Health: Alzheimer's Reversal

PET scan of a human brain with Alzheimer's courtesy of NIH/National Institute On Aging

This is good news indeed, for those of us with aging parents, or, worse yet, those who are feeling the first touch of Alzheimer's. Nasty, nasty disease. And till now there has been no cure, or even treatment, really.

A new scientific study documents marked improvement in Alzheimer’s disease within minutes of administration of a therapeutic molecule, according to the Journal of Neuroinflammation.

The study shows how a cytokine (soluble protein) known as tumor necrosis factor-alpha(TNF), which normally regulates transmission of neural impulses in the brain, interferes with regulation when it is present at elevated levels. The brains and cerebrospinal fluid of Alzheimer's patients show elevated levels of this cytokine.

Injection of an anti-TNF therapeutic called etanercept shows improvement within minutes. Etanercept (trade name Enbrel) binds and inactivates excess TNF. Etanercept is FDA approved to treat a number of immune-mediated disorders and is used off label in the study.

The study was authored by Edward Tobinick M.D., assistant clinical professor of medicine at UCLA and director of the Institute for Neurological Research, with coauthor Hyman Gross, M.D., clinical professor of neurology at USC.

The study is titled “Rapid cognitive improvement in Alzheimer’s disease following perispinal etanercept administration,” and is available with the accompanying commentary, entitled “Perispinal etanercept: Potential as an Alzheimer’s therapeutic,” on the Web site of the Journal of Neuroinflammation.

Let's hope it helps one of our favourite authors, Terry Pratchett.

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Health: Nataline Sarkisyan Update

Molly Hennessy-Fiske writes in the L.A. Times that Nataline Sarkisyan had a successful bone marrow transplant on Nov. 21, and subsequently developed complications that required hospitalization in the ICU.

On Dec. 6, Nataline's doctors put her on the liver transplant list and a liver became available four days later, according to Nataline's family. That would be December 10th. CIGNA proclaimed the liver transplant was an "experimental" treatment and refused to approve and pay for the procedure (according to Nataline's family). As a result, Nataline apparently was taken off the waiting list for a liver transplant.

According to emedicine, the liver is the second most commonly transplanted organ in the human body. The site states, in part:

the Pediatric End-Stage Liver Disease (PELD) scoring system [is used when a recipient is] younger than 18 years.

* Status 1 (acute severe disease) is defined as a patient with only recent development of liver disease who is in the intensive care unit of the hospital with a life expectancy without a liver transplant of fewer than 7 days.

That would pretty much define Nataline Sarkisyan. Without a liver transplant she was certain to die. CIGNA knew that when they made the decision to refuse to pay for the transplant. Also, the second most commonly transplanted organ in the human body is hardly "experimental." Of course, the insurance companies apparently reserve the right to define experimental, a definition that they do not share with the public or with treating physicians and other medical professionals.

On December 11th, Nataline's own doctors told the family and Cigna that patients in Nataline's situation have a 65% chance of living at least six months with a liver transplant. They urged CIGNA to reconsider its decision.

On December 14th, another donor match was found for Nataline. CIGNA refused to approve payment, and Nataline's family could not come up with the $75,000 downpayment required for the surgery. Meanwhile, the California Nurses' Association joined with the Sarkisyan family and Armenian-Americans to protest CIGNA's heartless denial of coverage.

The L.A. Times article states:

The family's benefit plan does not cover experimental treatments. But this week, after receiving an appeal from the family and UCLA doctors, the company reconsidered.

Supposedly, a medical decision is based on fact, not emotion or pressure. Either the patient's benefit outweighs the cost of treatment, or not.

For example, had Nataline been 80 years or older, and on the transplant list with a less than 50 per cent likelihood of survival, her family might weep and wail till the cows came home, but the public would most likely not sympathize with them and the "experts" who evaluated her case would be supported by CIGNA and the public at large in refusing her a liver transplant.

