Health & WellnessS


Briefcase

Big Pharma Spends $95 Thousand Per Doctor on Marketing Each Year

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© Unknown
The amount of spending to market Big Pharma's products comes to about $95,000 per doctor per year in the US alone. Now, they're interacting with docs at the point of writing prescriptions.

You've likely seen your doctor using a nifty mobile phone application, called Epocrates, before writing a prescription. Such a clever device - and your doc didn't have to pay a penny for it. But you do. You pay for it in terms of adverse effects, less effective drugs, and money. Lots of money.

Mobile devices are the big new thing in pharmaceutical marketing, and one company now dominates the industry: Epocrates. Clever name that, but it plays on the name of Hippocrates, whose oath includes a statement that a doctor should first do no harm. That oath is shredded by Epocrates' Big Pharma connections and funding by advertisements.

Of the $60 billion spent each year on marketing, according to former Epocrates CEO, Kirk Loevner, $16 billion is spent trying to directly influence doctors. That's $23,333 per doctor per year, and the industry is planning to increase that figure. They do it for one reason alone: it works.

Doctors who claim it doesn't are, at best, fooling themselves. Epocrates says that pharmaceutical companies that purchase DocAlerts return three dollars for every dollar spent. Doc Alerts are thinly-disguised advertisements that physicians must go through before getting to their drug searches. Obviously, these ads are effective in convincing doctors to prescribe drugs.

Ladybug

US: New Tick-Borne Disease Found in Upper Midwest

A tick is shown in this file photo.
© Kent Wood/Getty ImagesA tick is shown in this file photo.

A previously unknown species of the tick-borne Ehrlichia bacterium was responsible for mysterious infections affecting four people in Wisconsin and Minnesota in 2009, researchers reported in the Aug. 4 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Culturing, serological testing, and DNA analysis confirmed that the four individuals, all of whom recovered, were infected with a still unnamed Ehrlichia species distinct from E. chaffeensis and E. ewingii, the most common pathogens responsible for ehrlichiosis in the U.S., according to Dr. Bobbi S. Pritt of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. and colleagues.

Currently designated as Ehrlichia Wisconsin HM543746, the new species appears most closely related to E. muris, which until recently was thought to be confined to eastern Europe and parts of Asia. Pritt and colleagues found the two species to be 98 percent genetically similar.

Arrow Down

Study: U.S. Hospitals Poor at Breast-feeding Support

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© Reuters/Carlos Barria/FilesA nursing mother holds her son in front of the Delta airlines counter during a protest over breastfeeding on Delta planes at Fort Lauderdale airport, Florida
U.S. hospitals are not doing enough to encourage mothers to breast-feed their newborns, raising the risk of childhood obesity, diabetes and other conditions, according to a federal study released on Tuesday.

Less than 4 percent of the country's hospitals fully support breast-feeding, said a report issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In nearly 80 percent of hospitals, healthy babies who are being breast-fed are given formula even when there is no medical need for it, making it more difficult to continue breast-feeding at home, the report says.

People

Smoke, Drink, Eat the Wrong Food and Live to 100...If You've Inherited the Right Genes

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© InternetMust have good genes: Scientists discover centenarians can indulge their vices if they have good genes
Smoking, drinking and eating fast food will not stop you living to a ripe old age - if you have the right genes.

A study of hundreds of centenarians revealed they were just as likely to have vices as other people - and in some cases they indulged in them more.

Some of them had smoked for 85 years, others got through more than two packets of cigarettes a day. They also exercised less than their shorter-lived counterparts but were less likely to become obese.

The bad news is it is almost impossible to be sure if you are one of the lucky few blessed with the longevity genes.

This means, say the American researchers, that there is no excuse for not taking care of your health.

Family

Study links asthma to magnetic-field exposure of pregnant moms

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Can magnetic fields from power lines, computers and even common household appliances lead to health problems down the road?

A new study suggests that pregnant women with the highest levels of exposure to magnetic fields are more likely to have a child who develops asthma, compared to pregnant women with low exposure levels.

The study was conducted by the same researcher who made waves in 2002 with a study that suggested magnetic fields could boost a woman's chances of miscarriage.

But many experts aren't convinced the risks are real and the medical field remains sharply divided over the presence of a link between health problems and exposure to electromagnetic fields.

Pills

Are You Taking Pills You Don't Need?

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© Martha Rosenberg
Some reasons why

Most people blame direct-to-consumer advertising, especially on TV, for elevating everyday anxiety to depression, depression to bipolar disorder, childhood behavior problems to psychiatric illnesses, lack of sleep to excessive sleepiness, migraines to epilepsy-drug deficiencies, and old age to hormone deficiency.

Ghostwriting also helps promote the national malaise: people suffering from and treating diseases that didn't exist earlier and ballooning public and private health-plan costs.

