Sunday, February 5, 2012

Weekend Reading:Hepatitis Newsletters and Medical Blogs

According to WebMD, it looks like maybe menopause?


For Your Weekend Reading Pleasure

Happy Weekend to all !

What a lovely day in Michigan, I started out with my three mile walk, cleaned up my humble abode, grabbed a cup of coffee, followed by my weekend ritual reading at grand rounds, ending finally with reading all those wonderful patient and medical blogs. After lunch ? I jumped on HCV advocate to read this months always highly anticipated newsletter.

The weekend allows this blogger to catch up on what I missed during the week, or review articles I  offered only a quick glance previously. If you find yourself doing the same, check out a little review on HCV resistance, the information is from 2011 but easy to understand. Interested ? Find it here, and here.

If you didn't catch the media frenzy over the small study published in the "New England Journal of Medicine" on protease inhibitor asunaprevir (formerly BMS-650032) and HCV NS4A inhibitor daclatasvir (BMS-790052), this insider medicine video available below will bring you up to speed.

Hepatitis C Video: New Drug Combo May Help Treat Chronic Hepatitis C 
Among the 11 patients who received daclatasvir and asunaprevir alone, four responded well and the hepatitis C virus remained undetectable in their bodies even 24 weeks after finishing their treatment. Another six patients began to develop resistance to the drugs even before their treatment session was completed, and the final patient responded well during treatment but relapsed when it was discontinued. In contrast, nine of the 10 patients who received daclatasvir and asunaprevir with peginterferon and ribavirin had a sustained response to their therapy that lasted 24 weeks after the drugs were discontinued, and one had a response that lasted 12 weeks after treatment termination.



Also on the blog this lovely weekend you'll find a few links to some "good reads" from around the Web. Today I've dug up an extra great list of patient and medical blogs, check them out below along with a few HCV newsletters. Enjoy your weekend folks.

Grand Rounds
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Grand Rounds is the weekly summary of the best healthcare writing online, featuring stories, opinion and analysis from doctors, nurses, patients, researchers and administrators, as well as journalists. Each Tuesday, a different blogger takes the helm, publishing a new edition of Grand Rounds on their site. Each edition features the host’s picks for the ten best healthcare links of the week.

This weeks host is Afternoon Napper

This edition of Grand Rounds is part of a special collaboration among the RARE Project, Grand Rounds, and The Afternoon Nap Society using social media to connect patients and healthcare providers while raising awareness of World Rare Disease Day (coming up on February 29).

A few submissions
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Stan Goldberg, IG Living - "My Brain is Fried" really struck a chord. I'd like this one to be required reading for the medical profession, caregivers, and patients. "The presence of an illness, either stable or progressive, shapes almost everything that is experienced," Goldberg writes. "The constant presence of something that is life-altering affects people in more ways than non-chronically ill people may understand."

The Chaos of Medicine offers up "Diagnosis Unknown," a take on the complexities of getting answers, which is written by a self-described "soon-to-be med student" and first-time submitter to Grand Rounds.

Read more here...

The Next Grand Rounds!

Grand Rounds Vol. 8 No. 20 @ Endogoddess
Learn More…

A Few Recommended Medical Blogs

Movin' Meat
About me: I am an ER physician and administrator living in the Pacific Northwest. I live with my wife and four kids. Various other interests include Shorin-ryu karate, general aviation, Irish music, Apple computers, and progressive politics. My kids do their best to ensure that I have little time to pursue these hobbies.

Dr. Walter van den Broek is a practicing psychiatrist with a passion for medical education and research into the treatment and neuroscience of depression. His neurostimulating blog covers a broad range of topics with an emphasis on the analytical interrogation of the workings of the human mind.

Dr. Rob Lamberts is a primary care physician from the Southeastern United States. This roller coaster of a medical blog is intelligent, witty and eclectic racing from the serious to the absurd from one blog post to the next.
The team of physicians that contribute to this blog shine the light of science and skepticism on medicine. Their in-depth rigorous articles hunt out and applaud excellent research and expose some of the pseudo-science that sadly continue to pervade the world of medicine.
One of the leading 'literary' medical blogs for a few years now, it is no surprise that working as a truly general surgeon in the South African province of Mpumalanga provides fertile ground for a riveting blog. Bongi's anecdotes and musings never fail to at once show the universality of medicine and human nature as well as the exotic hardships of his environment.

