June 2011 Blog Posts (4)

It was just 30 years ago in June 1981 when the first cases of what came to be known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) were published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR.) These were men who had a wasting illness and died of unusual infections, ones of the types seen mostly in “immunocompromised hosts.” These were infections with which I was very familiar in my work treating and preventing infections in aggressively treated…

It is often difficult to appreciate that improving the care of patients can actually reduce the costs of care. Last year Dr H Brody wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine (vol 362, p283-5) about “Medicine’s ethical responsibility for health care reform – the top five list.”  In essence he challenged physicians to be first to find ways to rationally reduce health care costs by identifying the top five tests or treatments in any given specialty or subspecialty that could be markedly…

Drug companies can use genomics to create targeted drugs like imatinib (Gleevec) and trastuzumab (Herceptin.) Physicians can then use the results of genomic studies to guide prescribing. As discussed in prior posts, a person with Philadelphia chromosome-positive (i.e., having the BCR-ABL translocation with its aberrant tyrosine kinase) chronic myelocytic leukemia will likely respond to Gleevec. And a woman whose breast cancer shows high levels of the Her2neu receptor will likely respond to…