Category: Health

Incandescents Better than LEDs at Allowing a Good Night’s Sleep

(p. D6) Studies have shown that such light, especially from the blue part of the spectrum, inhibits the body’s production of melatonin, a hormone that helps people fall asleep.
. . .
Devices such as smartphones and tablets are often illuminated by light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, that tend to emit more blue light than incandescent products.

For the full story, see:
KATE GALBRAITH. “WIRED WELL; Can Orange Glasses Help You Sleep Better?” The New York Times (Tues., APRIL 7, 2015): D6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “WIRED WELL; Can Orange Glasses Help You Sleep Better?”)

Brin: Regulatory Burden Discourages Health Entrepreneurs

(p. A13) Earlier this month, at a private conference for the CEOs of his portfolio companies, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla interviewed Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, asking them if the company might jump into health care. “It’s just a painful business to be in,” Mr. Brin replied, later noting that “the regulatory burden in the U.S. is so high that I think it would dissuade a lot of entrepreneurs.”
Mr. Brin is right. As a neurosurgeon-scientist and entrepreneur who co-founded a bioelectronic medicine company that deploys implantable technology to supplant drugs, I wish he were wrong.
. . .
. . . entrepreneurs should be allowed to carve out their own turf and let patients choose their own level of risk.
Consider the case of Goran Ostovich, a burly, 47-year-old truck driver from Mostar, Bosnia. Mr. Ostovich has suffered from long-standing rheumatoid arthritis and needed near-permanent bed rest. With his hands and wrists swollen and aching, he could no longer hold on to a wheel or even play with his small children. He tried a variety of medications. None worked.
When I met Goran at his doctor’s office in 2012, however, he didn’t seem at all afflicted with the disease. That’s because, one year earlier, he had been offered the opportunity to be the first participant in a clinical trial of a new therapy based on my invention. He received a bioelectronic implant and rapidly improved.
. . .
Since news of this clinical trial’s success became public, people from all over the U.S. stricken with rheumatoid arthritis have emailed, called and sent letters pressing for their shot at potentially effective–but not yet FDA-approved–treatments.
. . .
Some patients are very willing to take a calculated risk, . . .

For the full commentary, see:
KEVIN J. TRACEY. “Let Patients Decide How Much Risk They’ll Take; Take a tip from Sergey Brin: The health-care regulatory burden stops entrepreneurs from getting into the game.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., July 28, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 27, 2014, and has the title “Let Patients Decide How Much Risk They’ll Take; Take a tip from Sergey Brin: The health-care regulatory burden stops entrepreneurs from getting into the game.”)

How a Chavista Uses Her Chávez T-Shirt

(p. A1) CARACAS, Venezuela — Mary Noriega heard there would be chicken.
She hated being herded “like cattle,” she said, standing for hours in a line of more than 1,500 people hoping to buy food, as soldiers with side arms checked identification cards to make sure no one tried to buy basic items more than once or twice a week.
But Ms. Noriega, a laboratory assistant with three children, said she had no choice, ticking off the inventory in her depleted refrigerator: coffee and corn flour. Things had gotten so bad, she said, that she had begun bartering with neighbors to put food on the table.
“We always knew that this year would start badly, but I think this is super bad,” Ms. Noriega said.
Venezuelans have put up with shortages and long lines for years. But as the price of oil, the country’s main export, has plunged, the situation has grown so dire that the government has sent troops to patrol huge lines snaking for blocks. Some states have barred people from waiting outside stores overnight, and government officials are posted near entrances, ready to arrest shoppers who cheat the rationing system.
. . .
One of the nation’s most prestigious public hospitals shut down its heart surgery unit for weeks (p. A12) because of shortages of medical supplies. Some drugs have been out of stock for months, and at least one clinic performed heart operations only by smuggling in a vital drug from the United States. Diapers are so coveted that some shoppers carry the birth certificates of their children in case stores demand them.
. . .
The shortages and inflation present another round of political challenges for President Nicolás Maduro, who has vowed to continue the Socialist-inspired revolution begun by his predecessor, the charismatic leftist Hugo Chávez.
“I’ve always been a Chavista,” said Ms. Noriega, using a term for a loyal Chávez supporter. But “the other day, I found a Chávez T-shirt I’d kept, and I threw it on the ground and stamped on it, and then I used it to clean the floor. I was so angry. I don’t know if this is his fault or not, but he died and left us here, and things have been going from bad to worse.”

