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Thursday, October 2, 2014

US CDC Alerts Employees of Transportation Route Used by US Ebola Patient

The US CDC has announced the public transportation route used by the nation's first infected Ebola patient. Employee's have been alerted. Sunsequent to the announcement the US stock market reacted with a downward course of airline stock sales. Today's post is shared from thehill.com/
The first person to be diagnosed with the deadly Ebola virus in the U.S. flew on a pair of United Airlines' flights last month, the company confirmed on Wednesday.
The company said the Ebola-stricken passenger traveled on its Flight 951 from Brussels to Washington's Dulles International Airport and then connected to its Flight 822 to Dallas.
The man was diagnosed with Ebola after traveling from Liberia to the U.S.
U.S. officials had previously declined to unveil which airline the Ebola patient had traveled on, but United officials said Wednesday that he took two flights on one of their airplanes on Sept. 20.
"The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has informed us that the patient said he flew part of his trip on United. However, without consent, we cannot divulge a traveler’s identity," the company said in a statement.
CDC officials have said that there is no risk of catching the Ebola virus from passengers who shared commercial airline flights with the first confirmed U.S. patient.
United said Wednesday it agreed with the agency's declaration.
"The director of the CDC has stated there is 'zero risk of transmission' on any flight on which the patient...
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Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Merck immunotherapy drug shows promise in bladder cancer

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from whbl.com

MADRID (Reuters) - Merck & Co's new immune system drug Keytruda has produced encouraging results in early tests against bladder cancer, according to a company-sponsored study, prompting the firm to prepare a clinical trial later this year.
Keytruda is the first in a new wave of immune-boosting medicines to be approved for treating melanomas in the United States, but it also has potential in a range of other cancers.
Bladder cancer is seen as a disease that is likely to be amenable to such drugs, which are designed to help the body's own immune system fend off cancer by blocking a protein known as Programmed Death receptor (PD-1), or a related target PD-L1.
Roche has a similar experimental drug that is currently in the lead in addressing the specific indication of bladder cancer.
In Merck's study involving 29 people with PD-L1 positive, advanced bladder cancer, seven patients -- or 24 percent -- saw their tumors shrink after being given Keytruda, Elizabeth Plimack of Philadelphia's Fox Chase Cancer Center told the European Society of Medical Oncology on Monday.
Based on this data, Merck said it would initiate a pivotal Phase III study this year to further explore the use of Keytruda in advanced bladder cancer.
Promising results using Keytruda in stomach cancer were also reported on Sunday.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Crispian Balmer)
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Detailing Financial Links of Doctors and Drug Makers

Yoday's post is shared from nytimes.com
Pharmaceutical and device makers paid doctors roughly $380 million in speaking and consulting fees, with some doctors reaping over half a million dollars each, during a five-month period last year, according to an analysis of federal data released Tuesday. Other doctors made millions of dollars in royalties from products they helped develop.
The data sheds new light on the often murky financial ties between physicians and the health care industry. From August to December 2013, drug and device companies made 4.4 million payments to more than half a million health care professionals and teaching hospitals — adding up to about $3.5 billion.
The lucrative arrangements are just some of the findings of the online database, which provides one of the most detailed looks at the payments health care professionals receive from drug and medical device companies. The website also allows consumers to find information about their own doctors to determine whether they might have conflicts of interest.
The site, required by the recent health care law, is part of a broader push for transparency. Proponents say such disclosures are an important tool to help limit drug and device makers’ influence on doctors.
But the website is being questioned by the industry, which says that technical problems and data inaccuracies limit its value. For example, about 40 percent of the records do not tie back to a specific professional or teaching hospital, accounting for 64 percent of the overall...
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Germs at the Office Are Often Found on Keyboards and at Coffee Stations

Shared from the http://online.wsj.com/
As cold and flu season nears, is it possible to avoid the germ-filled spots in the office? WSJ's Sumathi Reddy joins Lunch Break with Tanya Rivero to discuss. Photo: iStock/Thomas_EyeDesign
It's almost that time of year when you ever-so-slowly inch away from the person with the hacking cough and infectious sneeze.
Turns out it's pretty hard to avoid the germs of your co-workers, even the ones you don't know personally. Just one door contaminated with a virus spreads the germ to about half the surfaces and hands of about half the employees in the office within four hours, according to a study at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Germs traveled through the office just as quickly when the researchers infected a single person with the artificial virus.
"The hand is quicker than the sneeze," said Charles Gerba, a professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona who presented the research at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Washington D.C. earlier this month.

