Slow Day

Today was rather slow by comparison - only saw two patients.  In the morning there were lots of quickies here for some injections (either Supartz or corticosteroids) and one or two who didn't want a student.  Spent a lot of time sitting around reading JAMA articles.  I came across a few interesting tidbits.

1. Onchocerca and Dranunculus, both parasitic roundworms, are in the process of being essentially eliminated from the human population by the World Health Programme.  Onchocerca causes river blindness in South America, and Dranunculus is also known as the Guinea Fire Worm, and if you don't remove it slowly from a person's arteries then it will die and cause a reaction that will kill the person.  You hear about viruses like polio or smallpox being eliminated, or maybe malaria, but rarely about parasitic worms.     

2. Bladder cancer is higher in men than in women - I hadn't really thought about this before now.  Bladder cancer is strongly linked to cigarette smoking, particularly to a chemical in cigarette smoke: naphthylamine, which  is also found in certain textile dyes.  However, it was previously thought one of the reasons men were more susceptible was because men were more likely to be smokers, have unhealthy lifestyles, and work in environments that expose them to carcinogens.  Now that women are working in a lot of the same fields as men, the incidence has not increased an equivalent amount.  A study in 2007 showed that mice without the testosterone/androgen receptors who were exposed to chemicals linked to bladder cancer did not get any bladder cancer, compared to mice with the receptors who nearly all got bladder cancer (~90%).  It would seem that the same mechanism behind prostate cancer may be involved in development of bladder cancer in men.

3. JAMA includes a previous JAMA article from 100 years ago to the day at the end of each issue.  One of the old articles about digitalis/foxglove and its use as a medication for arrhythmias and other heart problems had a very interesting line in it.  After going at length about the benefits of high doses of digitalis, the author writes: "For that reason, a daily large dose of digitalis is advocated indefinitely to keep the weary heart a-going on its rapid journey to an eternal standstill."  That article was written in 1911, and the last part of that line has a very poetic, almost morbid sound to it.  Rather unexpected when I was reading the article.

At the end of the day I had to go to didactics, where a guy who reminded me a lot of Jim Carrey was telling us about Clopidogrel, and how it compares to Aspirin - his main argument was that Clopidogrel (Plavix) is treated like a substitute or necessary adjunct therapy for Aspirin, but in reality there is little evidence it is more efficacious than Aspirin, or that dual therapy would benefit anyone besides those with cardiac vessel stents or in an acute cardiac event.  It was interesting, he was going on a bit about drug reps and such - since I studied a lot of that in undergrad for my medical history classes, it wasn't anything that new to me.  Anyhow, time to get some reading done and try to recharge for tomorrow.