News outlets are reporting that actress Christina Applegate has chosen to have a double mastectomy for breast cancer. She chose to do so after undergoing lumpectomies in the affected breast to remove early-stage cancer from one breast and after learning that she is at higher risk for breast cancer due to a mutation in a breast cancer gene, BRCA-1. However, for many early-stage breast cancer patients, mastectomy is not a recommended treatment, and it may not increase survival rates in the long term.
The article states that:
 Growing numbers of women are opting for double mastectomies, even when they have cancer only …read more

New Alzheimer’s Drug Discouraging but Moving Forward
Elan will go ahead with larger trials of its Alzheimer’s drug, bapineuzumab, despite disappointing results in smaller trials, little fanfare, and falling company stocks. A desperate need for Alzheimer’s treatments drives the drug forward, albeit with little hope.
FDA Orders a Prescription Label Change
For the first time since a 2007 law that allows the FDA to order a prescription label to be changed was put into place, the agency has told biotech. company, Amgen, to change labels on drugs used to treat chemotherapy-induced anemia to indicate the possibility of the drugs iworsening the effects of …read more

More Than 300 New Meds Being Developed to Combat Mental Illness
A new report shows that U.S. pharmaceutical companies are developing 300+ new medicines to help those suffering from the wide range of mental illnesses. These new developments, which are all in clinical trials or awaiting FDA approval, include 89 medicines targeting dementias. The report and drug descriptions can be found here.
New U.S. Drug Application Submitted for Type 2 Diabetes Treatment
Bristol-Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca have submitted a drug application for Onglyza (saxagliptin) to treat Type 2 Diabetes. The companies also simultaneously submitted a Marketing Authorization Application (MAA) to the European Medicines …read more

Health care and technology trends abound… that’s why we keep hearing about things such as electronic health records, Google Health, and Microsoft’s health vault project. But what about using video games to improve patients’ strength and balance as part of rehabilitative therapy? The Wii OT’s blog about ”Wiihab” (OT = Occupational Therapist, Wiihab = Wii + Rehab) discusses the ways that using Wii games such as Mario Kart can actually improve very specific issues for patients, such as problems with coordination and balance.
Is this a trend that we’re going to see more and more of — incorporating video games and more things …read more

Biotech Company Warns of Damaged Vials of Breast Cancer Medication
Genentech has sent a letter to health care providers warning that there have been complaints of broken/damaged vials of its Herceptin 440 mg and BWFI (bacteriostatic water for injection) diluent used to treat HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. The company states that broken/damaged vials carry a small risk of loss of sterility which could cause infections in patients.
Cholesterol Medications Get the Okay for Some Children
The American Academy of Pediatrics has released new recommendations for cholesterol screening and treatment in children. Screening for children over age 2 who have risk factors for heart …read more

The NYT reported this weekend on something that’s been bugging all of us in the oncology world for quite some time. How much should we pay for drugs that seem to slow down cancer’s advance, but that don’t prolong the life of a patient? Some of these drugs lengthen “progression free survival” or other markers (tumors may shrink, quality of life may be slightly better), but they do not eliminate the cancer, cure the patient, or add more time.
The article reports on bevacizumab (trade name Avastin), a drug used for metastatic colon, lung, and breast cancer that cuts back on …read more

That many racial health disparities exist is not news. What might be news, though, is that a new diabetes study found that disparities in treatment and outcomes may be due to physicians treating everyone the same rather than treating patients differently.
The study, published yesterday in the The Archives of Internal Medicine, looked at the treatment of 6,814 patients with diabetes. Adjusting for socioeconomic and other factors, the study found that the larger racial disparities (66%-75%) in the measured outcomes (LDL levels, blood pressure, and hemoglobin A1C) were found among patients receiving the same treatment from the same physician. Providing the …read more

Earlier this month an e-mail was sent by psychologist Dr. Norma Perez at Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center in Temple, Texas to staff suggesting that they “refrain from giving a diagnosis of [post traumatic stress disorder] PTSD straight out.” Dr. Perez suggested that a diagnosis of “adjustment disorder” be given instead. This didn’t upset me at first as there are many instances of any number of conditions being over-diagnosed, and maybe Dr. Perez just wants to be accurate. As I read on, though, a couple of things jumped out at me.
First, I learned from many sources that the level of …read more