart and in small numbers in the gastrointestinal system, proteins that are called ACE2 receptors. ACE2 receptors are the proteins that allow the attachment of a hormone called angiotensin converting enzyme, a hormone that helps regulate blood pressure, among other functions.
The virus attached to human cells. It entered those cells and inserted itself into the genetic material of those cells, which is what viruses do. The virus then caused those cells to make copies of itself. Those copies destroyed the cell and were released into the bloodstream where they found and attached themselves to the ACE2 receptors of other cells and entered those cells and their genetic material. Those cells began making still more copies of the virus billions and billions of copies.
That human being had become infected. And then that human began to cough, or sneeze, or breathe or speak, so that the virus entered the air and infected other people nearby. And those people coughed and sneezed and infected other people. The newly infected people infected others, over and over again, until at least sixteen million people who have been tested and counted, as I am writing this, but very likely many more than that likely a hundred to two hundred million people - people who have had the virus but havent been tested or counted have become infected. Which is not many, really, when you consider that none of us has seen this virus before so have no immunity to it. And that there are seven billion of us. Likely all seven billion human beings are susceptible to this new virus and will become infected with it before long since none of us were immune to it in the fall of 2019.
Seven billion humans. 200 million people is about three percent of seven billion, so many more people will become infected before this pandemic is over.
I thought Id sit out the Coronavirus outbreak in the US as an observer. Im a fiction writer turned doctor turned fiction writer again. I worked as a family physician and then started doing public health in my late fifties. I was Director of the Rhode Island Department of Health 2011-2015 a period that included the Ebola epidemic of 2014-2015. Along the way Ive had the privilege of knowing three CDC directors, three Surgeons General (one of whom I helped train to be a state health officer, in 2015) and about 100 city and state health directors, a number of whom are close and dear personal friends with whom I talk frequently. I know CDC and its culture. Many friends and colleagues work there. And I also know government and how it works at the federal, state and city levels. Or doesnt.
When reports began to come out of China of hospitals overwhelmed, of a doctor who had been silenced and then died of the disease, of health workers getting sick and dying in large numbers, of people dying in the streets of Wuhan, I was writing in the morning, and working in the afternoons seeing patients two half days a week, and trying to develop new programs to reduce cost and improve access to health services in Central Falls, Rhode Island, the smallest, poorest and most densely populated city in the state. I consulted a little with the mayors of Central Falls and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, a neighboring city, but had turned my attention to writing fiction, an old first love. I worried a little about this new virus but I assumed that the Chinese CDC and WHO would get in front of it and get it stopped before it spread too far.
I didnt expect to find myself in the middle of one of the worst outbreaks of Coronavirus in the nation.
I also didnt expect the public health apparatus of the world and nation to so dismally fail. Or that the failure would reveal again what my 2018 book Health Care Revolt was written to reveal originally that we have a medical services market, a pharmaceutical products market and a health care insurance market but that we dont have a health-care system in the United States, a system that provides the same set of essential services to all Americans. Our medical, pharmaceutical and health care insurance markets are focused on profit, as markets should be, and not public health. These markets, and the profit focus of American society, have produced a culture in which the rich get richer and the poor are kicked to the side of the road.
Again. The poor get kicked to the side of the road. We have decades of data showing how the market focus of American health care has made our population sicker and poorer, worsened income inequality in the US and has disadvantaged the poor and people of color. You would have thought wed learned something from all our studies, and used what we learned to do a better job with Covid-19. Instead, we failed again, and failed so profoundly that we locked up our society for at least a year, and perhaps for as long as half a generation.
Still, because of my role with a community health center and with the two cities, I paid close attention to the stories and the data coming out of China in late 2019 and by January of 2020 was able to brief the mayors and my colleagues about what we were learning: This new Coronavirus is in the family of viruses that cause the common cold. This one likely evolved in bats and crossed over to human beings in the fall of 2019 in Wuhan China. It was related to the coronaviruses that cause SARS and MERS but this virus appeared to be harder to contain. In most people this new Coronavirus causes mild disease runny nose, fever, cough, loss of taste and smell, and sometimes nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. But the new Coronavirus spreads quickly and can cause a very serious lung infection in some people, something called Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome, which is much worse than a simple pneumonia and can be fatal in about one-third of the people who get significantly ill. The case fatality rate - the ratio of the number of people who get the disease to the number of people who die of it - was reported to be 3 percent, so that of a hundred people who would get the disease likely three would die, which made this Coronavirus 30 times more lethal than influenza but 20 times less lethal than Ebola, a virus that kills 50-75 percent of the people who get it.
Eventually wed learn the case fatality rate is more likely 0.4 percent or less, or about four times that of seasonal influenza. Even so thats a scary number, because every human being, in theory is susceptible to the Coronavirus, which means all of us could get sick at about the same time. In theory, a city of 100,000 might have 10,000 people in the hospital in the span of a few weeks, about ten times the usual number. And 3000, we thought then, would likely die. By comparison, about 5 percent of us are susceptible to seasonal flu each year. Even so, it kills 30,000 to 60,000 Americans every year. This means in that city of 100,000 people, likely 5000 people get the flu, and 500 people are hospitalized for it, and 5 die.
See the rest here:
What Was That? Coronavirus, Chaos and Democracy By Michael Fine PART 1 - GoLocalProv
7 Ways To Adapt To the Covid-19 Lockdown Life Like A Ninja – Chiang Rai Times
Thanks to our ongoing global battle with the pandemic it looks like many nations will face some sort of covid-19 lockdown for the next six months a least. And given that for many of us it feels like restrictions had no sooner been lifted than they were reimposed, the result can be hard to bear psychologically, even if (thankfully) were unaffected physically.
However, help is at hand if you want to handle lockdown with the resolve, resilience and inventiveness of a ninja, take a look at these 7 ways to adapt to Covid-19 lockdown life.
You can literally learn to be a ninja online by watching free Ninja Learning Network training videos however please be careful not to injure yourself and seek advice from a physician before starting any strenuous fitness regime.
Been meaning to try that healthy vegetarian or vegan diet for some time? With so much plant-based food available online, theres never been a better time to switch your waistline will also thank you for it!
Creating some calm headspace for yourself is more important than ever during lockdown. If you dont want to adhere to Buddhist meditation practices, mindfulness is an effective secular version youll find on apps like Calm.
Always had a penchant for writing but never had the time to write down your thoughts? Writing a daily journal can be very therapeutic and your finished draft might turn into an autobiography or novel. Your lockdown diary could become a classic like Hagakure, still read hundreds of years after it was penned who knows?
Forget informal MOOCs where you put in the effort to study but dont get a recognised qualification in return take an online degree with ARU Distance Learning in a subject like digital marketing or psychology and you could be on your way to an exciting new career.
Being stuck indoors with family need not mean that youre at each others throats in fact it can be the ideal opportunity to build bridges and spend some quality time together. Spend a little less time on your phone or tablet and a little more time bonding over activities like cooking, crafts and simply chatting, then youll feel closer than ever to your loved ones.
Participating in a regular virtual pub quiz can be a great way of exercising those little grey cells and catching up with friends over a few convivial drinks. If youre struggling for ideas on how to get started, take a look at the amazing Jays Virtual Pub Quiz, which has taken the online world by storm this year!
Follow these seven ways to adapt to covid-19 lockdown life like a ninja and youll navigate the next few months like the most nimble shinobi you can thank us later!
Share youre lockdown tips in the comments section we would love to hear them.
See the original post here:
7 Ways To Adapt To the Covid-19 Lockdown Life Like A Ninja - Chiang Rai Times
How Effective is CBD for your Health – Oregon Cannabis Connection
Are you stressed, anxious, or depressed? Do you have trouble sleeping? Do you have skin and hair problems? The answer to all those queries can be CBD.
Cannabidiol, widely known as CBD, comes from cannabis plants and is one of the two prevalent compounds popular within the medical community. The other one, known as Tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, is responsible for the feeling high and the euphoric experience people experience.
Cannabis plants have two subspecies known as Cannabis Indica and Cannabis Sativa. Marijuana and hemp are both varieties of the Cannabis Sativa species, and CBD can be derived from both of them. Usually, hemp plants have been selectively bred and used industrially to remove THC almost completely. Marijuana, however, contains 30% of THC.
The breeding of hemp plants and CBD manufacturing has been legalized for medicinal reasons as long as it contains no more than 0.3% of THC per dry weight. CBD derived from marijuana is also legally manufactured but usually requires a doctors prescription to be sold.
CBD derived from both marijuana and hemp plants is used to treat many medical issues such as nausea (from chemotherapy), stress, anxiety, pain management, and treating muscle spasms that can be brought on due to multiple sclerosis, etc. It works on the neurotransmitters and regulates the nerve cells in our brains and tells them to calm down. This year, with the coronavirus pandemic going around, many people are stressed and have a heightened anxiety level than before for staying at home for too long or from losing jobs. It brings a feeling of relaxation to the patients who suffer from these issues and helps them sleep and relax. Another use of this compound is it is excellent in reducing acne and improves skin and hair conditions.
Products containing CBD are everywhere now, in hair products, skin products, capsules, oil, pet products, etc. It was also included in some food items as additives until the FDA banned it in 2019.
However, for ingesting, there are different methods that you can use that would best suit your needs. You can try inhaling, vaping, taking capsules orally, or ingesting oil drops. You can even choose what type of flavor or aroma you prefer.
The most effective relaxant that promotes the wellness of health is CBD-containing oil supplements. If you are new to using this, you can start with a low dosage and increase it as you see fit. Labels stating CBD oil have a significant amount of CBD not to be confused by hemp oil, which doesnt contain any CBD. You can buy CBD oil UK and notice how it boosts your mood and relaxes you.
Its simple. These oils come with an ml dropper and labeled instructions on how much dosage should be taken. It is usually recommended to start low, about 5mg, and then making your way up. Drop 5mg of oil under your tongue and keep it that way for around 60 90 seconds and then swallow. This way, you can retain the full potency of the product. Another thing to remember is that CBD oil drops can be taken after every six to eight hours. Ideally, you should use cannabinoids in consistent doses.