There are 200 U.S. medical education and communication companies (MECCs) that ghostwrite medical journal articles for pharma for $20,000 to $40,000 per article. Companies like Complete Healthcare Communications (CHC), whose phalanx of 50 medical writers, editors, and medical directors promise an "84.5 percent acceptance rate for first-time manuscript submissions."

Info

Acne, Mental Health, and Diet

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Are acne and mental health related to what we eat?

In 2008 some folks from a Beverly Hills skin clinic wrote up a short paper in Lipids in Health and Disease called Acne vulgaris, mental health and omega-3 fatty acids: a report of cases (free full text). The experiment itself was an open-label trial of a mineral/omega-3 supplement on five patients, so useful only as a reason get us thinking and to give us pointers for further research. But a lot of interesting science tidbits on acne, omega-3s, and minerals are noted in the article, so it's worth a peek.

Acne is a disease of civilization which, like depression, has increased the last half century, especially in women. As was discussed in my blog post, Acne and Suicide, patients with acne are more likely to be depressed, angry, and suicidal. In fact, patients with acne struggle more with mental health issues than even patients with epilepsy or diabetes, according to a study comparing questionnaires between sufferers of acne and other general medical conditions.

Magnify

How Did These Babies Die? Question Unites Grieving Families

Matthew Schultz was only 2.5 hours old when he died on Feb. 21, 2009. A coroner's report stated there was no anatomical or toxicological cause of death, which was deemed "natural". Another baby, Greyson Rawkins, was only two months old when he died on March 23 of this year. A coroner's report found Greyson died of sudden unexplained death in infancy and his death was ruled undetermined. However, the mothers of both babies were taking Effexor while carrying and believe the antidepressant drug may be connected to the deaths of their children. And, as KTW learned, there are widespread medical warnings about pregnant women taking antidepressants.

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© cchrint.orgMatthew Schultz was only 2.5 hours old when he died on Feb. 21, 2009.
Two hours is not a lot of time, but for little Matthew Schultz, it was his entire life.

One moment, Amery Schultz held Matthew in his arms. The next moment, his child was dead.

As the Merritt family struggled to deal with their grief, two years later and 45 minutes away in Kamloops, another family would be shattered by the sudden loss of a newborn.

Greyson Maxwell Rawkins was found one morning by his mother, cold and unresponsive.

The two-month old was dead.

Unlike most sudden-infant deaths, which go largely unexplained, both families believe they know exactly what killed their sons - an antidepressant called Effexor.

Alarm Clock

DSM 5 Will Further Inflate The ADD Bubble

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The Child Work Group Fails Again To Learn From Its Experience

Martin Whiteley is an MP who represents Perth in the Australian parliament. He has been actively involved in mental health issues and succeeded in a crusade to curb what had been Perth's alarming overdiagnosis and overmedication of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Mr Whiteley has become expert in the intricacies of ADD and is alarmed that the changes suggested for DSM 5 will greatly exacerbate the ADD fad he worked so hard to tame. Read Mr Whiteley's careful item by item review and you will be alarmed too: Speed Up & Sit Still: The Controversies of ADHD Diagnosis and Treatment

We are already in the midst of a false epidemic of ADD. Rates in kids that were 3-5% when DSM IV was published in 1994 have now jumped to 10%. In part this came from changes in DSM IV, but most of the inflation was caused by a marketing blitz to practitioners that accompanied new on-patent drugs amplified by new regulations that also allowed direct to consumer advertising to parents and teachers. In a sensible world, DSM 5 would now offer much tighter criteria for ADD and much clearer advice on the steps needed in its differential diagnosis. This would push back, however feebly, against the skilled and well financed drug company sell. DSM 5 should work hard to improve its text, not play carelessly with the ADD criteria in a way that may unleash a whole set of dreadful unintended consequences- unneeded medication, stigma, lowered expectations, misallocation of resources, and contribution to the illegal secondary market peddling stimulants for recreation or performance enhancement.

Info

Suicide Victims Found to Have Abnormal Brain Cells

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Changes to some of the star-shaped brain cells called astrocytes may play a role in depression, a new study finds.

The findings are based on the postmortem examination of brains of depressed individuals who committed suicide.

The researchers focused on a part of the brain involved in mood regulation and decision making, called the anterior cingulate cortex. In depressed people, some astrocytes were larger and more branched than those of people with no history of psychiatric illness who died suddenly, the researchers said.

These differences showed up only in the brains' white matter, not gray matter. White matter, found deep inside the brain, consists mostly of "cables" that allow different brain areas to communicate.

The study adds to a growing body of research linking changes in white matter to depression. It is the first study to "zoom in" and observe changes occurring at a cellular level, said study researcher Naguib Mechawar of McGill University in Quebec.

The researchers said they don't know whether these alterations are a cause or effect of depression and can only speculate on how the changes would contribute to the mood disorder. It's likely they would affect communication between the anterior cingulate cortex and other parts of the brain, Mechawar added.