For the full commentary, see:
WILLIAM NEUMAN. “Oil Cash Waning, Venezuelan Shelves Lie Bare.” The New York Times (Fri., JAN. 30, 2015): A1 & A12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JAN. 29, 2015.)

How Air Conditioning Can Improve Metabolism

(p. 14) Sleep is essential for good health, as we all know. But a new study hints that there may be an easy but unrealized way to augment its virtues: lower the thermostat. Cooler bedrooms could subtly transform a person’s stores of brown fat — what has lately come to be thought of as “good fat” — and consequently alter energy expenditure and metabolic health, even into daylight hours.
. . .
“These were all healthy young men to start with,” . . . [senior author Francesco S. Celi] says, “but just by sleeping in a colder room, they gained metabolic advantages” that could, over time, he says, lessen their risk for diabetes and other metabolic problems. The men also burned a few more calories throughout the day when their bedroom was chillier (although not enough to result in weight loss after four weeks).
. . .
The message of these findings, Celi says, is that you can almost effortlessly tweak your metabolic health by turning down the bedroom thermostat a few degrees. His own bedroom is moderately chilled, as is his office — which has an added benefit: It “keeps meetings short.”

For the full story, see:
GRETCHEN REYNOLDS. “Let’s Cool It in the Bedroom.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., JULY 20, 2014): 14.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 17, 2014.)

The academic paper discussed above, is:
Lee, Paul, Sheila Smith, Joyce Linderman, Amber B. Courville, Robert J. Brychta, William Dieckmann, Charlotte D. Werner, Kong Y. Chen, and Francesco S. Celi. “Temperature-Acclimated Brown Adipose Tissue Modulates Insulin Sensitivity in Humans.” Diabetes 63, no. 11 (Nov. 2014): 3686-98.

Fishing with Mosquito Nets, Where Food Is the Binding Constraint

(p. 1) BANGWEULU WETLANDS, Zambia — Out here on the endless swamps, a harsh truth has been passed down from generation to generation: There is no fear but the fear of hunger.
With that always weighing on his mind, Mwewa Ndefi gets up at dawn, just as the first orange rays of sun are beginning to spear through the papyrus reeds, and starts to unclump a mosquito net.
Nets like his are widely considered a magic bullet against malaria — one of the cheapest and most effective ways to stop a disease that kills at least half a million Africans each year. But Mr. Ndefi and countless others are not using their mosquito nets as global health experts have intended.
Nobody in his hut, including his seven children, sleeps under a net at night. Instead, Mr. Ndefi has taken his family’s supply of anti-malaria nets and sewn them together into a gigantic sieve that he uses to drag the bottom of the swamp ponds, sweeping up all sorts of life: baby catfish, banded tilapia, tiny mouthbrooders, orange fish eggs, water bugs and the occasional green frog.
“I know it’s not right,” Mr. Ndefi said, “but without these nets, we wouldn’t eat.”
Across Africa, from the mud flats of Nigeria to the coral reefs off Mozambique, mosquito-net fishing is a growing problem, an unintended consequence of one of the biggest and most celebrated public health campaigns in recent years.
The nets have helped save millions of lives, but scientists worry about the collateral damage: Africa’s fish.
. . .
“The nets go straight out of the bag into the sea,” said Isabel Marques da Silva, a marine biologist at Universidade Lúrio in Mozambique. “That’s why the inci-(p. 10)dence for malaria here is so high. The people don’t use the mosquito nets for mosquitoes. They use them to fish.”
But the unsparing mesh, with holes smaller than mosquitoes, traps much more life than traditional fishing nets do. Scientists say that could imperil already stressed fish populations, a critical food source for millions of the world’s poorest people.
. . .
In many places, fish are dried for hours in direct sunlight on treated mosquito nets. Direct sunlight can break down the insecticide coating. Anthony Hay, an associate professor of environmental toxicology at Cornell University, said fish could absorb some of the toxins, leaving people to ingest them when they eat the fish.
“It’s just another one of these ‘white man’s burdens,’ ” Mr. Hay said, referring to William Easterly’s well-known book critical of foreign aid by the West. “We think we have a solution to everybody’s problems, and here’s an example of where we’re creating a new problem.”
. . .
For Mr. Ndefi, it is a simple, if painful, matter of choice. He knows all too well the dangers of malaria. His own toddler son, Junior, died of the disease four years ago. Junior used to always be there, standing outside his hut, when Mr. Ndefi came home from fishing.
Mr. Ndefi hopes his family can survive future bouts of the disease. But he knows his loved ones will not last long without food.