Side effects due to ingesting CBD have not been reported yet, or they are so mild that it was not directly attributed to cannabidiol. The ones reported were mild dry mouth and thirst, although they are not proven to be caused by CBD.
With the arrival of a pandemic and lockdown situation, most people have become anxious, depressed, and stressed financially and mentally. Some opt to take marijuana or other drugs and leave their problems behind, but the compound itself is so addictive that people keep asking for more. So when they finally decide to quit, they go through severe withdrawal issues. CBD has been known to help patients like these and manage mental health issues such as psychosis.
If you have skincare issues such as eczema and psoriasis, then using CBD topical products has been known to reduce oil production and eradicate acne. It contains anti-inflammatory agents that help in clearing out the skin.
CBD also helps with back pain or injury that involves inflammation; however, more studies are yet to be conducted.
As for stress-related issues, CBD has proven to relax the nerve cells and signals the body to take it slow. It acts as a mood regulator and reduces anxiety, hence re-balancing a persons mental and emotional health.
CBD therapy has also been shown to help health-care workers in this pandemic by providing relief to their neck or back pains and aid in restoring their sleep. It also helped many people who had panic attacks and were suffering from depression and the insomniacs affected due to the ongoing lockdown situation.
CBD reacts differently in men and women, where the latter is usually sensitive to the chemical compounds effects due to their hormone, estrogen. Women can develop a tolerance level within their bodies, so they must take a break now and then. A break from CBD will ensure their endocannabinoid system resets and help them adjust better to the product.
Despite CBD showing promising results, it is always good to consult your physician before making CBD a part of your life. It is particularly crucial to consult your doctor if you are taking other medications for your health issues such as antidepressants, which may have a side effect if combined with CBD.
CBD, with its therapeutic benefits, taken in appropriate amounts can lead to a better and healthier lifestyle, mentally, emotionally, and physically. However, a relationship with this compound requires you to put in a bit of work and make your life easier in this lockdown situation.
Read this article:
How Effective is CBD for your Health - Oregon Cannabis Connection
Cancer Hormone Therapy Market: Rising incidences of cancer across globe is a major driving – BioSpace
Hormones are natural substances made by our glands in our body and the network of glands that make hormones is termed as endocrine systems. These hormones are carried through bloodstream and act as a messenger between one part to another part of our body. Hormone therapy is one of the major modalities of medical treatment for cancers which involves manipulation of the endocrine systems through exogenous administration of steroid hormones or drugs inhibiting or interrupting activities of specific hormones. Surgical removal of certain endocrine organs for instance oophorectomy can also be employed as a part of hormone therapy. In hormone therapy physician generally start with hormone receptor test that let caregivers to measure amount of cancer proteins or hormone receptors within a cancer tissue. By estimating the amount of hormones such as estrogen or progesterone the test either can be positive or negative. A positive test indicates growth of cancer cells with the help of hormones. In such cases physician divert the hormone therapy by blocking the interaction of hormones with the hormone receptor. Alternatively, in case of negative hormone receptor test which signifies null effect of hormones in growth and development of cancer cells other effective treatments can be rendered to cure cancer.
Read Report Overview - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/cancer-hormone-therapy-market.html
A hormone therapy can be rendered either before or after a primary treatment. In case it is rendered before the primary treatment it is medically termed as neoadjuvant treatment which kills. Neoadjuvant treatments help to kill cancer cells and contribute to the effectiveness of the primary therapy. If hormone therapy is given after the primary cancer treatment, it is called adjuvant treatment. Adjuvant therapy is given to improve the chance of a cure. Now a day hormone therapy is widely used in treating breast and prostate cancer. In breast cancer the female hormone estrogen are primarily responsible for stimulating the growth and development of breast cancer cell in majority of cases. Recently in 2014, aromatase inhibitors such as Arimidex and Femara have been approved for treating breast cancers through hormone therapy. Apart from these FDA approved Zoladex Lupron can also be used in curing breast cancers through hormone therapy. In case of prostate cancer a variety of medications can be used as hormone therapy. Male hormones, such as testosterone, stimulate prostate cancer to grow. Hormone therapy is given to help stop hormone production and to block the activity of the male hormones. Some of the antiandrogens used as inhibitors of prostate cancer cell growth encompass flutamide, enzalutamide, bicalutamide, and nilutamide among others. some of the other cancers to which hormone therapy is gaining acceptance now a day include womb cancer, kidney cancer, ovarian cancer among others.
Request for Analysis of COVID-19 Impact on Cancer Hormone Therapy Market- https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=covid19&rep_id=7475
Major drivers to global cancer hormone therapy include rising incidences of cancer across globe. Statistically according to WHO cancer accounts for 8.2 million deaths in 2012 and it is estimated that annual cancer cases is expected to rise from 14 million in 2012 to 22 million by 2022. Rising awareness among physician and patients towards alternative cancer therapy processes such as target therapy, immunotherapy or hormone therapy is likely to uplift the market in forthcoming years. Side-effects associated with hormone therapy are major restraints to growth and acceptance of therapy. Some of the common side-effects associated with hormone therapy for cancer include nausea, vaginal spotting, irregular menstrual periods, skin rashes, loss of appetite, vaginal dryness, impotence and male breast enlargement among others.
Pre Book Cancer Hormone Therapy Market Report - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=7475<ype=S
Prominent companies operating the global cancer hormone therapy market include AstraZeneca plc, Novartis International AG, Merck & co., QuatRx Pharmaceuticals and Pfizer, Inc. among others.
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Cancer Hormone Therapy Market: Rising incidences of cancer across globe is a major driving - BioSpace
All the president’s medicine: How doctors are treating Donald Trump – ABC News
The leader of the free world is now fighting his own battle with a virus that's laid global siege. A concoction of some experimental treatments is helping him do it.
On Monday evening, after spending three nights undergoing treatment for COVID-19 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, President Donald Trump returned home to the White House.
Standing on the balcony, Trump removed his mask and gave a double thumbs up to the crowd.
Minutes later, in a produced video released via tweet, Trump claimed his victory over the virus.
"I didn't feel so good," Trump said to camera. "Two days ago I felt great, like better than I have in a long time... better than 20 years ago."
"Now I'm better -- and maybe I'm immune! I don't know. But don't let it dominate your lives. Get out there. Be careful. We have the best medicines in the world, and they're all happened, very shortly, and they're all getting approved."
Trump has been recovering under close watch from a team of physicians administering world-class care and special access to therapeutics. Monday, his personal physician, Dr. Sean Conley, told reporters Trump "has continued to improve" over the past 24 hours, having "met or exceeded all standard hospital discharge criteria."
There is not enough evidence to confirm when, or if, some level of immunity to COVID-19 occurs, and how long it might last. Experts say right now, the president is likely still contagious. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says COVID-19 patients should stay isolated for at least 10 days after the start of their symptoms or after receiving a positive test. Trump's doctors said Monday he "may not entirely be out of the woods yet," but they are using what they have called a "multi-pronged approach" in his treatment, which will continue as he recuperates at home.
Trump's diagnosis early Friday morning plunged a nation already in chaos into further crisis, uncertainty and fear for his well-being of urgent concern amid a pandemic that has now claimed the lives of more than 210,000 Americans.
Over the weekend, Trump assured the public he was feeling "much better" since being given a sundry mix of medication, some of it experimental, which he called "miracles coming down from God."
A car with US President Trump drives past supporters in a motorcade outside of Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland on October 4, 2020.
The full picture of what treatments Trump has received thus far is still evolving, as still-outstanding questions in the public interest are met with more fulsome, forthright detail. Monday, his medical team told reporters they continue to treat him with the intravenous antiviral Remdisivir, and have continued with the steroid Dexamethasone.
Of the combination of medicines and supplements now being deployed to help him recoup, many are not yet definitively known to beat the novel coronavirus, but are thought to help mediate the virus' symptoms and severity in the body. There is, as of now, no drug "approved" by the FDA for COVID-19 treatment, though some have been given emergency authorization.
Some experts have raised questions about the uniquely robust drug regimen now being administered to the president. Dr. Lew Kaplan, president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and a surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania, said these types of "non-standard processes" can " invite error." This exact combination of medications has not been tested together yet in large-scale studies.
NIH treatment panel guidelines member Dr. Mitchell Levy assured that there is no "miracle" drug yet available.
"If you look at our guidelines, we just don't think there's enough evidence to recommend one way or the other," Levy, chief of pulmonary critical care at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, told ABC News. "So little is proven. It's like the Wild West, and he's the president of the United States, and so you feel like: 'I want to do anything I can to prevent the disease from progressing.' That often drives us to do things outside of the normal standard. And that is never a good idea. There's a standard of care for a reason. With COVID-19, part of the problem is, we're never really sure what the standard of care is."
Other experts are more optimistic
"All of these treatments shift the odds in your favor," Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told ABC News. "None of them is a magic wand that suddenly makes you feel better," he added, explaining that Trump's treatment plan was made respecting the parameters of available science.
The president's doctors have said he is taking at least eight medicines and supplements. The timeline of Trump's illness remains murky; however, here's what we know about what the president is taking -- and when he started taking it.
Remdesivir
Before Trump was to check out of Walter Reed and head back to the White House Monday evening, his physicians told reporters they planned to administer the fourth dose of the antiviral drug Remdesivir. He has been receiving Remdesivir intravenous infusions since Friday, within 24 hours of revealing his diagnosis. Initially developed for Ebola treatment, it has solid evidence supporting its use in COVID-19 patients, according to the National Institutes of Health, and based on that promising potential, the FDA has issued emergency authorization for its use. Typically given to patients with severe infection, it works by hindering the virus' replication in the body.
Once Trump settles back at the residence, his doctors say, they've made arrangements for the fifth and final dose of his treatment course, Tuesday evening.
In this undated image from video provided by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020, vials are inspected at the company's facilities in New York state, for efforts on an experimental coronavirus antibody drug. Antibodies are proteins the body makes when an infection occurs; they attach to a virus and help the immune system eliminate it.
Regeneron monoclonal antibody "cocktail"
Trump is taking a cocktail of two synthetic, pharmaceutical versions of what occurs naturally in the body to fight off infection. A mix of monoclonal antibodies, this one made by biotech company Regeneron, is thought to be promising, though still in its experimental phase. Late last month, Regeneron published positive, yet preliminary data for its cocktail treatment showing it improved symptoms in patients without severe disease.
