Ahmed Amin

للمهتمين بالبورد الامريكى فى الفارماكثيرابى...شرح للشابترز مع مراجعة شاملة
http://www.pharmacyonlineschool.com

In acute pancreatitis we use IV narcotic analgesics (for severe abdominal pain) exept mepridine, so why we don't use mepridine?

قبل كده كان التحذير ده للiron dextran بس

Feraheme (ferumoxytol): Drug Safety Communication – Warnings Strengthened and Prescribing Instructions Changed
March 31, 2015

ISSUE: FDA is strengthening an existing warning that serious, potentially fatal allergic reactions can occur with the anemia drug Feraheme (ferumoxytol). FDA changed the prescribing instructions and approved a Boxed Warning, FDA’s strongest type of warning, regarding these serious risks. Also added is a new Contraindication, a strong recommendation against use of Feraheme in patients who have had an allergic reaction to any intravenous (IV) iron replacement product.

معلومة ظريفة....
Benefits of Iron Supplements Unclear for Pregnant Women


TUESDAY March 31, 2015, 2015 -- Taking iron supplements during pregnancy doesn't appear to significantly change any health outcomes for mom or baby, a new review shows.

Harnessing the Power of the Poliovirus as a Cancer Cure


Polio, a highly infectious and crippling disease, was certainly one of the most feared viruses in the 20th century. Each year, thousands of children were left paralyzed. Polio has been successfully eliminated in the U.S. for decades due to a widespread vaccine program. So why would a group of researchers be interested in injecting the poliovirus directly into the brain of a patient?

Clinical trials are now ongoing and research is revisiting the poliovirus in new and hopeful ways, ironically to help battle deadly cancers. Glioblastoma multiforme is one of the most common and fatal brain cancers. Gliobastomas are aggressive tumors that occur in the brain or spinal cord leading to headaches, nausea, seizures, blurred vision and a host of other unpleasant effects. The tumors grow quickly and often leave patients with only months to live. Treatments for glioblastoma involve surgery to remove the tumor, followed by radiation treatment and chemotherapy. Unfortunately, the recurrence rate for glioblastomas is near 100%, with an average time to recurrence of six to seven months. Glioblastomas will double in size every two to three weeks if left untreated.

There is no FDA-approved cure, but it seem to be getting much closer each day, thanks in part to the poliovirus. At the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, medical experts have been painstakingly working on a treatment for glioblastoma for over a decade and a half. Their result: a genetically modified poliovirus, known as PVS-RIPO.

How does it work? The poliovirus is genetically modified with a portion of a rhinovirus (which causes the common cold) inserted into the poliovirus. This prevents the poliovirus from replicating and causing polio disease. The PVS-RIPO kills cancer cells but not healthy cells because it requires certain elements found only in cancer cells to be effective. The poliovirus receptor is found on most tumor cells, and this is what allows the agent to seek out and destroy the cancer. PVS-RIPO also helps to elicit the patient’s own immune response against the cancer. The patient’s immune system recognizes the virus and initiates it’s own disease-fighting process, much the same way that a cold or cough virus is warded off.

Equal Numbers of Males, Females Are Conceived: Study


MONDAY March 30, 2015, 2015 -- Many scientists believe human conception produces more male than female embryos, with male embryos less likely to survive.

But, a new study suggests that equal numbers of males and females are conceived and female embryos are less likely to survive.

"It looks like more females die during pregnancy than males," said Steven Orzack, a senior research scientist with the Fresh Pond Research Institute in Cambridge, Mass. "People have long thought the opposite was true. An important fact that people thought was reasonably well-demonstrated is probably incorrect."

لسه عارفين دلوقتى!!
Drinking Water Helps Prevent Kidney Stones


FRIDAY March 27, 2015, 2015 -- Drinking plenty of water will lower your risk of kidney stones, researchers report.

"This analysis shows that drinking water is an effective way to cut one's risk for developing kidney stones in half," Kerry Willis, chief scientific officer at the National Kidney Foundation, said in a foundation news release.

"Kidney stones cause significant discomfort and cost, along with a potential to contribute to the development of kidney disease, so confirmation of reducing risk through improved hydration is an important finding," Willis added.

The current research looked at nine previous studies that included nearly 274,000 people. More than 550 people had a history of kidney stones.

The review found that people who produced 2 to 2.5 liters of urine were 50 percent less likely to form kidney stones than those who produced less urine. That amount of urine production is associated with drinking about eight to ten 8-ounce glasses of water a day, according to the researchers.

Women Take Longer to Reach Hospital After Heart Attack

THURSDAY March 5, 2015, 2015 -- Women having heart attacks get to the hospital for treatment later than men and are more likely to die, a new study finds.

Researchers analyzed data from more than 7,400 heart attack patients in Europe. They found that 70 percent of women took longer than an hour to get to a hospital that could treat them. Only 30 percent of men with heart attack symptoms took that long. The time to the hospital ranged from as few as five minutes to as long as three days, according to the researchers.