But Nataline was only seventeen, and her doctors felt she had a better than 65 per cent chance of survival. So CIGNA knew what they were doing when they refused coverage. They were condemning her to death.

Arlys Stadum, a Cigna spokeswoman, said the insurer submits all transplant requests to physicians with transplant expertise for review. Every request that is refused has been seen by at least one expert physician, she said.

Having been seen by "expert physicians" working for insurance companies, we here at this fine establishment can testify that most of them appeared to be some decades past active practice. Their sole source of income appeared to be the insurance companies, and we're willing to bet that they were not being paid to render decisions that would cost the insurance companies money.

These people, some past the age of retirement, many having little knowledge of the newest information in their field, were being allowed to pass judgment on working medical practitioners who perform medical diagnostics and procedures in their field on a daily basis.

It's like asking your mother the retired librarian her opinion of the latest developments in information management when she hasn't worked in the field since you were born three decades ago. She might well know the theory, but you couldn't rely on her to implement an information management system without training and hands-on time. And nobody dies from mismanaged information.

Six days later at approximately 4:40 p.m. on December 20th, just as the family had decided to remove Nataline from life support, Cigna sent a letter to the family's attorney approving the transplant.

The letter, faxed to attorney Mark Geragos, is stamped 4:44 p.m. Geragos said his staff tried unsuccessfully to reach the Sarkisyans at the hospital. The family said they didn't see the letter until after they removed Nataline from life support at 5:20 p.m.

"They took my daughter away from me," Krikor Sarkisyan, 51, an automotive technician, said at the news conference outside Geragos' downtown L.A. office.

In the letter, Deborah Garnsey, a registered nurse who reviews cases for Cigna, said she had reviewed the family's appeal on Thursday and decided that day "to make an exception in this rare and unusual case."

She noted that the family's appeal was reviewed by an oncologist and liver specialist.

"We are making this decision on a one-time basis, based on the unusual circumstances of this matter, although the treatment, if provided, would be outside the scope of the plan's coverage and despite lack of medical evidence regarding the effectiveness of such treatment," Garnsey wrote.

Shouldn't the treating physicians, and UCLA's top-notch transplant team be the best judges of the medical evidence available, and what weight to accord to such evidence, Nurse Garnsey? How does it happen that a nurse - no matter how intelligent, able, and well-qualified - is empowered to overrule the medical decisions of two "specialists" in the field, two doctors, in "reconsidering" a decision? Also, what "unusual circumstances" are these? The fact that people protested? Does this mean that insurance companies have a policy of denying treatment unless people protest?

The article goes on to quote Dr. John Roberts, chief of the transplant service at UC San Francisco:

"The problem that they got into is, here's a situation where she didn't have very long to live," he said. "Probably in this situation, they're probably better off to say, 'The transplant center really feels like this is the right thing to do, let them go ahead.' "

Dr. Goran Klintmalm, chief of the Baylor Regional Transplant Institute in Dallas, said the operation that UCLA wanted to perform was a "very high-risk transplant" and "generally speaking, it is on the margins."

But Klintmalm said he would consider performing the same operation on a 17-year-old and believes the UCLA doctors are among the best in the world.

"The UCLA team is not a cowboy team," he said. "It's a team where they have some of the soundest minds in the industry who deliver judgment on appropriateness virtually every day."

Of course, when quoting insurance company spokespeople, the reporter fails to question their underlying bias.

Karen Ignagni, chief executive of America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group, said that the case shows how few employers, and even individuals, want to pay for experimental care coverage when they buy insurance, but that when people find themselves in dire health, everyone wants it.

Ms. Ignagni, that's disingenuous, to be very charitable. It's clear that the second commonest organ transplant performed can't be judged to be "experimental." The article in emedicine states that 5,300 such transplants were performed in 2002. As the population ages, more and more people will find themselves needing organ transplants. It's the coming crisis in the healthcare system - a system that pays insurers to stand between sick people and their doctors is inherently unjust.