While it is not yet FDA-authorized, Trump has been granted access to it under "compassionate use," enabling him to get it outside of a clinical trial. A Regeneron spokesperson confirmed to ABC News that Trump's medical staff reached out to them for permission to use their monoclonal cocktail, and it was cleared with the FDA.
Dexamethasone
Trump's personal physician told reporters Monday afternoon that they continue to treat the president with the steroid Dexamethasone, in response to temporary drops in his oxygen levels.
A corticosteroid used for its anti-inflammatory effects, Dexamethasone has solid evidence supporting its use in COVID-19 patients, according to the National Institutes of Health. In severe cases it's thought steroids can fight the haywire inflammation caused by the virus; however in milder cases, one trial found "no benefit (and the possibility of harm) among patients who did not require oxygen."
When pressed by reporters Monday afternoon, Conley, Trump's personal physician admitted that the president had, in fact, been given supplemental oxygen twice since falling ill. Previously, Conley had said he was not sure if Trump had received it a second time, and would have to check with the nursing staff.
Regarding those two times Trump received supplemental oxygen, Conley said, "it wasn't required."
Schaffner told ABC News that though the press and public have not seen the president's chest X-rays or CAT scans, prescribing the steroid is "a borderline indication within the physicians' prerogative."
Whatever was on those CAT scans, Schaffner said, along with his oxygen levels, seems "undoubtedly what targeted physicians' decision to add dexamethasone," in hopes that it would moderate his immune system response's "collateral damage."
Famotidine
Famotidine, more commonly known by its brand-name Pepcid, is an FDA-approved for heartburn, not COVID-19. Some early, observational studies showed improved survival amongst hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Still, experts caution that observational studies are no substitute for high-quality, randomized trials designed to demonstrate a treatment's true effectiveness. A trial for an intravenous infusion of famotidine is still ongoing.
Zinc
This is not the first time Trump has said he is taking Zinc. In mid-May, Trump told reporters he had been taking both Zinc and Hydroxychloroquine as a "preventative" measure. On Friday, as his doctors listed off the treatments he would now receive for his infection, Zinc again appeared on the list. As an over-the-counter supplement, Zinc is subject to less regulatory oversight. Its virus-fighting properties have shown mixed results in prior studies. Schaffner described Zinc, along with Vitamin D, as "adjunctive therapies, the benefits of which are not known."
"There is some data that Zinc is helpful if you have the common cold," he said. "But not COVID."
Vitamin D
Trump's doctor announced the president is also taking a vitamin D supplement. Studies show an association between vitamin D deficiency and a greater risk of and dying from COVID-19. However, most people get enough vitamin D from their diet. At this point, studies have not demonstrated that taking a vitamin D supplement can help fend off COVID-19 related illness, although there is an ongoing, randomized trial that may offer clarity.
Melatonin
Melatonin is a naturally-occurring hormone with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties also helping regulate circadian rhythms. Some researchers have suggested that the supplement might help compliment other COVID-19 treatments. At this point, research showing that this supplement helps COVID-19 patients is limited, but there is at least one small, randomized study ongoing in the U.S.
Aspirin
Available over the counter, aspirin have been taken internationally as concomitant treatment for COVID-19 -- in response to the strange prevalence of clotting and pulmonary embolism doctors have seen crop up in some patients. Aspirin may also help reduce low grade fevers. Saturday, the president's medical team said he no longer had a fever, after less than a day's time. On Monday afternoon, his medical team told reporters Trump "has not been on any fever reducing medications for over 72 hours," but declined to elaborate.
For people for people who don't have increased cardiovascular risks or COVID-19, daily aspirin use is no longer recommended as a way to reduce the risk of heart attacks, because the risks are now believed to outweigh the benefits.
Before taking any medication, people should always check with their doctor, as every patient's situation is different.
This report was featured in the Monday, Oct. 5, 2020, episode of "Start Here," ABC News' daily news podcast.
"Start Here" offers a straightforward look at the day's top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, the ABC News app or wherever you get your podcasts.
ABC News' Eric Strauss and Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.
Read more from the original source:
All the president's medicine: How doctors are treating Donald Trump - ABC News
Honoring National Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Tips to Take Charge of Your Breast Health – RiverBender.com
O'FALLON October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a time to reaffirm our commitment to fighting breast cancer and to remind ourselves and others the importance of prevention and early detection.
Breast cancer can develop in women of every age, race, and ethnic group. According to the American Cancer Society, more than 200,000 women will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer this year, and approximately 40,000 women will die. Breast cancer in men is not as common, but it does happen, affecting about 2,000 American men each year. Fortunately, the death rate for those diagnosed with breast cancer has decreased significantly due to early detection.
Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women in America, but its also one of the most treatable when detected early, said Jacqueline Owens, MHA, BS, RDMS, director of radiology at St. Elizabeths. Each woman should take time out of her busy schedule to take care of herself and get essential screenings.
HSHS St. Elizabeths Hospital encourages women to take charge of their breast health by following these important breast cancer prevention tips:
Self-check. Starting at age 20, women should do a monthly self-breast exam. Visit http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/breast-self-exam for more information.See your physician regularly. Women ages 20-40 should have a breast exam by a physician or nurse practitioner every three years, and annually thereafter. If you are high risk because of family or personal history, then you should see a physician every six months starting at age 25. Get a Mammogram. Mammograms should be done every one to two years for women age 40 or older and begin at age 30 if you are at high risk.Know your family history. Women who have a first-degree relative or other close relatives who have had breast cancer may be at increased risk of developing these cancers. When determining your risk due to a family history, it is important to look at the number of women and/or men in your family who have been diagnosed and the age at which they were diagnosed. Talk to your physician about your family history and discuss what you should be doing for prevention and screening.Breastfeed. Women who breast-feed their babies for at least a year in total have a reduced risk of developing breast cancer later in life.Develop healthy habits. Eat low-fat foods and lots of fruits and vegetables. Stay close to the weight your doctor says is right for you and exercise regularly. An increased physical activity, even when begun later in life, reduces overall breast-cancer risk by about 10 percent to 30 percent. Limit alcohol intake to no more than one drink a day and refrain from tobacco use.If you are diagnosed with breast cancer, your physician will likely recommend a combination of treatments depending on the type of cancer, the stage of the cancer and your overall health. Common ways of treating breast cancer include surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, hormone therapy and immunotherapy.
To schedule your mammogram at any of St. Elizabeths three, convenient imaging locations, call 618-222-4639 or use our easy, online scheduling tool through MyChart (https://www.hshs.org/StElizabeths/MyChart) to make an appointment. You can also learn more about the womens health services offered at HSHS St. Elizabeths Hospital at http://www.steliz.org.
To learn more about breast cancer prevention, visit https://www.cancer.org/breastcancer.
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Honoring National Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Tips to Take Charge of Your Breast Health - RiverBender.com
Leading Research From ESMO 2020 Further the Potential of Targeted Agents in Breast Cancer – Targeted Oncology
Breast cancer data reported during the 2020 European Society Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress revealed major advances in the treatment paradigm. The agents included in these trials challenged that standard-of-care.
The biggest updates presented at ESMO were in the setting of hormone receptor (HR)positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer. There were also some reports of efficacy with agents in triple-negative breast cancer and early breast cancer.
Updated results from the use of alpelisib (Piqray) in combination fulvestrant in the phase 3 SOLAR-1 trial were presented at ESMO by Fabrice Andre, MD, PhD, director of research at Gustave Roussy in France. First, Andre provided a recap of the primary analysis data.1
We previously reported in 2019 in the New England Journal of Medicine that alpelisib improves progression-free survival from 5 to 11 months in patients with PIK3CA mutations. There was no benefit observed in patients without PIK3CA mutations, Andre told Targeted Oncology, in an interview.
At ESMO we reported a secondary endpoint, overall survival. What was observed is that there was a difference in the median overall survival of 8 months between patients who did not receive alpelisib in patients who received alpelisib, Andre added.
The addition of alpelisib specifically prolonged overall survival (OS) in patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative, PIK3CA-mutant advanced breast cancer by 7.9 months as compared with chemotherapy alone. The median OS with alpelisib/fulvestrant was 39.3 months (95% CI, 34.1-44.9) compared with 31.4 months (95% CI, 26.8-41.3) in the placebo-plus-fulvestrant arm (HR, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.64-1.15; one-sided P .0161).
Considering stratification measures in SOLAR-1, subanalyses of patients with lung and/or liver metastases, as well as patients with PIK3CA mutations in plasma circulating-tumor DNA(ctDNA) were separately assessed. The OS result favored alpelisib plus fulvestrant in patients with lung and/or liver metastases. The median OS was 37.2 months (95% CI, 28.7-43.6) with added alpelisib versus 22.8 months (95% CI, 19.0-26.8) with fulvestrant alone (HR, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.46-1.00).
Patients with PIK3CA mutations in their plasma ctDNA also fared better in terms of OS with alpelisib/fulvestrant compared with placebo/fulvestrant with a median OS of 34.4 months (95% CI, 28.7-44.9) versus 25.2 months (95% CI, 20.7-29.6), respectively. The HR for risk of death in this subgroup was 0.74 (95% CI, 0.51-1.08).
The combination of alpelisib plus fulvestrant was overall beneficial for patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer, although the OS result did not meet the prespecified OBrien-Fleming boundary. Notably, there was a progression-free survival (PFS) benefit observed with patients, which Andre determined was supported by a numeric increase in OS.
The CDK4/6 inhibitor abemaciclib (Verzenio) was administered alone or in combination with tamoxifen as treatment of patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer in the phase 3 nextMONARCH clinical trial. It was hypothesized with this study that, unlike other CDK4/6 inhibitors, abemaciclib monotherapy at 150 mg over 200 mg could improve survival on its own.2
To validate the theory, the study included 3 arms. In arm A, patients received abemaciclib 150 mg in combination with tamoxifen 20 mg. Arm B received abemaciclib 150 mg only, and arm C received abemaciclib 200 mg plus prophylactic loperamide.