MD Whistleblower presents vignettes and commentaries on the medical profession. We peek 'behind the medical curtain' and deliver candor and controversy in every post.

I'm a midwestern physician who has finally finally finally come to the end of my grueling medical training, and at last I have enough time to publish the wealth of cartoons I've created over the years. If you enjoy them, please comment. If you don't enjoy them, then you can just keep your fool mouth shut.

NEJM Blog
The Study - BMS-790052 and BMS-650032
Now@NEJM is a blog for physicians about NEJM articles — medical research, reviews, cases — and an educational resource for medical students and ...

 Patient And HCV Blogs

I'm a thirty something year old living with a wonderful man who has Hep C. We have 2 kids and a mad dog to keep us busy.

It's been a long week.  I attended a plethora of doctors' appointments this week so could be ready to start Hepatitis C treatment.

Living With Hepatitis C
I contracted Hepatitis C while working as a registered nurse in a large, inner- city hospital. I am married with four grown children. My treatment was unsuccessful X 2. Life can be wonderful some days, and others pure hell. Hepatitis C, genotype 3a. Two rounds of pegylated interferon/Ribavirin; 24 weeks and 48 weeks. Responded to treatment but virus returned within 12 weeks (relapser).

"What goes around comes around"
Post Treatment A month has passed since receiving the news I had for so long dreamed of hearing, " the hepatitis c virus is no longer detected in your blood .

HCV/HBV ADVOCATE BLOG
Welcome to HCV Advocate’s hepatitis blog. The intent of this blog is to keep our website audience up-to-date on information about hepatitis and to answer some of our web site and training audience questions.
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AGA Journals Blog-The AGA Journals Blog is a forum for discussion of the latest discoveries in the fields of gastroenterology and hepatology. Each week we will comment on a new article from the AGA journals Gastroenterology and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

HCV Newsletters


February 2012

In This Issue: 

BMS Acquires Inhibitex
Alan Franciscus, Editor-in-Chief

 HealthWise:  
Searching for Supplements—Part 1
Lucinda K. Porter, RN

HCV Snapshots
Lucinda K. Porter, RN

Disability & Benefits:  
Getting Health Insurance After Diagnosis
Jacques Chambers, CLU

HBV Journal Review

CAP Hepatitis C Literature Review
Monthly Pubmed Review of the most relevant research on hepatitis C.

Hepatitis Newsletters: 
These newsletters have yet to be published for February.

From Hepcbc  
Monthly newsletter

GI & Hepatology News
GI & Hepatology News is the official newspaper of the AGA Institute and provides the gastroenterologist with timely and relevant news and commentary about clinical developments and about the impact of health-care policy. The newspaper is led by an internationally renowned board of editors.GI & Hepatology News is published monthly 


 Article Of Interest

Entrepreneurs Try to Fill Gap in Online Medical Help
 
(The Washington Post, January 29, 2012)"Go online and it’s easy to compare just about anything according to cost, value or performance. But health plans? Doctors? Prescriptions drugs? Not so much. Many people end up confused or alarmed when they use the Web to self-diagnose, check out a doctor or research medical costs. The information seems incomplete because there’s relatively little factual health-care data available online to consumers or the entrepreneurs that want to cater to them. Recognizing a need for innovation, the government has made some of its raw data available on…a central database where developers can get information for Web sites and apps. So far, the database includes everything from food safety recalls to fatality statistics, but the challenge remains the dearth of comparable information…Some information, such as the fees insurance plans negotiate with doctors and hospitals, are kept under wraps because the industry considers it proprietary information…But as health-care entrepreneurs harness the power of social media, they are unlocking other information. And many are making money not through the traditional advertising model, but instead are getting revenue from drug companies, doctors and hospitals."..read more


For Your Viewing Pleasure
The only thing I love about football is MADONNA

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