Tag Archive for: Health News

May 2023 Digital Health Round Up

Every month there is new technology developed that helps doctors treat cancer. Scientists have developed a sophisticated oxygen-eating battery that successfully helped treat cancer in trials. A hollow seed armed with immunotherapy has been successful in treating pancreatic cancer in mice trials. A new powerful microscope at a university is helping scientists to see cancer react with radiation at a cellular level. 

An Oxygen-Eating Battery Implant Cures 90 Percent of Cancer in Mice 

They have developed an implantable battery system that can identify low-oxygen environments in the human body that support tumor activity the battery system includes a self-charging saltwater battery and an anticancer drug called tirapazamine (TPZ) reports Interesting Engineering. This implant attacks cancer cells in the environment in which they grow, an environment lacking in oxygen. This battery implant regulates the low oxygen tumor conditions.

The drug TPZ only targets cells in this environment so no healthy cells are harmed. Researchers found that the volume of cancerous tumor decreased using this method. Another important finding was that there were no side effects such as weight loss or hair loss that typically occurs with chemotherapy. The battery implant creates a hypoxic environment making the TPZ work better. If this works as well in human trials, cancer patients won’t have the common painful side effects of chemotherapy. Click here for more information. 

Hollow “Seed” Shrinks cancerous Tumors From the Inside 

Pancreatic cancer is relatively rare, but it’s also notoriously difficult to detect and treat. As a result, more than 80% of patients diagnosed with the most common form of pancreatic cancer -pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC)- die within the first year after diagnosis, and fewer than 10% live for five or more years after reports Freethink. Doctors use monoclonal antibodies (mABS), which bind to cancer cells to either kill the cells or help the immune system fight the cancer.

These antibodies are given IV and circulate throughout the body. The mABS do not go straight to the pancreas, they are in the bloodstream, and this is what causes side effects. A nanofluidic drug-eluting seed or NDES is a device made of stainless steel that releases the monoclonal antibodies at the cancer site over 2 weeks period. Releasing it directly at the pancreas reduces side effects and allows for a smaller dose. Researchers have found promising results in mice trials. Click here for more information. 

New SEISMIC Facility Could Improve Our Understanding of Infectious Diseases, Aging, and Cancers 

The University of Surrey’s SEISMIC facility will offer scientists access to technology that enables them to pick up single cells or even parts of cells and measure the spatial position of biomarkers like proteins, metabolites and lipids reports News Medical & Life Sciences. This Research Center has an ion beam center, environmental flow laboratory, and a proton beam. 

These advanced microscopes allow scientists to follow biomarkers throughout the cell. This information will help them see how cancer affects cells. This technology allows scientists to see how cells communicate under certain conditions. They can observe the interaction between cancer cells and radiation. The University is allowing researchers and academics that are funded for cancer research to use this advanced technology. Click here for more information.

“Fake News” Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

In a recent post, I talked about the trust that’s required for effective peer health discussions. That trust issue is even more critical when it comes to the science of medicine, and its inclusion in those peer health discussions – as in, is what’s being shared in peer health groups scientifically sound, or snake oil?

One of the downsides of giving everyone a voice – one of the foundational goals of the web, according to Tim Berners-Lee, its creator, “its true potential would only be unleashed if anyone, anywhere could use it without paying a fee or having to ask for permission”- is that everyone has an opinion and a place to express it, but opinions are not facts.

Which brings me to today’s web, where anyone with a smartphone can share an opinion, call it a fact, and gather a community around that opinion-in-fact-clothing. There is dangerous “fake news” mushrooming across the globe, thanks to the web, with the most egregious versions of it driving bad decisions about human health. One example of that is what’s called the anti-vaxx movement, where a debunked article by a disgraced scientist named Andrew Wakefield has continued to drive a mistaken belief that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine given to children under two years old causes autism. (Spoiler: it does not.)

That’s only one example. There are a host of others, including bogus cancer cures that proliferate on Facebook and YouTube, and recommendations that drinking bleach can cure autism. So what’s a patient community member to do? And where’s the clinician community on this issue?

In a powerful op-ed in the New York Times in December of last year, “Dr. Google Is a Liar,”cardiologist Dr. Haider Warraich said that Silicon Valley needs to own their part of this problem, that journalists need to do a better job of covering health and science news, and that the scientific community itself needs to be more transparent and easy to understand when they talk about new discoveries.

It turns out that the cardiology team is playing hard on the side of truth here, publishing an editorial in February 2019 in more than two dozen cardiology-related scientific journals around the world, saying that the medical community needs to help the public vet the message they’re getting from whatever sources they use for health information. The American Heart Association even has a short and snappy video – it qualifies as a thirty second ad that could run on television – “5 tips for finding trustworthy health information online” that recommends: Top of FormBottom of Form

  1. Look for government sites, medical professional societies, and reputable medical schools as information sources
  2. Look for sites that stay current, that refer to updated information and current science
  3. Make sure the information on the site is reviewed by a medical professional
  4. Beware of sites that promote “miracle cures” (and that run ads for those “miracles”)
  5. Verify what you read with your clinical care team

The clinician community has joined the fight against fake news in medical science. The patient community needs to make the same commitment to fighting junk science in our circles. What should be on our list of recommendations for avoiding falling for “fake news”? And should we develop a code of ethics for patient community leaders that covers the information we share online?

I welcome all suggestions, and I’ll include them in a future post. Just hit me up on Twitter, using the hashtag #PtLeaderEthics, or via email. Let’s fight fake science news together, shall we?