The trial did show a promising OS improvement in the combination arm, despite not being powered for this result.
We have seen a lot of data in the first- and second-line space with CDK4/6 inhibitors, with ribociclib [Kisqali], palbociclib [Ibrance], and abemaciclib. Abemaciclib is a bit different because its the only CDK4/6 inhibitor that has a single-agent approval, Erika Hamilton, MD, told Targeted Oncology in an interview.
What we saw in nextMONARCH was that the progression-free survival and overall survival was quite similar to what was previously published, a 7.9-months difference that was not statistically significant. But we did see an overall survival benefit in [the combination arm] when abemaciclib was given in combination with tamoxifen.
The OS observed with abemaciclib plus tamoxifen was 24.2 months compared with 20.8 months among patients treated with single-agent abemaciclib at 150 mg and 17.0 months among those who received abemaciclib 200 mg. The difference between the arm A and arm C was calculated with a HR of 0.62 (95% CI, 0.40-0.97; P = .0341). The HR for the difference between arm B versus arm C was 0.96 (95% CI, 0.64-1.44; P = .8321).
It was noted during Hamiltons ESMO presentation that abemaciclib/tamoxifen also improved PFS at 9.07 months compared with 7.43 months with 200-mg abemaciclib alone (HR, 0.81; 95% CI, 0.56-1.16; P = .2493). Single-agent abemaciclib 150 mg had a median PFS of 7.23 months compared with the 200-mg dose (HR, 1.06; 95% CI, 0.74-1.53; P = .7400).
The survival results from nextMONARCH were said to have confirmed the benefit of abemaciclib that was previously observed in phase 2 MONARCH-1 clinical trial of abemaciclib alone in patients with refractory HR-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer (NCT02102490).
In the randomized, open-label phase 3 MonarchE trial (NCT03155997), abemaciclib in combination with endocrine therapy improved invasive disease-free survival (iDFS) compared with endocrine therapy alone in patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative early breast cancer, demonstrating the benefit of CDK4/6 inhibitors in other settings.3
The primary end point was invasive disease-free survival [in which we] saw significantly fewer events in those patients treated with abemaciclib compared to those who had endocrine therapy alone. It resulted in a 25% reduction in the risk of recurrence with a hazard ratio of 0.747 and this was statistically significant, Stephen R. D. Johnston, MD, PhD, FRCP, professor of breast cancer medicine and consultant medical oncologist, at the Royal Marsden, NHS Foundation Trust, told Targeted Oncology in an interview.
The HR Johnston mentioned was based on 136 iDFS events in the abemaciclib combination arm versus 187 in the endocrine therapy-only arm (95% CI, 0.598-0.932; 2-sided P = .096). At 2 years, the iDFS rate was 92.2% in the abemaciclib/endocrine therapy group versus 88.7% in the endocrine therapy-only group for an absolute difference of 3.5 percentage points. The benefit was carried over into subgroups populations, most notably among patients who had received prior neoadjuvant chemotherapy and those who were premenopausal.
A key secondary end point in this study was distant relapse-free survival (RFS), which did not include patients with local recurrence or second primary cancers. The data observed in this analysis were consistent with the primary end point showing 106 events in the abemaciclib combination arm versus 152 in the endocrine therapy arm (HR, 0.717; 95% CI, 0.559-0.920; 2-sided P = .0085). This resulted in a 28.3% reduction in the risk of distant recurrence. The 2-year distant RFS rate was 93.6% with abemaciclib/endocrine therapy versus 90.3% with endocrine therapy alone for an absolute difference of 3.3 percentage points.
The results overall imply that the addition of abemaciclib to the standard treatment of HR-positive, HER2-negative early breast cancer can prevent recurrence in these patients.
The anticipated primary analysis results from the phase 3 ASCENT trial of sacituzumab govitecan (Trodelvy) in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (NCT02574455) were presented during ESMO by Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH, medical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. The results showed a significant improvement with sacituzumab govitecan over standard single-agent chemotherapy across all primary and secondary end points explored in the study.4
The first results from the ASCENT trial were presented at ESMO 2020. The primary and point of the study was progression-free survival and the study met its primary end point, Bardia told Targeted Oncology in an interview.
Overall the study was positive. Patients who received sacituzumab govitecan had a 59% lower risk of disease progression as compared with those who received standard therapy, Bardia added.
First, the median PFS achieved with sacituzumab govitecan was 5.6 months (95% CI, 4.3-6.3) versus only 1.7 months (95% CI, 1.5-2.6) with treatment of physicians choice (HR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.32-0.52; P <.0001) per blinded independent central review. The PFS benefit was consistent across the subgroup populations explored in the study.
The OS analysis also demonstrated favor for the sacituzumab govitecan arm, which had a median OS of 12.1 months (95% CI, 10.7-14.0) versus 6.7 months (95% CI, 5.8-7.7) in the physicians choice arm (HR, 0.48; 95% CI, 0.38-0.59; P <.0001).
Finally, treatment with sacituzumab govitecan improved response from baseline in the ASCENT trial. The objective response rate (ORR) was 35% in the sacituzumab govitecan arm, which included complete responses (CRs) in 10 patients and partial responses (PRs) in 72 patients. In comparison, the physicians choice arm had an ORR of only 5% with 2 CRs and 9 PRs. Response were also more durable in the patients who received sacituzumab govitecan with a median duration of response of 6.3 months (95% CI, 5.5-9.0) versus 3.6 months (95% CI, 2.8-not evaluable) with physicians choice of therapy. The P value was .057.
Based on the primary ASCENT findings, Bardia et al concluded that the benefit of sacituzumab govitecan as treatment of metastatic triple-negative breast cancer is confirmed and should be considered a new standard-of-care treatment in this patient population.
Patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer were given treatment with ribociclib in both the MONALEESA-3 (NCT02422615) and MONALEESA-7 (NCT02278120) clinical trials. Among these patients, a subgroup had developed resistance to prior endocrine therapy.5
In MONALEESA-3 explored treatment with ribociclib in combination with fulvestrant in men and postmenopausal women with hormone receptor positive, HER2-negative, advanced breast cancer who have received no or only one line of prior endocrine treatment. MONALEESA-7 studied ribociclib compared with placebo plus tamoxifen in premenopausal women with HR positive, HER2 negative advanced breast cancer.
Pooled findings for outcomes for this subgroup from both studies were presented during ESMO by Sara Hurvitz, MD, a medical oncologist at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, at UCLA Health - Santa Monica Medical Center.5The combined results showed a more than doubling of PFS with the addition of ribociclib to endocrine therapy.
What we showed in this exploratory analysis was that ribociclib was associated with 6-month improvement in overall survival compared with endocrine therapy alone. This underscores the activity of ribociclib in patients whose disease can be considered endocrine therapy-resistant, Hurvitz told Targeted Oncology, in an interview.
In MONALEESA-3, the 6-month PFS rate observed was 67% with ribociclib/endocrine therapy compared with 46% with endocrine therapy alone. In MONALEESA-7, treatment with ribociclib plus endocrine therapy led to a 74% 6-month PFS rate compared with 46% in the endocrine therapyonly arm.
The Kaplan-Meier curves for PFS in MONALEESA-3 showed that the median PFS favored the ribociclib combination over endocrine therapy alone at 13.4 months versus 5.7 months, respectively (HR, 0.621; 95% CI, 0.367-1.049). The benefit was also observed in MONALEESA-7 at 14.5 months versus 5.6 months, respectively (HR, 0.562; 95% CI, 0.342-0.922).
The median OS observed with ribociclib/endocrine therapy in the MONALEESA-3 study was 37.5 months compared with 31.7 months in the endocrine therapyalone arm (HR, 0.697; 95% CI, 0.365-1.330). In MONALEESA-7, the median OS was not yet reached in the ribociclib plus endocrine therapy arm versus 32.7 months with endocrine therapy alone (HR, 0.588; 95% CI, 0.304-1.136).
According to Hurvitz et al, these poster data demonstrate the consistent efficacy of ribociclib in patients with early breast cancer and endocrine therapy resistance.
References:
1. Andre F, Ciruelos EM, Juric D, et al. Overall Survival (OS) Results From SOLAR-1, a Phase 3 Study of Alpelisib (ALP) + Fulvestrant (FUL) for Hormone Receptor-Positive (HR+), Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2-Negative (HER2) Advanced Breast Cancer (ABC). Presented at: 2020 ESMO Congress; September 19-21, 2020; Virtual. Abstract LBA18.
2. Hamilton EP, Cortes J, Ozyikan O, et al. nextMONARCH: Final overall survival analysis of abemaciclib monotherapy or in combination with tamoxifen in patients with HR+, HER2- metastatic breast cancer. Presented at: 2020 ESMO Congress; September 19-21, 2020; Virtual. Abstract 2730.
3. Johnston SRD, Harbeck N, Hegg R, et al. Abemaciclib in high risk early breast cancer. Presented at: 2020 ESMO Congress; September 19-21, 2020; Virtual. Abstract LBA5_PR.
4. Bardia A, Tolaney SM, Loirat D, et al. ASCENT: A randomized phase 3 study of sacituzumab govitecan (SG) vs treatment of physicians choice (TPC) in patients (pts) with previously treated metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (mTNBC). Presented at: 2020 ESMO Congress; September 19-21, 2020; Virtual. Abstract LBA17.
5. Hurvitz SA, Lee SS, Jerusalem G, et al. Ribociclib (RIB) in patients (pts) with HR+/HER2_ advanced breast cancer (ABC) and resistance to prior endocrine therapy (ET) in the MONALEESA (ML) -3 and -7 trials. Presented at: 2020 ESMO Congress; September 19-21, 2020; Virtual. Abstract 329P.
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Leading Research From ESMO 2020 Further the Potential of Targeted Agents in Breast Cancer - Targeted Oncology
Inside Trump’s supplement regimen and what experts say you can try too – New York Post
Since his coronavirus diagnosis last week, President Trump has received a variety of cutting-edge treatments, including an experimental polyclonal antibody infusion administered at the White House last Friday.