For the full story, see:
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN. “Meant to Keep Mosquitos Out, Nets Are Used to Haul Fish In.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., JAN. 25, 2015): 1 & 10.
(Note: ellipses are added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JAN. 24, 2015, and has the title “Meant to Keep Malaria Out, Mosquito Nets Are Used to Haul Fish In.”)

The book referenced by Professor Hay, is:
Easterly, William. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.

Regulations Reduce Biotech Innovation

(p. A15) Modern genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or GM, has been around since the 1970s. Yet with the notable exception of biopharmaceuticals–beginning with the marketing of human insulin in 1982 and now accounting for more than 20% of U.S. drug expenditures–genetic engineering has failed to realize anything approaching its potential for vertical progress.
The reason is plain: In the non-pharmaceutical sectors, federal regulators for years seemingly have done everything they can to prevent U.S. researchers and companies from employing genetic engineering to create the “next big thing.”
. . .
Regulatory disincentives are potent. It costs about $136 million to bring a genetically engineered crop plant to market. This is the primary reason more than 99% of such crop plants are those that are grown at huge scale: . . .
. . .
“Biopharming”–the once-promising biotechnology area that uses genetic engineering techniques to induce crops such as corn, tomatoes and tobacco to produce high concentrations of high-value pharmaceuticals (one of which is the Ebola drug, ZMapp)–is moribund because of the Agriculture Department’s extraordinary regulatory burdens. Thanks to EPA’s policies, which discriminate against organisms modified with the most precise and predictable techniques, the high hopes for genetically engineered “biorational” microbial pesticides and microorganisms to clean up toxic wastes have evaporated.

For the full commentary, see:
HENRY I. MILLER. “Regulators Put the Brakes On Biotech; Thanks to EPA, hopes have evaporated for genetically engineered microorganisms to clean up toxic wastes.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Jan. 14, 2015): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 13, 2015.)

Serendipitous Discovery that Titanium Fuses with Bone, Leads to Implants

(p. 24) Implants have been a major advance in dentistry, liberating millions of elderly people from painful, ill-fitting dentures, a diet of soft foods and the ignominy of a sneeze that sends false teeth flying out of the mouth. But addressing those problems was not Dr. Branemark’s initial intent.
At the start of his career, he was studying how blood flow affects bone healing.
In 1952, he and his team put optical devices encased in titanium into the lower legs of rabbits in order to study the healing process. When the research period ended and they went to remove the devices, they discovered to their surprise that the titanium had fused into the bone and could not be removed.
Dr. Branemark called the process “osseointegration,” and his research took a whole new direction as he realized that if the body could tolerate the long-term presence of titanium, the metal could be used to create an anchor for artificial teeth.
. . .
. . . , Dr. Branemark’s innovation was poorly received. After Dr. Branemark gave a lecture on his work in 1969, Dr. Albrektsson recalled, one of the senior academics of Swedish dentistry rose and referred to an article in Reader’s Digest describing Dr. Branemark’s research, adding, “This may prove to be a popular article, but I simply do not trust people who publish themselves in Reader’s Digest.”
As it happened, that senior academic was well known to the Swedish public for recommending a particular brand of toothpick. So Dr. Branemark immediately rose and struck back, saying, “And I don’t trust people who advertise themselves on the back of boxes of toothpicks.”

For the full story, see:
TAMAR LEWIN. “Per-Ingvar Branemark, Dental Innovator, Dies at 85.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., DEC. 28, 2014): 24.
(Note: ellipses are added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JAN. 27, 2015.)

Innovation and Jobs Destroyed by Tax

(p. 7A) I was humbled to receive in November the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at the White House for the development of life-changing medical devices. Traveling to our nation’s capital, I couldn’t help but think: There is no way I could have had the same impact if the tax on medical devices was in place when I got started over 50 years ago.
Simply put, the medical device tax is destroying job creation and innovation, and as a result, patient care is suffering.
. . .
Every day, I see firsthand the difficult choices innovators must make as a result of this ill-conceived tax. Perhaps worst of all, the medical device tax is helping cause a steep drop of investments in promising therapies.
. . .
It’s time to put an end to this disastrous policy so that medical device entrepreneurs can do what America does best — innovate.