A major reason why women took longer to receive care was that they waited longer than men to call emergency medical services. Women waited an average of one hour to call for help versus 45 minutes for men, according to the study.

"Our findings should set off an alarm for women, who may not understand their personal risk of heart disease and may take more time to realize they are having a heart attack and need urgent medical help.

مريض الصرع الصح انه ينام على جنبه او على ظهره و ممكن يضع كرة تنس فى التشرت عشان ماينامش على صدره (بطنه)
WEDNESDAY Jan. 21, 2015, 2015 -- Sleeping on your stomach may boost your risk of sudden death if you have epilepsy, new research suggests.

Sudden, unexpected death in epilepsy occurs when an otherwise healthy person dies and "the autopsy shows no clear structural or toxicological cause of death," said Dr. Daniel Friedman, assistant professor of neurology at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.

This is a rare occurrence, and the study doesn't establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship between sleeping position and sudden death.

Still, based on the findings, people with epilepsy should not sleep in a prone (chest down) position, said study leader Dr. James Tao, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Chicago.

"We found that prone sleeping is a significant risk for sudden, unexpected death in epilepsy, particularly in younger patients under age 40," said Tao.

For people with epilepsy, brief disruptions of electrical activity in the brain leads to recurrent seizures, according to the Epilepsy Foundation.

It's not clear why prone sleeping position is linked with a higher risk of sudden death, but Tao said the finding draws parallels to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

It's thought that SIDS occurs because babies are unable to wake up if their breathing is disrupted. In adults with epilepsy, Tao said, people on their stomachs may have an airway obstruction and be unable to rouse themselves.

For the study, Tao and his colleagues reviewed 25 previously published studies that detailed 253 sudden, unexplained deaths of epilepsy patients for whom information was available on body position at time of death.

The findings were published online Jan. 21 in the journal Neurology.

Tao found that 73 percent of the patients died while sleeping on their stomach. In a subgroup of 88 cases, those younger than age 40 were four times more likely to have died in a stomach sleeping position than the older people. In all, 86 percent of those younger than 40 and 60 percent of those over 40 were on their stomachs when found dead.

Tao can't say why sudden death was more common in younger epilepsy patients. Perhaps they were more likely to be single and without a bed partner who might have awakened them during the seizure, he said.

He emphasized that he only found a link between sleeping position and death risk, not proof that stomach sleeping caused the deaths. "It's an association, not cause and effect," Tao said.

The new study sheds more light on what neurologists have found and believed, said Friedman, who is also an editor for the Epilepsy Foundation website. Friedman wasn't involved in the study.

The study also adds data about the higher risk found in those younger than 40, he said.

Epilepsy affects about 50 million people worldwide, research shows. Tao said probably 0.3 percent of them die unexpectedly. Of this small number, about 70 percent die during sleep.

Sudden death is more common in those whose epilepsy is chronically uncontrolled, Tao added.

People with epilepsy should try to sleep on their side or back, Tao said, and ask their bed partner to remind them. Using wrist watches and bed alarms designed to detect seizures during sleep may also help prevent sudden death, he said.

Friedman suggested putting a tennis ball in the front pocket of a T-shirt before going to sleep. Then, if you roll over on your stomach, you'll be awakened.

THURSDAY Jan. 8, 2015, 2015 -- A new study that confirms that underweight babies are at increased risk for type 2 diabetes later in life also identifies factors associated with that increased risk.

The findings may help pinpoint which physical processes are disrupted by a low birth weight, eventually resulting in diabetes, the Brown University researchers said.

The study authors looked at more than 1,200 women with type 2 diabetes and nearly 1,800 without the disease. Those who had been born with a low birth weight -- less than 6 pounds -- were 1.27 times more likely to have diabetes than those with a birth weight of 6 to 8 pounds, and 2.15 times more likely to have diabetes than those with a birth weight of 8 to 10 pounds.

New Antibiotic May Combat Resistant Bacteria

WEDNESDAY Jan. 7, 2015, 2015 -- Laboratory researchers say they've discovered a new antibiotic that could prove valuable in fighting disease-causing bacteria that no longer respond to older, more frequently used drugs.

The new antibiotic, teixobactin, has proven effective against a number of bacterial infections that have developed resistance to existing antibiotic drugs, researchers report in Jan. 7 in the journal Nature.

Researchers have used teixobactin to cure lab mice of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a bacterial infection that sickens 80,000 Americans and kills 11,000 every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The new antibiotic also worked against the bacteria that causes pneumococcal pneumonia.

Cell culture tests also showed that the new drug effectively killed off drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis, anthrax and Clostridium difficile, a bacteria that causes life-threatening diarrhea and is associated with 250,000 infections and 14,000 deaths in the United States each year, according to the CDC.

"My estimate is that we will probably be in clinical trials three years from now," said the study's senior author, Kim Lewis, director of the Antimicrobial Discovery Center at Northeastern University in Boston.

Lewis said researchers are working to refine the new antibiotic and make it more effective for use in humans.