But the president, who returned to the White House on Monday after being treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and reported no symptoms Tuesday, is also taking a cocktail of seemingly routine over-the-counter supplements and medications.
A recent memorandum from Trump physician Sean Conley noted that the President has been taking zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin and a daily aspirin.
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, with 210,000 deaths in the US and 1.04 million worldwide, can Trumps drugstore-available meds aid others in the treatment of COVID-19?
Thats still unclear, according to Dr. Bruce Farber, the chief of infectious diseases at Northwell Healths North Shore University Hospital and Long Island Jewish Medical Center.
Theres no evidence that any over-the-counter medication is active in treating or preventing COVID, Farber told The Post, adding that patients should always contact their doctors before taking any new supplements.
I think this [regimen] is somewhat unique to [Trump], Farber added.
Heres what we know so far about these supplements and how they might help treat the potentially deadly bug.
If theres one pill that stands out to Farber, its aspirin. The painkiller and blood thinner has long been part of treatment plans for those with histories of heart attacks or strokes.
Coronavirus dramatically increases the risk of spontaneous blood clots, said Farber. Thats part of COVIDs MO.
People with COVID who are sick should be on some [anti-clotting] medication, and that could be aspirin, he added.
A COVID-related aspirin trial at Xijing Hospital in China earlier this year hypothesized that early use of aspirin would reduce the incidence of severe and critical patients; however, that studys results have not yet been posted.
Famotidine, more commonly known as the over-the-counter heartburn medication Pepcid, has also been the subject of recent research.
According to a September hospital study from Connecticuts Hartford HealthCare, COVID patients who took famotidine were 45 percent less likely to die in the hospital, as well as 48 percent less likely to require a ventilator to breathe.
Current thoughts are that it may lessen the hyperimmune inflammatory response, said cardiologist Dr. Raymond McKay, the studys primary investigator, who added that the results ought to be considered preliminary and that the specific reasons for these positive outcomes were still theoretical.
Zinc, an over-the-counter mineral, is known to regulate the immune system and metabolism.
According to preliminary research from doctors working in a Barcelona hospital, patients with lower zinc levels were more likely to die from the coronavirus.
Older people and others more susceptible to COVID, such as those with a heart condition or diabetes, may also have lower zinc levels due to diet or lower absorption levels, according to a recent Wall Street Journal column,Trump Takes Zinc. Maybe You Should Too.
But Farber warns that there is too much of a good thing.
It can cause toxicity, he said. Symptoms of too much zinc can include nausea and vomiting, as well as flu-like symptoms of fever, chills or fatigue.
Zinc is not totally benign particularly if taken in large quantities for long periods of time, he added.
A recent study from the University of Chicago Medicine found a link between vitamin D deficiency and testing positive for COVID-19.
Vitamin D is important to the function of the immune system and vitamin D supplements have previously been shown to lower the risk of viral respiratory tract infections, said David Meltzer, lead author of the study.
Last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recommended vitamin D supplements, which he himself takes, noting that it has an impact on your susceptibility to infection.
The hormone melatonin, known to regulate sleep and produced by the brains pineal gland, can also be taken as an oral supplement.
Its usually used for sleep and sleep health, said Farber.
Additionally, the hormone has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant qualities.
Researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo recently began a yearlong trial to determine whether melatonin can reduce the severity and halt the progression of COVID-19 when taken while symptoms are mild.
Excerpt from:
Inside Trump's supplement regimen and what experts say you can try too - New York Post
Can you have an allergic reaction to the flu shot? It’s very rare, but those with egg allergies may be at risk – Business Insider India
The flu shot is the best defense that we have to protect ourselves and others from getting sick with the influenza virus. Every year, new flu shots are developed that will protect against multiple strains of the flu. The CDC recommends that everybody over the age of 6 months old get the flu shot, with only a few rare exceptions.
Luckily, allergic reactions to the flu shot are extremely uncommon, leaving little reason for us to avoid getting the flu shot, unless your doctor specifically advises against it for you. For example, if you have an egg allergy, you might need to take certain precautions and discuss the shot with your doctor.
However, a preservative allergy is even rarer, and should not deter you from getting the flu shot, says Ryan Steele, DO, board-certified allergist-immunologist and internist at Yale Medicine.
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If you experience these symptoms, contact a healthcare provider immediately.
You should get the vaccine under the careful supervision of a healthcare provider in a medical setting if you:
You should only avoid the flu vaccine altogether if you have previously had a severe reaction to the flu shot itself.
It is a myth that Guillain-Barr syndrome (GBS) is a common reaction to the flu shot. In reality, there are only one to two cases of GBS per million flu shots administered.
GBS causes your immune system to attack nerves in your own body, resulting in symptoms like tingling or numbness that start in the lower body and escalate. This has the potential to result in paralysis, but most people can recover from GBS and live life normally.
The benefits of getting the flu shot greatly outweigh the risks. If you don't get a flu shot, your chances of becoming seriously ill from the flu are much higher than your chances of having an allergic reaction to the vaccination.
If you have personal concerns about the flu shot and any allergies, consult your doctor.
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Can you have an allergic reaction to the flu shot? It's very rare, but those with egg allergies may be at risk - Business Insider India
GLOW Natural Wellness Creates Free Online Resource To Promote Healing At Home And Managing Chronic Disease During Pandemic – PR Web
NEW YORK (PRWEB) October 08, 2020
With the health of every American being a consistent topic of conversation, and rightfully so, it has become more important than ever for individuals to be equipped with the knowledge necessary to protect themselves and their loved ones from everyday diseases and ailments. In an effort to provide the resources and information that will create informed citizens who are taking control of their health, Dr. Michelle Sands, licensed Naturopathic Physician (ND) and Co-Founder of GLOW Natural Wellness will launch Natural Medicine at Home, the free online series that focuses on making health building tools, foundational skills, and healthy lifestyle protocols accessible and affordable for all people. The virtual event goes live October 18, 2020 until October 18, 2020 but participants can take advantage of early admission now and be granted access to several of the talks, the meal plan and a host of health building resources.
As the author of the internationally best-selling book, "Hormone Harmony Over 35: A New, Natural, Whole-Body Approach to Limitless Female Health, Dr. Sands is excited to utilizing her expertise in womens and metabolic health, autoimmunity conditions and genetics to help those in need. These natural medicine techniques will help both women and men that are looking to learn affordable accessible at home health building tools and techniques to help them combat chronic disease, fortify their immune health and live healthier. Each day of the seven day long immersive event will provide the platform for Dr. Sands to teach participants how to use natural medicine safely and effectively in the privacy of their own homes, with the purpose of overcoming the various medical conditions that they may be enduring or subjective to. Virtual attendees will be treated to a well-defined daily schedule that is personally curated by Dr. Sands herself and will include:
"Naturopathic Physician on a mission to help Americans get healthy, right at home, says Dr. Sands. In the midst of the COVID pandemic, we are seeing those with chronic health conditions being at an inherent higher risk for illness, so it was an important mission of mine to bring together the top health and wellness experts in the world to teach Americans how to build health in a accessible and affordable way, right at home; while being free and online.
The Natural Medicine at Home program is the first step for those that are ready to take their health into their own hands and make the life changes necessary for a long and healthy life.
For additional information and to view the video trailer, list of topics, and international panel of experts please visit:
ABOUT DR. MICHELLE SANDSDr. Michelle Sands is a licensed Naturopathic Physician (ND), Co-Founder of GLOW Natural Wellness and author of the #1 Internationally best-selling book, "Hormone Harmony Over 35: A New, Natural, Whole-Body Approach to Limitless Female Health". She is a highly sought-after Female Hormone and Epigenetics Expert specializing in womens health, holistic fertility treatments and autoimmune conditions. Dr. Michelle, her book and resulting programs, have been featured on various platforms including ABC, CBS, Outside Magazine, The Boston Herald, NBC, Fox News, and USA Today to name a select few. Her groundbreaking program, "DNA Made Simple" takes away the confusion around genetics and epigenetics and gives people a personal, scientifically supported instruction manual for optimal health. She uses data driven science, holistic lifestyle medicine, natural supplementation, epigenetic coaching, and eastern philosophies to pinpoint the source of various chronic conditions and as a result helps patients restore their overall health and increase vital energy. Dr. Michelle is also a Board-Certified Holistic Nutritionist, Certified Personal Trainer and award-winning endurance athlete.
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GLOW Natural Wellness Creates Free Online Resource To Promote Healing At Home And Managing Chronic Disease During Pandemic - PR Web
Abortion pill reversal is medically sound | News, Sports, Jobs – Minot Daily News
Nadia Smetana
Lansford
This letter is in response to the letter from Elizabeth Larson published in the Sept. 26-27 issue of the MDN, Abortion Reversal not medically sound.
I am happy for the chance to clarify some things that were brought up in the letter. First of all, lets talk about terms. The letter used the term abortion reversal. The fundraiser held by Dakota Hope featured a woman who had experienced abortion pill reversal.
Surgical abortions are completed within minutes and of course, are not reversible. A medical abortion is a 2-step process. The first abortion pill (mifepristone or RU-486) is given at the abortion clinic. It causes an abortion by blocking progesterone receptors. Progesterone is a necessary hormone that nurtures and supports a pregnancy.
The second abortion pill (misoprostol or Cytotec) is taken at home and its purpose is to cause the uterus to contract and expel the baby.
Some women regret the abortion soon after taking the first pill. For these women there is a possibility for a second chance to save the pregnancy. Abortion Pill Reversal is a cutting-edge application of a time-tested, FDA approved treatment used safely for decades to prevent miscarriage and preterm birth. It involves an off-label prescription of progesterone to counteract the effects of the first abortion pill. Time is of the essence. The goal is to start the progesterone within 24 hours of taking the first abortion pill, but there have been many successful reversals when treatment was started within 72 hours.
A woman who wants to continue her pregnancy should not take the second abortion pill. She should also connect to a local prescribing physician for abortion pill reversal and a pregnancy help center by calling the 24/7 helpline at 1-877-558-0333 or go to the APR website, abortionpillreversal.com
According to the APR website, more than 1000 women have successfully reversed their pill abortions since the program began and many of their stories can be found on the above referenced website. Everyone is invited to listen to the powerful story of Rebekah Hagan who spoke at the Dakota Hope Fundraising Banquet. Listen free for a limited time until Oct. 21 on the Dakota Hope Clinic website event page.