People realize this, which is why there is such a tremendous outpouring of anger over the very preventable death of Nataline Sarkisyan. Because Nataline is you and me and everyone else who needs health care and pays for health care and finds, at the end of the day, that to save a penny here and a dollar there, the insurance companies which have taken our money for twenty years are quite willing to let us die.

Caveat: The cited articles have been extensively snipped due to space limitations. To view the articles in their entirety, please click the links.

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Health Care: Nataline Sarkisyan

More details are coming out about CIGNA, the company that insured teenaged cancer survivor Nataline Sarkisyan.

For background on Sarkisyan, go here.

Her family has hired attorney Mark Geragos to represent them in their suit against CIGNA for her wrongful death. Geragos plans to refer the case to the prosecutor for criminal charges for either murder or manslaughter. He alleges that the reason the insurance company waited so long and then changed their mind was that they were reasonably certain that by the time they changed their mind and approved the transplant, the girl was too close to death to receive the transplant.

ABC has the details.

If you're still furious about the unnecessary death of teenaged cancer survivor Nataline Sarkisyan, you might want to read this post which includes a very interesting letter from a surgeon. He's absolutely right. Certain members of this household were required to submit to insurance company "experts" to determine whether their injuries were as bad as they claimed. The so-called "experts" had shoddy little offices in which they did not practice medicine (at least two of them looked as if the last time they practised medicine was over a decade ago; the third spent his time flirting with his receptionist and giving us a very cursory and extremely rough examination, which he then had the gall to lie about in his report). Their sole income appeared to derive from "examining" patients who required procedures for which the insurance company did not want to pay.

I'm sick of the health care system that would deliberately kill someone's child. But there are probably millions of us out there who at one time or another have been screwed over by these companies which reward their shareholders with big profits and pay their CEOs more than any other industry. Think of that. The bloated salaries of most CEOs in other fields are significantly smaller than the bloated salaries of CEOs in the "health care" industry.

They're killing us. It's time to fight back.

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Entertainment: Perfect Me

Singer Leah Kaufman is taking Ann Coultwhore's suggestion about Jews needing to be perfected seriously, Raw Story tells us. At least insofar as a satirist can.

Click the link to listen to her sing "Perfect Me."

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Consumer Alert - Contaminated "Holy Water"

British Muslims are being warned against buying bottled "Zam Zam" water which purports to be from a sacred well in Mecca. Apparently, some morally bankrupt entrepreuners have hit on the idea of bottling water from deity-only-knows-where and flogging it to the public as Zam Zam water. Unfortunately, the water has been tested and found to contain three times the WHO-determined safe level of nitrates and twice the safe level of arsenic.

Both chemicals have been implicated in causing cancer, and are unsafe for the persons most likely to be consuming the water - infants, young children, the sick, and the elderly. The Guardian states, in part:

Diluted arsenic has been associated with disorders of the nervous system, loss of sensation in the limbs and hearing impairment.

Apparently, Saudi Arabia does not permit Zam Zam water to be exported, so the water is definitely not the real thing. Zam Zam water was tested in 1971 and found to be safe for human consumption.

In short, do not drink Zam Zam water unless you either brought it back yourself or know the person who brought it really well, and are convinced that they would never try to poison you.

The kind of people who would profiteer off the gullibility of the ignorant - blithely and without conscience causing them physical and mental harm - deserve to die of thirst.

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Health - A Vaccine For Ovarian Cancer

Photograph courtesy of The BBC

This really makes me feel hopeful. Auntie Beeb tells us that an anti-ovarian cancer vaccine is showing encouraging results in early trials.

Ovarian cancer is very aggressive, and by the time you're diagnosed, you're lucky if you have five years left.

The vaccine is designed to enhance the body's own immune response to the cancer, said the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, based in Buffalo, New York.

Most patients with advanced disease respond to chemotherapy, but more than 70% die from a recurrence of the cancer within five years of diagnosis.