For the full commentary, see:
Tom Fogarty. “Opposing View: Tax Destroys Jobs and Innovation.” USA Today (Mon., January 5, 2015): 7A.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 4, 2015, and has the title “Tax Destroys Jobs and Innovation: Opposing View.”)

“It’s My Life, and I Want the Chance to Save It”

(p. 18) LYONS, Colo. — Since May [2014], a string of states have passed laws that give critically ill patients the right to try medications that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Deemed “Right to Try” laws, they have passed quickly and often unanimously in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Louisiana and Arizona, bringing hope to patients like Larry Kutt, who lives in this small town at the edge of the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Kutt, 65, has an advanced blood cancer and says his state’s law could help him gain access to a therapy that several pharmaceutical companies are testing. “It’s my life,” he said, “and I want the chance to save it.”
The laws do not seem to have helped anyone obtain experimental medicine, as the drug companies are not interested in supplying unapproved medications outside the supervision of the F.D.A. But that seems almost beside the point to the Goldwater Institute, the libertarian group behind legislative efforts to pass Right to Try laws. “The goal is for terminally ill patients to have choice when it comes to end-stage disease,” said Craig Handzlik, state policy coordinator for the Goldwater Institute, based in Arizona. “Right to Try is something that will help terminally ill people all over the country.”

For the full story, see:
JULIE TURKEWITZ. “Patients Seek ‘Right to Try’ New Drugs.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., JAN. 11, 2015): 18.
(Note: the bracketed year is added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JAN. 10, 2015.)

Mandated Health Treatment Regulations Are Often Reversed

(p. A25) After spending nearly two decades in medicine, I am still amazed by how spare the evidence is on which we doctors base our medical decisions. Treatment guidelines, often accompanied by a de facto mandate, are frequently reversed.
Only a few years ago, for example, beta-blocker drugs were routinely recommended for almost all patients undergoing noncardiac surgery. Since then, research has shown that these drugs may significantly increase the risk of stroke at the time of surgery. I remember colleagues questioning the beta-blocker recommendation for certain patients and being admonished for not being “evidence-based.” I shudder to think how many patients were left disabled by strokes because of the blanket adoption of this standard.
What is in vogue today is often discarded tomorrow. Hormone replacement therapy for women after menopause is an example of a once widely implemented treatment that we have now largely abandoned. In September, in response to new research, the American College of Cardiology revoked a major recommendation on heart-attack treatment. “Science is not static but rather constantly evolving,” said its president, Patrick T. O’Gara, in explaining the decision.
. . .
Instead of being allowed to deliver “patient-centered” care, many physicians feel they are being co-opted by regulations. Some feel pressured to prescribe “mandated” treatment, even to frail older adults who may not benefit. Guidelines are supposed to assist and advise. But all too often, recommended care in certain situations becomes mandated care in all situations.

For the full commentary, see:
SANDEEP JAUHAR. “Don’t Homogenize Health Care.” The New York Times (Thurs., DEC. 11, 2014): A25.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date DEC. 10, 2014.)

Smart Phones Bring Power to the Patient

(p. A11) We instinctively reach for our smartphones when we need to take pictures, get directions, deposit checks or reserve a table. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and digital pioneer, thinks that they are ready to perform at least one more task: revolutionize health care. In “The Patient Will See You Now,” he argues that smartphones will democratize medicine by bringing data and control directly to the people.
The power of doctors, says Dr. Topol, “can be likened to that of religious leaders and nobility” in centuries past, when knowledge and authority belonged to a small elite. He notes that we’ve never seen “a discrete challenge to the medical profession” akin to Luther ‘s challenge to the Roman Catholic Church or democracy’s challenge to monarchy and despotism. “But we’ve not had the platform or landscape for that to be accomplished. Until now.” Smartphones, he says, enable a range of medical applications to move from the hospital to the home, and they shift medicine’s locus of control from doctor to patient.

For the full review, see:
DAVID A. SHAYWITZ. “BOOKSHELF; Doctor Android; In the same way that Luther challenged the Catholic Church, smartphones are poised to upend the medical profession.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Jan. 13, 2015): A11.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Jan. 12, 2015.)

The book under review is:
Topol, Eric. The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your Hands. New York: Basic Books, 2015.