As to the question of whether this is a safe and effective medical procedure, there is good evidence that it is. I would refer anyone to the resources I will post on the Friends of Dakota Hope FB page and on the Dakota Hope Clinic website under the Partner With Us tab.
After spending 16 years as a research nurse, I know that headlines on research articles can be misleading and you must take a second look at details. This is true of the 2019 study Larson referred to in her letter that purported to show that the abortion pill reversal procedure was not credible and could be harmful to patients. That study actually pointed to the riskiness of the abortion pill itself because the two patients that needed treatment for severe bleeding had received placebo, not progesterone, after taking the first abortion pill.
Another criticism leveled at abortion pill reversal proponents is that women who do not take the second abortion pill may retain the pregnancy anyway. The literature indicates that up to 25% of women who only take the first abortion pill will stay pregnant. The latest published study shows that the percentage of women who stayed pregnant when progesterone was added was 68%, a significant increase.
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Is Thyroid Disease Worsened by COVID? – Medscape
As COVID-19 continues to sweep across the globe, people with thyroid disease are searching for answers.
"Does my thyroid condition put me at higher risk for infection?""What about complications?""Is it safe to continue taking my thyroid medication?"
These are common questions that endocrinologists face every day.
As of September 2020, there have been 56,236 articles on COVID-19 published in the medical literature, but only a handful address the relationship between thyroiditis and COVID-19. Because the evidence remains extremely limited, we aim to summarize the available data and offer clinical guidance to practicing endocrinologists and other clinicians.
We know that SARS-CoV-2 enters target cells by binding to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). Because of the high relative expression of ACE2 on thyroid cells compared with lung cells, one hypothesis for thyroid involvement is that ACE2 in thyroid tissue might be a receptor for SARS-CoV-2 invasion.
Case reports, case series, and retrospective studies describing the association of COVID-19 and thyroiditis have reported subacute thyroiditis/de Quervain thyroiditis manifesting as subclinical hyperthyroidism or overt hyperthyroidism, often with high circulating concentrations of IL-6. Both typical (painful) and atypical (not painful) clinical presentations have been described.
Thyroid dysfunction in subacute thyroiditis usually follows a triphasic course (ie, thyrotoxicosis first, followed by hypothyroidism, and then, finally, euthyroidism) that lasts about 3 months. Symptomatic thyrotoxicosis occurs in the majority of patients, but clinical hypothyroidism is uncommon. Because viral infections such as mumps, influenza, adenovirus, coxsackie, and Epstein-Barr and cytomegalovirus viruses are known environmental triggers for subacute thyroiditis, from a biological standpoint it is not surprising that one of the manifestations of COVID-19 could be an episode of thyroiditis.
In a recent study, about 20% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 and no previous thyroid disease were found to have elevated serum free T4 concentrations in association with decreased (but not suppressed) serum TSH concentrations and a negative antibody panel that included TSH receptor, antithyroglobulin, and TPO antibodies.
The administration of heparin, which can displace T4 from binding proteins, could play a role in these observations. However, these findings are more consistent with a diagnosis of mild hyperthyroidism possibly due to thyroid inflammation and related destructive thyroiditis due to systemic immune activation. As such, management of these patients should focus on controlling adrenergic symptoms rather than initiating antithyroid drugs.
Similarly, another study found that a substantial portion (15%) of patients with COVID-19 requiring ICU care had low TSH concentrations. However, the mean serum free T4 concentrations were not significantly different between ICU patients with and without COVID-19. The biochemical abnormalities and clinical presentation were not typical of either subacute thyroiditis or nonthyroidal illness, also known as euthyroid sick syndrome.
Multiple mechanisms may contribute to the development of euthyroid sick syndrome in the critical care setting, including alterations in TSH secretion, peripheral 5'-deiodination of T4 to T3, thyroid hormone binding to plasma proteins, transport of thyroid hormone in peripheral tissues, and thyroid hormone receptor activity. Currently available data do not support a clear benefit of treatment with thyroid hormones in euthyroid sick syndrome; ongoing clinical trials are focusing on new management strategies to explore whether restoration of normal serum thyroid hormone concentrations improves patient prognosis and clinical outcomes.
Further studies are needed to determine whether it is appropriate to increase thyroid function testing in critically ill patients with COVID-19. While awaiting these data, clinical judgement is required; symptoms of hypothyroidism or thyrotoxicosis in patients with COVID-19 should prompt thyroid function testing.
There is no evidence to date that patients with existing autoimmune thyroid disease are more susceptible to contracting viral illnesses, including infection with SARS-CoV-2, or that they are at higher risk of developing more severe COVID-19 disease. There is also no evidence to suggest increased risk for COVID-19 in poorly controlled thyroid disease, but patients with uncontrolled thyroid dysfunction (especially hyperthyroidism) may be at higher risk for complications of overt thyrotoxicosis and thyroid storm triggered by infection. Hence, patients should continue their antithyroid medications to decrease this risk.
We must educate patients about the potential complications of severe neutropenia, the signs and symptoms of agranulocytosis that may occur with antithyroid medications, and the need for urgent medical evaluation. Because symptoms of neutropenia (sore throat, mouth ulceration, fever, and flu-like illness) may overlap with symptoms of COVID-19 (fever, new continuous cough, and flu-like illness), clinical differentiation can be challenging. The best suggested approach is to stop the medication and obtain a complete blood panel to evaluate for neutrophil count. Test for COVID-19 if indicated, as lymphopenia and thrombocytopenia are seen in COVID-19 and are less likely to be related to antithyroid drugs.
After symptom resolution, antithyroid drugs can be resumed at a lower dose, or an alternative drug may be considered. If symptoms recur after reinitiation of the drug, alternative treatments for hyperthyroidism, such as radioactive iodine ablation or surgery, should be considered.
There are no suggested changes for the diagnosis and treatment of hypothyroidism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Advise patients to continue the same form and dosage of thyroid hormone replacement therapy. Thyroid function testing with TSH and FT4 levels is indicated if a patient reports significant change in hypothyroidism-related symptoms, such as worsening fatigue or weight changes, in order to adjust medication if needed. For pregnant patients, the dose of levothyroxine should be titrated to achieve the usual trimester-specific TSH targets.
In conclusion, there are no data available to suggest that patients with preexisting thyroid conditions are at higher risk for COVID-19 or its complications. Advise patients to continue their current treatment for their underlying thyroid condition but to be vigilant about reporting new symptoms. In patients severely affected by COVID-19, changes in thyroid function may be transient and related to thyroiditis or euthyroid sick syndrome, but specific thyroid-related damage and sequelae may also occur, requiring further investigation.
Physician and patient resources on COVID-19 and the thyroid are available on the American Thyroid Association website.
Spyridoula Maraka, MD, MS, is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), program director of the UAMS Endocrinology fellowship program, and staff physician at the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System. She has published more than 50 articles in high-impact journals, has received multiple awards and invitations to present at national and international conferences, and serves on committees of several professional organizations.
Soumya Thumma, MD, is a senior UAMS clinicalfellow in endocrinology with clinical practice interest in thyroidology. She has worked on promoting patient education and serves on national committees of two professional organizations.
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Engaging with nature and just getting outside help in the age of COVID-19 – Great Lakes Echo
Sevar Yaldo gets outdoors to relief the stress of an exam. Image: Lillian Young.
By Capital News Service
Fresh from what was conceivably the most important exam of his life, aspiring physician Sevar Yaldo sat on a Bailey Park bench for some fresh air in East Lansing.
Having spent the majority of the pandemic indoors preparing for the Medical College Admission Test, Yaldo understands and literally studied the psychological importance of getting outdoors during quarantine.
The slightest bit of fresh air can go such a long way in improving his thoughts, relationships and self-esteem, Yaldo said. Whenever I have a chance to not be inside, I will be outside, whether Im walking or running.
We often hear about how crucial it is to eat our greens. But rarely do we talk about the importance of seeing green.
Relationships with nature have diminished in an increasingly artificial world. Depression and obesity are reaching unprecedented levels.
While there are a host of treatments including medication and therapy regimens mitigating such problems may be simpler.
Anne Bretton enjoys birdwatching at Harris Nature Center in Okemos: Image: Yue Jiang.
I encourage patients with all kinds of mental health conditions be it anxiety, depression, or whatever else to get outside. Ill suggest that they walk to my office rather than driving there, said Okemos psychologist Pamella Montgomery. By the time they arrive, they always report feeling significantly better.
Montgomery has long advocated spending time outdoors.
I worked and went to graduate school full time with a 30-hour-a week internship on the side, but I still managed to run outdoors. To this day, regardless of the weather, I run outside, Montgomery said. Being outdoors and in nature is crucial to our being. Were creatures that need to interact with nature.
Psychologically, she said, Going outside gets you out of your indoor rut. It makes you stop and think about things, which you dont do sitting in front of the TV or computer.
Paul Smith of Ann Arbor drove about 1 hours to go rock-climbing at Oak Park in Grand Ledge.
This is a sport you cant really do by yourself, which I know is very insane during our COVID times, said Smith, who was with a group of people at the Ledges.
Since the start of the pandemic, Smith said hes spent less time outside. With winter coming, hes trying to get outside more.
In addition to it being physically healthy, being outdoors has a good mental impact, he said. If youre just inside all the time, I definitely find it causes a lot of drain and wear on your emotions.
Kobe is out for a morning walk in Westland. Image: Kalah Harris.
In the age of COVID-19, getting fresh air takes on new meaning.
Those fortunate enough to be near parks and trails can safely socially distance.
When Craig Dennis needs to kill time, he hits a nature trail in East Lansings Harrison Meadows Park. It gave me a purpose to go out and exercise and feel good, he said.
Outdoor activities are bustling as people have taken to hiking, walking dogs, biking and running because indoor activities remain limited. Dennis said hes seen coronavirus-wary older neighbors get outside more.
Speaking of dogs, one chilly morning in Westland, Kobe, with tongue hanging low was out for a walk with owner Jacquis Smith.