Three people I know had a scare over the past decade, with doctors telling them, we need to remove a cyst and check for cancer. All three turned out to be OK (thank deity) but just hearing a diagnosis like that can really ruin your fucking day, yaknow?

Further testing is required, but anything that can protect against this highly aggressive cancer is good.

Lead researcher Professor Kunle Odunsi said: "There is now compelling evidence that the immune system has the capacity to recognise and kill ovarian cancer cells.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

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Science - Vitamin C And Cancer

Linus Pauling insisted that Vitamin C was an effective anti-carcinogen. However, research has not backed him up - so far. New studies from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda Md show that although people quickly clear Vitamin C from their bodies when they take it orally, intravenous doses showed blood concentrations up to 70 times as high. The high blood concentrations do not show any adverse effects.

To test how higher concentrations of Vitamin C might affect cancer, Mark Levine of the Institute applied Vitamin C at concentrations similar to those of the injected volunteers to healthy human and mouse cells and various types of cultured cancer cells. They found that an hour's exposure killed 50 per cent of cancer cells in 5 out of 10 cancer-cell cultures. Further tests showed that cancer cells converted Vitamin C into hydrogen peroxide, which kills cells. Report from Science News, Vol. 168.

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Health - Controlling Diabetes

This is an interesting piece of news - from Auntie Beeb, again. Following up on my previous post about fatty liver disease, a Hammersmith Hospital NHS Trust team has found that adding a single low-glycemic-index food to a meal reduces blood sugar. I found the first paragraph of the following excerpt from the article a bit ironic - and scary - but overall, the article is quite heartening, and anyone with diabetes would do well to follow their recommendation:

Although the British Dietetic Association has warned against over-reliance on such diets, pointing out ice cream has a low GI value, and the key to losing weight was cutting down on calories.

The Hammersmith team measured the blood sugar levels of nine people on normal diets, and then put them on a low GI diet involving replacing one low GI item per meal for two weeks.

When the readings were taken again eight out of nine subjects had lower blood sugar readings.

Brag: I eat only whole-grain products. In fact, I very very rarely eat bread at all. Mostly, it's bulgur, couscous, whole-grain pasta, brown rice, beans, lentils, and all dem other good things.

Disclaimer: I guess I don't sound quite so holy when I point out that I really like all that stuff, so it's not as if I'm forcing myself to eat stuff that I hate but is good for me. I do, however, have a terrible weakness for potatoes. So I force myself NOT to eat them. Except when I can't take it anymore. Then I cook them with lots of veges and some form of protein and lots of spices. And thoroughly enjoy noshing on them.

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Health - Vitamin C and Cancer

Cancer is in the air, this week, it seems. Someone I know just had a double mastectomy, and then someone else I know just had a mastectomy, and someone else is having a hysterectomy, so I kinda have to write about health issues this week. Bear with me.

Via Raw Story comes a report of a study done at Johns Hopkins which explains exactly how Vitamin C fights cancer - and its not at all what researchers have thought for the past X years.

Vitamin C can help to prevent cancer, but not the way that scientists thought, according to a study published Monday in the United States.

Scientists have long thought that vitamin C and other antioxidants help to fight cancer growth by grabbing volatile oxygen free radical molecules and preventing them doing damage to DNA.

But researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found that antioxidants play a different role in the fight: they destabilize a tumor’s ability to grow under oxygen-starved conditions.

Before you rush out to buy that giant bottle of supplements, though, the researchers would like you to know that their study is still in its early stages.

OTOH, what can it hurt to make sure you get plenty of foods that contain vitamins C and D, and bag the buttered rolls and steaks and potatoes and pastries and sodas and snacks and ... et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

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Health - Insulin Breakthrough

Yes, but is it worth starving to death for? Because that will surely happen if we lose all our bees. The current collapse of honeybee colonies, with no clear reason, should suffice to make us cautious. Especially since diabetes is largely a disease with dietary causes, that can be managed with diet instead of drugs.