The University of Arizona researchers conducted their study at an office building with 80 employees. They contaminated a push-plate door at the building entrance with a virus called bacteriophage MS-2. It doesn't infect people yet is similar in shape, size and survivability to common cold and stomach flu viruses.
Within two hours, the virus had contaminated the break room—coffee pot, microwave button, fridge door handle—and then spread to restrooms,...
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Anti-Wellness: Boca Raton FL firefighters union fights to light up, change anti-smoking policy

I was shocked to read this headline. Seriously, First Responders should set an example of a healthy life style. Not only shouldn't they smoke, but they should exercise and eat a healthy diet. A recent conference at The Harvard School of Public Health presented overwhelming evidence of this. Perhaps the Boca Raton Fire Department needs a major wellness program. It's working for other firefighters!
Proposal to snuff out policy.
Proposal to snuff out policy.
The Boca Raton firefighters' union wants the city to butt out of firefighters' smoking habits.
After 24 years of contract prohibitions against firefighters using tobacco — on or off the job — Boca Raton's fire union wants to change the contract so they can light up without consequences.
Currently,firefighters who use tobacco can be fired.
Union officials say they want to bring the firefighters' contract more in line with the requirements for firefighter certification under Florida law.
State law requires that new firefighter hires be tobacco-free for at least a year before hiring, but the law is silent on what happens after they're hired.
The Boca union's proposed change that would affect 186 unionized firefighters is among the outstanding issues that led the city last week to declare an impasse in its negotiations with Boca Raton's public safety unions.
John Luca, Boca's current fire union president and one of the contract negotiators, referred questions about the current...
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Mesothelioma: New findings on treatment options

Today's post is shared from sciencedaily.com/
Treating patients with high-dose radiotherapy after chemotherapy and surgery for malignant pleural mesothelioma does not achieve improvements in local relapse and overall survival, according to data from a prospective randomized phase II trial presented at ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid.
"Mesothelioma remains a difficult disease to find better treatment options for, so we asked whether high-dose hemithoracic radiotherapy would decrease the rate or delay the time of local recurrence after chemotherapy and radical surgery," says lead author Prof Rolf A. Stahel, from the Clinic and Policlinic for Oncology, at the University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland, and current President of the European Society for Medical Oncology.
The multicentre trial included 153 patients with surgically-treatable malignant pleural mesothelioma, who were first treated with three chemotherapy cycles of cisplatin and pemetrexed, followed by surgical removal of affected lung tissue, with the goal of complete removal of the cancerous areas of lung.
In a second part of the study, researchers randomly assigned 54 patients to receive either radiotherapy or no further treatment, with the primary endpoint being the duration of relapse-free survival.
While there had been preliminary evidence suggesting that the addition of radiotherapy might improve outcomes, the study failed to find any differences in relapse-free survival between patients treated with the additional radiotherapy, and those who were not.
...
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Doctors Find Barriers to Sharing Digital Medical Records



Today's post is shared from nytimes.com/
As a practicing ear, nose and throat specialist in Ahoskie, N.C., Dr. Raghuvir B. Gelot says that little has frustrated him more than the digital record system he installed a few years ago.
The problem: His system, made by one company, cannot share patient records with the local medical center, which uses a program made by another company.
The two companies are quick to deny responsibility, each blaming the other.
Regardless of who is at fault, doctors and hospital executives across the country say they are distressed that the expensive electronic health record systems they installed in the hopes of reducing costs and improving the coordination of patient care — a major goal of the Affordable Care Act — simply do not share information with competing systems.
The issue is especially critical now as many hospitals and doctors scramble to install the latest versions of their digital record systems to demonstrate to regulators starting Wednesday that they can share some patient data. Those who cannot will face reductions in Medicare reimbursements down the road.


On top of that, leading companies in the industry are preparing to bid on a Defense Department contract valued at an estimated $11 billion. A primary requirement is that the winning vendor must be able to share information, allowing the department to digitally track the medical care of 9.6 million active-duty military personnel around the globe.
The contract is the latest boon to an industry that taxpayers have...
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