I shortened the time of how much time I spend outside. Ive noticed people arent wearing their mask when they are walking their dogs, but I always have mine on, Smith said,
Michigan State University education professor David Stroupe walks a trail alongside the Red Cedar River on campus.
I try to go in the woods and hear the birds, Stroupe said.
Michigan State professor David Stroupe hikes near the Red Cedar River. Image: Chioma Lewis
Stroupe was already going on regular walks before COVID 19 but has noticed more animals since the pandemic began. I think theyre more bold.
He doesnt bring technology. Being unplugged makes the walk more enjoyable. Since were on computers a lot now, I try and leave my phone at home, he said.
Green, leafy environments can boost a persons mood, speed up brain activity and improve overall health, according to research from the Department of Psychology at Ottawas Carleton University.
And like an all-natural ventilation system, trees and plants encountered on nature walks produce oxygen and scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
More sunshine helps. Direct sunlight isnt enough to wipe out COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, but can help produce vitamin D to gear up the immune system to fight infectious disease.
Sunlight also causes the brain to produce the hormone serotonin, which can heighten happiness.
Lansing resident Driscilla Tettey has been spending more time outdoors. Image: Audrey Porter.
On a rainy recent evening, the weather and COVID-19 didnt stop the daily busy world, especially not for Lansing resident Driscilla Tettey, whod been running errands all day.
Ive been spending more time outside now during the pandemicbecause we were social distancing and in isolation. We had to be indoors all the time, and that can take a toll on your mental health, so definitely spending more time outside helped boost my mental health and my overall well-being, Tettey said.
Anne Breton, who has been coming to the Harris Nature Center in Okemos for more than 20 years, said its been a gift to have parks in Meridian Township during this COVID-19 era.
We can walk with friends at a social distance,she said after finishing a birdwatching trip in the park.
Shes seen an uptick in the number of people of all ages using the park and said she hopes some who hadnt been enjoying the outdoors will make that a part of their lives, even after they can again go to movies.
Mckenzie Dickens takes a break from walking around the Michigan State Botanical Gardens. Image: Anne Hooper.
Mckenzie Dickens walks barefoot through rows of plants in the MSU Botanical Gardens. Sitting on the grass, crossing his legs and tucking his dreadlocks into a bandana, he said time outdoors is precious, especially in the face of COVID-19.
Theres a point when watching Netflix gets tiresome.Thankfully, though, Gov. (Gretchen) Whitmer kept state parks open so people can visit them, Dickens said of Michigans early lockdown.
For all the harm this pandemic has caused, maybe it has a silver lining. Maybe it can teach everyone how to be outside again, he said.
And its not only people in Michigan who see a silver lining.
Before the pandemic, getting outdoors wasnt easy for Bernard Crawford, an advertising student at Florida Atlantic University. With more time on his hands, being outside is the new highlight of his day.
Bernard Crawford takes a stroll in Boca Raton, Florida. Image: Lea Mitchell.
On an afternoon stroll in the 90-degree weather along Boca Raton streets, Crawford said hes felt a greater sense of connection with nature and is outdoors much of the day.
Being a full-time student, I never had the chance to get out and enjoy Gods beautiful creation. Im upset I was always inside playing video games before, he said.
This story was reported and written by Kathleen Fitch, Kalah Harris, Anne Hooper, Yue Jiang, Chioma Lewis, Lea Mitchell, Claire Moore, Audrey Porter and Lillian Young, and edited by Jiang and Lewis.
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Engaging with nature and just getting outside help in the age of COVID-19 - Great Lakes Echo
Chantix may be the most effective way to quit smoking here’s how it works – Insider – INSIDER
Chantix, the brand name version of a drug called varenicline, is a nicotine-free prescription pill used to help people quit smoking gradually. Unlike nicotine replacement therapies, varenicline blocks the brain from getting pleasure due to nicotine.
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. This is likely because it's so difficult to quit, thanks to how nicotine affects the brain.
When you smoke, nicotine attaches to receptors located in the brain's reward center. This causes those receptors to release dopamine, a hormone that elicits feelings of pleasure. Once that dopamine rush wears off, you begin to crave nicotine, says Panagis Galiatsatos, MD, the director of the Tobacco Treatment Clinic at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Chantix helps break this nicotine addiction in two ways:
When smoking becomes an addiction, your brain associates certain smells, locations, or emotions with the action. This makes you want to smoke when you're in certain situations, even if your brain isn't in need of a dopamine rush, says Galiatsatos.
If you smoke on Chantix, not only will it be unsatisfying, but it will also break the association between specific circumstances and the need to smoke.
"If you try to smoke [while on Chantix], it won't be successful," says Galiatsatos. "Varenicline also keeps [higher] dopamine [levels] in the brain, satisfying pleasure sensors without nicotine, and cuts cravings."
Chantix is available by prescription only and is usually prescribed for 12 weeks. It's important to speak with your healthcare provider to determine the right dosage and plan for you.
There are three proven ways you can use Chantix to quit smoking:
How long quitting takes will depend largely, but not solely, on your smoking habit. "Some patients can quit immediately but others need to be on it for longer than 12 weeks. Guidelines are fine but they are not rules, you have to adapt treatment to the patient," Galiatsatos says.
In the United Kingdom, one in four people who quit smoking were using Chantix.
A 2020 report found that experts specializing in tobacco addiction recommended that those who wish to quit smoking take varenicline over all other treatment options. The experts also recommended pairing Chantix with a nicotine patch.
A 2016 review also found that varenicline is "the most effective single-use agent for treating tobacco addiction." Two large trial studies compared smokers who took either varenicline, bupropion, or a placebo for 12 weeks. It found that 44% of those in the varenicline group had successfully quit smoking four weeks after they completed their 12-week dose, compared to 30% in the bupropion group and 18% in the placebo.
The study also found that the efficacy of varenicline is improved when paired with bupropion an antidepressant and nicotine replacement therapies such as gum, patches, or lozenges.
While there are side effects to be aware of when taking Chantix, Galiatsatos says that the drug poses no more of a risk than commonly used antidepressants. However, some people, especially those with a history of mental illness, may experience serious adverse side effects, such as:
If you experience any of these symptoms, stop taking Chantix immediately and see your doctor.
Chantix works by delivering a one-two punch to smoking: It blocks nicotine from reaching receptors in the brain, which breaks the pleasure cycle of habitual smoking, and prevents cravings by releasing small amounts of dopamine.
Studies show that Chantix is particularly effective when paired with nicotine replacement therapies such as a nicotine patch. However, those on Chantix should pay close attention to any adverse side effects, especially mood changes, and check-in with your doctor if you experience them.
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Chantix may be the most effective way to quit smoking here's how it works - Insider - INSIDER
Coronavirus stimulus talks break down: There will be no stimulus until after the election – Poynter
Covering COVID-19 is a daily Poynter briefing of story ideas about the coronavirus and other timely topics for journalists, written by senior faculty Al Tompkins. Sign up here to have it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump said the country needs and wants a second stimulus bill. But on Tuesday, President Trump called off any chance of a stimulus bill until after the November election.
Trump says he is asking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to spend his energy confirming Trumps Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, and not negotiate further with Democrats, who wanted $2.6 trillion in stimulus relief. The White House had offered $1.6 trillion.
Millions of unemployed Americans hoped to get another round of enhanced unemployment benefits. Even more Americans might have gotten a stimulus check, as they did in the spring.
The presidents order came just hours after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned the nations economic recovery could falter without more federal stimulus. The Associated Press reported:
Powell said Tuesday that the risks of Congress pouring too much stimulus into the economy are far lower than the risk of not doing enough. Although government spending is adding to an already sky-high federal budget, lawmakers should act, Powell argued.
The presidents announcement came just before the stock market closed Tuesday, but in the short period left in the trading day, the Dow dropped 400 points.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped minutes after the president called off talks with Democrats
Airlines, in particular, saw a selloff. Airlines had said they could reverse some of the more than 35,000 layoffs they announced last week if Congress could approve a stimulus bill.
The Senate has a two-week hold on floor sessions after three GOP senators tested positive for COVID-19. Many experts predict the election will not be settled for days or even longer after Election Day, so it is difficult to imagine Congress being able to successfully take on a multi-trillion-dollar relief package in the midst of disruption, particularly if the balance of power changes in the election.
Some business analysts Tuesday evening offered the notion that the president might be bluffing and will reengage in talks.
Air travel is going to be more complicated this year. Beyond all of the COVID-19 testing and mask-wearing, there are going to be a lot fewer flights. Southwest Airlines, for example, says it will have 90,000 fewer flights in November and December. The Dallas Morning News reported:
Southwest cut 38,000 flights from its November plans, or about 36% of all trips, according to Dallas-based Airline Data Inc. The carrier also cut 55,000 flights for December, nearly half of its schedule.
American Airlines announced this week it was cutting holiday season flights, too. American removed 86,000 flights, almost half of its normal schedule, from the November calendar.
Boeing said this week that the pandemic will hurt jet sales for more than a decade.
Six states are now in the process of reversing orders that reopened public gatherings, businesses and schools. Four more have paused further reopenings for now.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers says starting Thursday morning, the state will reimpose restrictions on the size of indoor gatherings. Evers said, Were in a crisis right now and need to immediately change our behavior to save lives.
Wisconsin has four of the top 10 cities on The New York Times calculation of average daily cases compared to population over the last two weeks.
New polling from Axios/Ipsos finds about one in five Americans say President Trumps COVID-19 diagnosis makes them more likely to wear a mask and stay six feet away from other people.
(Ipsos)
Another poll, this one from Long Island University, finds that one in 10 Americans do not believe masks help prevent COVID-19 infections.
Journalists have repeatedly pointed out two COVID-19 risk factors that make President Trump more vulnerable to the virus. First is his age. The other is that he is obese.
What does obesity have to do with COVID-19 risk? It is a serious question since about 42% of American adults are obese.
Since the beginning of this pandemic, dozens of studies have shown obesity to be a key factor in who is likely to get the sickest from the virus. In one study involving 399,000 patients, People with obesity who contracted SARS-CoV-2 were 113% more likely than people of healthy weight to land in the hospital, 74% more likely to be admitted to an ICU, and 48% more likely to die.
