When medicine is practiced as a team, who gets to be the quarterback? For diabetes and heart disease cardiologists believe they are the logical choice. Primary care physicians, oddly enough, disagree.
Disease
Big Data can find patterns in our behavior that may be too subtle or occur over too long a period for us to notice. Those patterns are used every day to encourage more consumption, but it seems they might also help us identify dementia before it comes to our family's or medical attention.
Influenza, commonly known as the flu, is more than a bad cold. Seasonal outbreaks cause not only tremendous misery but huge numbers of hospital admissions and fatalities. Although the "holy grail" – a universal flu vaccine that recognizes all strains, including newly-arising ones – is not yet available, this does not mean that you should not get the seasonal vaccine. You should, and soon.
Is leptospirosis, an infection from a bacterium that's transmitted through contact with urine, on the rise among dogs in Utah and Colorado, as headlines declare? Possibly. Maybe an optional leptospirosis shot for the pooch isn't a bad idea.
As our population ages and our medical care improves, we have increasing numbers of frail patients. The frail require gentler, longer, and frequently more expensive care. A new study looks at these outcomes.
Vaxart, a biopharmaceutical company, is working on a vaccine for the dreaded norovirus. The company just released its Phase Ib results. Did it work? Our lips are sealed. But here are some thoughts on its chances for success.
Antibiotic resistance is spotty. If you are hospitalized in New York and you acquire a Gram-negative infection in the hospital, there is a reasonable chance it will be caused by a highly resistant pathogen. If you go to a hospital in New Hampshire or Vermont, there is almost no chance for that to happen. ACSH advisor Dr. David Shlaes explains.
In 2017, ACSH interviewed Dr. Harvey Friedman (pictured) from the Infectious Disease Division of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. We discussed his group's prophylactic herpes vaccine. The animal data generated since then have been eye-opening, and the group is preparing for human clinical trials. If it succeeds it would be the first successful herpes vaccine in 100 years of research.
While we often have good information on what makes a population healthy, it's difficult to translate those recommendations to the patient sitting before us. A new study suggests we look at the diversity of outcomes -- or the heterogenicity -- differently.
A new NBC News story warns us about the dangers of this year's flu. Although trite, the warning is at least reasonable. Until it isn't. Just another lame headline. Good for a scare and nothing else.
Mosquitoes suck, both literally and figuratively. No other animal on Earth is responsible for more human deaths than the lowly mosquito. The mosquito-borne virus that causes EEE (or Triple E) is the latest to cause public concern. Here's what you need to know about it.
Some medical conditions are especially frustrating to physicians. That's because they lack not only effective treatments but even a reliable means of diagnosis. One of the most common is variously known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). Dr. Henry Miller will explain it to you (if you're not too tired to read it).