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Health - Whoop de Doo

Big fucking surprise:

Eating a Mediterranean diet could help protect children from respiratory allergies and asthma, a study suggests.

UK, Greek and Spanish researchers assessed the diet and health of almost 700 children living in rural areas of Crete, where such conditions are rare.

They found those with a diet rich in fruit and vegetables were protected against both conditions.

Who'd'a thunk you can fight disease with a healthy diet? I mean, really? Sometimes the world outstrips my ability to snark.



There's more, including how bad margarine is for you.

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Health - So Much For Tamiflu

Remember when the avian flu scare had whole nations scrambling to stockpile Tamiflu?

At the time, my main thought was, well, I guess people in poor countries, and poor people in rich countries, are equally screwed. Because betchu big bux Dick "Dick" Cheney, erstwhile member of Halliburton's Board of Vampires, isn't going to lack the wherewithal for a shot. And neither is his LESBIAN daughter, Mary, who will probably be one of the very very few LESBIANs to survive such an attack.

Well, warm the cockles of my heart, world. Just today, Auntie Beeb tells us Tamiflu might not work as well as its makers had hoped. Guess you'll be down in the trenches with the common folk when it hits, Dick. Too bad, so sad. That is, if you don't commit suicide as a result of the (heh) cure.

I've always thought we'll all go together when we go.

Update and Disclaimer: I'm not yelling about Mary Cheney's lesbianism because of any prejudice towards lesbians on my part but because of the bone-crumbling hypocrisy of the entire Cheney family and the Repugnantcan party towards LGBT rights and towards Mary Cheney's UNMARRIED PREGNANCY. Even if her partner Heather has more balls than a pachinko parlor (got that from Alternate Brain, today).

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Health - So Easy To Cure This!

Is that all it takes? Clean drinking water supplies? Where the hell are our priorities, that it is more important for us as a species to build bigger, more expensive, deadlier bombs, when we could have a healthy world that doesn't have to suffer agonizing pains from a disease that could be so easily prevented?
More evidence that there is no deity. Such a one would already have exterminated us for our selfishness and stupidity. Or prevented such disease in the first place.

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Health - Asthma

Have I mentioned that one of the outcomes of the recently diagnosed pneumonia bout was the prescription of an inhaler? With some nasty stuff in it? Apparently, asthmatics and other allergics have to suck on this stuff fairly regularly. Ugh, I say.

Here's some info about how to control asthma without medication.

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health news

Scientists at the Imperial College of London, working with Canadian scientists, have mapped the gene for Type 2 diabetes. Does this mean there could be a cure looming on the horizon? Is it time to celebrate yet?

Debilitating Rett's syndrome might be curable by turning on a specific gene. Rett's is a disorder that affects mainly girls, and the news that a cure might be available in the foreseeable future must be a mighty source of joy to many miserable parents.

Shakespeare was not wrong when he referred to sleep as that which

" ... knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast."

According to researchers at Princeton, sleep deprivation (at least in rats, so far) causes the brain to manufacture fewer new brain cells, in the hippocampus, which is where memory is formed. Hmmm ...

Turns out, getting up early can actually give you more colds, aches and pains, and make you FAAAAAAAT!!

In good news, Portugal will legalize abortion. Why is this good news, in my opinion? Because there are way too many people on the planet, many of them children who have been orphaned or born to folks who don't want them. When people want and love their children, the bond between parent and child can be a beautiful thing. But an unwanted child is a child in danger of neglect and abuse, and all the sermonizing by wellmeaning godtards doesn't change that. Of course, how wellmeaning godtards are is open to debate, since they are usually also the ones who most strongly resist actually doing anything to help abandoned, orphaned, neglected, or abused children, preferring to let them fend for themselves until they commit one or more crimes in their attempts to stay alive, whereupon the godtards sweep down all righteous-like and promptly allocate money for jails and death sentences (though rarely for rehabilitation, reform, or any actual, you know, help).

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