One study of New York City COVID-19 cases found:
Being an individual with obesity increases the odds of COVID19 patients being hospitalized. Among diagnosed COVID19 patients, the prevalence of individuals with obesity in hospitalized patients was much higher than that in non-hospitalized patients. For example, a report that included 5700 patients with obesity in New York City showed that 41.7% of COVID19 hospitalized patients were individuals with obesity, whereas the average prevalence of individuals with obesity in New York City was 22.0%.
Another study of nearly 17,000 COVID hospitalized patients in the United States found 77% of those patients were either overweight or obese.
In fact, obesity is the No. 1 risk factor for developing a severe case of COVID-19 in people under the age of 55, warns Dr. Kyle Stephens, weight loss surgeon at Houston Methodist Hospital. Dr. Stephens says:
What we know historically from the influenza, tetanus and hepatitis B vaccines is that people who are obese seem to benefit less from vaccination than people who are at a healthy weight.
He adds that while researchers do not know exactly why vaccines do not work as well on obese people, it seems to have something to do with a chronic state of inflammation associated with obesity that interferes with a vaccines ability to do its work.
And obese patients are more likely to have other underlying health issues including diabetes, heart disease and lung disease which makes it more difficult to fight an invading virus.
Science Magazine described something physicians refer to as sticky blood that is associated with obesity:
For starters, the blood of people with obesity has an increased tendency to clot an especially grave risk during an infection that, when severe, independently peppers the small vessels of the lungs with clots. In healthy people, the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels are normally saying to the surrounding blood: Dont clot, says Beverley Hunt, a physician-scientist whos an expert in blood clotting at Guys and St. Thomas hospitals in London. But we think that signaling is being changed by COVID, Hunt says, because the virus injures endothelial cells, which respond to the insult by activating the coagulation system.
Add obesity to the mix, and the clotting risk shoots up. In COVID-19 patients with obesity, Hunt says, Youve got such sticky blood, oh my the stickiest blood I have ever seen in all my years of practice.
For a more detailed explainer on some of the theories about the connections between obesity and COVID-19, go to this study and flip down to Section 4.
I am not sure how well this claim would sit with the Food and Drug Administration if a mattress or pillow company tried to claim their product fights COVID-19. But National Geographic ran an interesting piece quoting Monika Haack, a psychoneuroimmunologist at Harvard Medical School, as saying, We have a lot of evidence that if you have an adequate amount of sleep, you definitely can help to prevent or fight any kind of infection.
When you do not get enough sleep, the body can reduce antibody responses to hepatitis A, hepatitis B and H1N1 swine flu vaccines. Researchers say one sleepless night might make a difference.
The story says:
Growing evidence also shows that sleep deprivation impairs a persons ability to fight off a disease once they are infected. In a number of studies, people with sleep disorders, people who catch less than five or six hours of shut-eye per night, and people with low levels of sleep efficiency (the percentage of time spent snoozing during the night) report higher rates of respiratory illnesses, head colds, and related ills.
In a 2019 study, Haack and colleagues listed more than three dozen ways that various immune-system players vary based on sleep changes. For instance, T cells are part of the immune system and are often described as the soldiers that fight infections. During sleep, according to studies by German researchers, T cells normally move out of the blood and likely into lymph nodes, where they conduct surveillance for invading pathogens, Haack says. But just one night of sleep deprivation, studies show, is enough to keep T cells circulating in the blood, making them less able to learn about and respond to invading viruses. When the body is denied sleep, T cells also become less able to interact with virus-infected cells, reducing their power to fight the infection.
Cytokines, a category of inflammatory molecules connected to the pandemic, are also a major focus of research on sleep and immunity. Pro-inflammatory cytokines normally help organize an immune response to infections, triggering other cells to come fight, says Sheldon Cohen, a psychoneuroimmunologist at Carnegie Mellon University. But the production of too many of these molecules adds up to a cytokine storm, an overreaction associated with severe and fatal cases of COVID-19. In studies of colds and influenza, infected people with poor sleep show worse symptoms, probably because elevated levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines interfere with T cells and other immune cells.
The National Geographic story points to a fascinating study from the University of California, San Francisco, and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh that took 164 healthy adults and squirted the virus connected with the common cold up their noses. The adults who slept less than six hours a night before being infected were more than four times more likely to get sick.
Other evidence shows that when you do not get enough sleep, you are more likely to make bad decisions that may include not adequately protecting yourself from viral hazards.
The Sleep Foundation says the pandemic is interrupting our sleep, even when we try to get enough rest. Worry, anxiety and working on computers late in the day before you go to bed are all sleep-killers. The blue light from screens can suppress the natural production of melatonin, a hormone that the body makes to help us sleep, the Sleep Foundation says.
Other ways the pandemic may be messing with your sleep:
It can be difficult to adjust to a new daily schedule or lack of a schedule.
Keeping track of the time, and even the day, can be hard without typical time anchors like dropping kids at school, arriving at the office, attending recurring social events, or going to the gym.
Being stuck at home, especially if it has low levels of natural light, may reduce light-based cues for wakefulness and sleep, known as zeitgebers, which are crucial to our circadian rhythm.
If you are not working at the moment or your weekly hours have been decreased due to COVID-19, you may be tempted to oversleep each morning. Sleeping more than seven to eight hours per night can make waking up on time much more difficult, even if you use an alarm. Oversleepers may also feel groggy, irritable and unfocused throughout the day.
Eddie Van Halen died, which just adds to the pain.
Joint Chiefs of Staff in quarantine,stock market tanks, stimulus talks collapse, learning to live with Covid, East Wing staff in full PPE, Pence doesnt want Plexiglas at debate. its barely noon on the West Coast!
Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) October 6, 2020
Dan Zak, White House correspondent for The Washington Post, documented a moment you never thought you would see. A guy in a hazmat suit walked through the West Wing press area with a sanitizing wand.
This is going on at the White House today. (This is the press area.) Video by @jabinbotsford. pic.twitter.com/46nFvIeKHs
Dan Zak (@MrDanZak) October 6, 2020
Well be back tomorrow with a new edition of Covering COVID-19. Sign up hereto get it delivered right to your inbox.
Al Tompkins is senior faculty at Poynter. He can be reached at atompkins@poynter.org or on Twitter, @atompkins.
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Coronavirus stimulus talks break down: There will be no stimulus until after the election - Poynter
POTUS being treated with antibody cocktail, according to letter from his physician – WCBD News 2
WASHINGTON, D.C. (WCBD) Dr. Sean P. Conley, Physician to the President, on Friday announced that President Donald Trump is receiving treatment for COVID-19 after testing positive for the virus early Friday morning.
Conley said that POTUS received a single 8-gram dose of Regenerons polyclonal antibody cocktail via infusion.
President Trump is also taking zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin, and a daily aspirin, according to the letter. It is unclear whether this regiment is related to his COVID-19 diagnosis.
According to the National Institutes of Health, zinc is a natural mineral and immunity booster often used to reduce the severity and duration of cold symptoms.
Vitamin D, most often associated with sunlight, may be used for the reduction of inflammation as well as modulation of such processes as cell growth, neuromuscular and immune function, and glucose metabolism, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Famotidine is a heartburn relief and acid-reducing drug.
Melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone often taken as a sleep aid.
Aspirin is taken for a variety of reasons. It can serve as an anti-inflammatory, fever reducer, pain reliever, and blood thinner.
Despite feeling fatigued, Conely reports that the President is in good spirits.
First Lady Melania Trump also tested positive and is experiencing mild symptoms as well. There is no word on whether the First Lady has received treatment.
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POTUS being treated with antibody cocktail, according to letter from his physician - WCBD News 2
Trump’s doctors are targeting a ‘sweet spot’ in fighting COVID-19 by using experimental treatments early, but – Business Insider India
President Donald Trump has now received two experimental treatments for his coronavirus infection, a combination that doctors say is logical but untested.
After being flown to Walter Reed Medical Center, President Donald Trump received an IV infusion of the antiviral drug remdesivir, the White House physician said Friday night. He previously got a dose of an experimental antibody cocktail.
After testing positive for the coronavirus, Trump had a fever, a mild cough, nasal congestion, and fatigue, Conley said. The timeline on when exactly the president tested positive was not immediately clear, but Conley said the COVID-19 diagnosis was confirmed via testing on Thursday.
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Shortly after Conley provided an update on Trump's health Saturday, an anonymous source familiar with the president's health appeared to contradict the physician's assessment.
"The thought is if you can reduce the viral burden with an antiviral early on, then maybe the progression will be halted in some way," Dr. Mangala Narasimhan, an intensive care doctor who oversees ICU care at Northwell Health, told Business Insider on Saturday.
"Given the fact he's 74, a male, and obese, I think he's in a higher-risk category, so his chances of getting sick from this are higher," she added. "They are trying to prevent that from happening"
The antibody treatment is made by the biotech company Regeneron and is not approved by the FDA. The experimental treatment aims to boost the body's immune response to help in fighting the virus.
Read more: Trump just received Regeneron's experimental COVID-19 treatment. Here's the inside story of the biotech and its 2 billionaire founders.
"We are clearly in a data-free zone right here," Dr. Taison Bell, an infectious-disease and critical-care physician at the University of Virginia's medical center told Business Insider on Saturday. "What his medical team is doing is trying what they can. The more we learn about these different combinations, the more we'll be informed. Right now, it's kind of like we're driving in the dark."
"It's right at that cusp where someone is sick or starting to get sick, but they aren't quite super sick," said Bell, who was a principal investigator for a National Institutes of Health trial that tested remdesivir.
Read more: Trump got a dose of Regeneron's experimental coronavirus treatment. Here's how the biotech and 8 others are racing to develop new ways to fight COVID-19.
Both physicians emphasized the lack of publicly available, detailed information on Trump's health.
Bell and Narasimhan both said there is no reason to not believe the health reports are accurate.
A possible sign that Trump's condition is worsening would be if he begins to receive steroids, the doctors said.
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Trump's doctors are targeting a 'sweet spot' in fighting COVID-19 by using experimental treatments early, but - Business Insider India