If you take beta blockers for blood pressure, it is important that you raise this issue on your nect visit. I know I will.

Two million Britons are to be taken off blood pressure drugs after studies showed they increase the risk of strokes, heart attacks and diabetes.

From today, beta blockers will no longer routinely be prescribed for high blood pressure.

The dramatic change in guidance follows evidence that the drugs taken daily by millions of Britons are only half as effective at stopping strokes than a host of newer pills.

Beta blockers such as atenolol also raise the risk of stroke and of developing diabetes, compared with other blood pressure tablets.

I'm on one of the medications mentioned later in the article. I'm not happy about the findings about the family of drugs.

Studies have shown that beta blockers are only half as effective at stopping strokes as other blood pressure treatments.

Last year, a study of 20,000 patients showed that treatment with beta blockers cut the risk of stroke by 20 per cent, compared to no treatment at all.

In contrast, the newer treatments prevent 40 per cent of strokes and 15 per cent more heart attacks.

Patients on beta blockers are also up to 30 per cent more likely to develop diabetes.

Beta blockers such as atenolol, bisoprolol and metoprolol also have worse side effects, including fatigue, loss of libido and impotence.

Professor Bryan Williams, who helped draw up the new guidelines, said: 'For the majority of patients, we no longer recommend beta blockers as a first line option for treatment.

Now the question that I'm curious about is financial -- given the benefits of covering the newer, better medications, will insurance companies move these drugs to a lower co-pay tier so as to lower their overall costs of treating patients, saving both them and patients money in the long run.

'They are less effective at controlling blood pressure, less effective at preventing events (strokes and heart problems) and they are more likely than other treatments to increase the risk of developing diabetes.

Posted by: Greg at 11:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Many of us have grave moral concerns about the methods used to harvest fetal stem cells for medical research. The creation of human life in order to snuff it out for purposes of scientific research is both ghoulish and morally repugnant in our eyes. And yet many of us also believe the research itself is of vital importance -- in my case out of a heartfelt desire to see my wife's illness arrested and reversed. Folks like me cling to the hope that research on adult stem cells will produce treatments and cures -- and agonize over the moral questions raised by fetal stem cell research.

And so it is with great joy and hope that I post this information.

Stem cell scientists in the United Kingdom are reporting today a gene discovery that suggests a way to take adult cells back to an embryonic state -- a discovery that could help treat diseases without relying on controversial human embryonic stem cells or cloning.

The ultimate goal would be to use a patient's own cells as the starting material for a new kind of regenerative medicine. But scientists insisted that they will need to use embryonic cells for the foreseeable future to perfect the new techniques.

A team led by Austin Smith at the University of Edinburgh's Institute for Stem Cell Research published the latest results online in the journal Nature. The study used mouse cells to investigate the critical role of one gene in the process by which a stem cell, when fused to a more specialized adult stem cell found in the brain, reprograms the brain cell into a primitive state.

Reprogramming adult cells to give them this core trait of an embryonic stem cell could dramatically reshape both the science and politics of the stem cell field, which is fraught with controversy because the embryonic stem cells require the destruction of human embryos.

For example, reprogramming could make it possible to generate from a patient's skin cells customized cells of other types that had been destroyed by spinal cord injury or diseases such as Parkinson's or diabetes. Self-renewing lines of human cells also might be used to study how genetic diseases come about and how treatments could affect the disease process.

Smith said in an interview that reprogramming could take at least another year of experimental work to be well understood. Yet it no longer seems the deep mystery it was before the latest studies, which reveal the role of a gene known as "nanog."

Smith called nanog "the key gene in the process."

"We thought this was something that would take us a very long time to work out, but now this changes from being a black box to something we can work to understand," he said.

May this research be fruitful and produce results that avoid the moral concerns that current methods raise.

UPDATE: Tammy Bruce writes on this topic here.

Posted by: Greg at 01:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The AMA is at it again – and your doctor may be looking to pick your pocket, or have the government do it.

Millions of upper-income Americans refuse to buy health insurance because they're young and healthy and figure they don't need it.

But now the American Medical Association wants to force them to buy coverage.

At its annual meeting in Chicago on Tuesday, the nation's largest doctors' group called for mandatory health insurance for anyone who makes more than five times the poverty level. That works out to $49,000 for an individual and $100,000 for a family of four.

No one would go to jail for refusing to buy coverage. The AMA instead suggested using the tax code to force compliance. There would be incentives such as tax credits for people who buy insurance and higher taxes for those who don't.

Of the 46 million uninsured Americans, about 5 million, or 11 percent, make more than five times the poverty level. The AMA said these people burden the health care system when they incur catastrophic medical bills they can't afford to pay. The cost gets passed on to those who largely pay for the health care system: taxpayers, employers and the insured.

"Society should not be penalized by the potential costly medical treatments of those uninsured who can afford to purchase health insurance coverage," an AMA report said.

Now I think it is stupid not to have health insurance. I cannot imagine doing without, but I understand that others may decide differently. That is a case of the free market at work. And we all know that mandatory health insurance will push prices higher, as companies have less incentive to compete for business.

On the other hand, the AMA doesnÂ’t want to take any action here.

Delegates defeated a resolution calling for price controls on prescription drugs.

Supporters of the resolution said drug companies make "excessive profits" and pay millions of dollars in salaries and perks to executives. Price controls would make drugs more affordable, they said.

But opponents said price controls would violate the AMA's long-standing support of free-market competition.

After all, that might cut the freebies that doctors get from those drug companies. That must be the free market they are concerned about.

Posted by: Greg at 10:26 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I applaud the approval of the vaccine – would that we could find more vaccines against cancers of various types.

The first vaccine to protect against most cervical cancer won federal approval Thursday.

The vaccine Gardasil, approved for use in girls and women ages 9 to 26, prevents infection by four strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV, Merck & Co. Inc. said. The virus is the most prevalent sexually transmitted disease.

Gardasil protects against the two types of HPV responsible for about 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. The vaccine also blocks infection by two other strains responsible for 90 percent of genital wart cases.

Merck is expected to market Gardasil as a cancer, rather than an STD, vaccine. It remains unclear how widespread will be the use of the three-shot series, in part because of its estimated cost of $300 to $500. Conservative opposition to making the vaccine mandatory for school attendance may also curb its adoption.

The target age for receiving Gardasil is low because the vaccine works best when given to girls before they begin having sex and run the risk of HPV infection. The vaccine may not protect people already infected and may increase their risk of the kind of lesions that can lead to cervical cancer, the FDA has said.

The national Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will decide June 29 whether to endorse routine vaccination with Gardasil. That endorsement is critical if a vaccine is to become a standard of care.

It is this last part that concerns me. Some argue for making the vaccine mandatory for students as a condition of being allowed to receive an education . This is not a vaccine that stops a disease readily communicable like whooping cough, polio, or smallpox. We do not require a flu shot, despite the fact that influenza runs rampant in the bacterial and viral incubator that is a school classroom. To require a shot for what is, in the end, a SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE intrudes upon the right of parents to make medical decisions for their children and to determine their upbringing in regard to sexual morality.

Posted by: Greg at 09:23 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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