Pharmacology

With a porous southern border, street fentanyl continues to enter the United States and be purchased by recreational drug users, all while the U.S. government continues to treat suffering cancer patients like criminals when it comes to legitimate pain medication access. It isn't much better in Canada, according to a new study. While cancer patients may die earlier, it is known that recreational drug users have much greater early mortality rates. Unless they are diagnosed with another chronic disease and are in the health care system, they may not receive palliative care of any kind. They won'…

Tirzepatide facilitates weight loss in obese people with type 2 diabetes and therefore improves glucose control and also results in improved cardiovascular disease outcomes. A recent analysis compared a group of adults with type 1 diabetes who were prescribed tirzepatide (off-label) to a control group of adults with type 1 diabetes who were not using any weight-loss medication. The investigators reported significantly larger declines in body mass index (BMI) and weight in the treated group compared to controls. HbA1c decreased in the treated group as early as three months and was…

Estradiol is an estrogen hormone used medically during menopause and after hysterectomies to help reduce symptoms such as hot flashes and to prevent osteoporosis (bone loss) in women, but a new paper says it is linked to cocaine addiction. Women are more likely than men to develop an addiction, try cocaine at a younger age, use larger amounts of the drug, and suffer from overdose. A psychologist says estradiol may be why. Using conditioned-place preference, a kind of Pavlovian conditioning used to assess the reinforcing properties of drugs, they conclude the link exists in humans. Yet despite…

An analysis of 2,261 and 1,940 infants ages 12 and 18 months, respectively, found that COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy had no impact on infant neurodevelopment.  There was concern about vaccines by pregnant women because American epidemiologists had spent decades promoting the belief that a glass of wine would mean fetal alcohol syndrome or that not buying organic food will mean worse grades for kids in school. An alarming number of anti-science activists had insisted that Big Pharma controlled the US Food and Drug Administration approval process since the 1990s. Pregnant women…

A recent Colorado University study is investigating the use of the naturally occurring psychedelic prodrug compound, psilocybin, in treating anxiety, depression, and existential distress in people with advanced cancer.  During the clinical trials, a single 25mg dose of psilocybin 25mg was tested against a single 100mg dose of niacin, which acted as the active placebo. These medications were administered alongside brief psychotherapy to patients suffering with advanced cancer. The researchers found that such psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy (PAP)  was effective in treating anxiety…

Since the introduction of ‘dual treatment’ drugs, survival rates for men with metastatic prostate cancer have increased by an average of six months, according to National Prostate Cancer Register data of all Swedish men diagnosed between 2008 and 2020. Dual treatment means that patients receive both standard hormone therapy (GnRH therapy) and chemotherapy or androgen receptor blockers. Research has previously shown that men receiving this treatment live approximately one year longer than those receiving GnRH treatment alone. The results showed that in 2020 40 percent received dual treatment.…

A new study finds that while antidepressants reduce negative memories in individuals suffering from depression they may also be improving overall memory function. But don't go all Ozempic and rush to find a boutique physician willing to prescribe them for you, no one knows how antidepressants work, even after 70 years in existence. Though they outperform placebos like supplements in GNC or other alternatives to medicine, alternative medicine is such a scam because the threshold for placebo is high. Antidepressants are far better than supplement alternatives even though they only work 50…

A recent analys if of primary care patients at Kaiser in Washington state, where recreational cannabis use is legal, found that addiction was common among patients who used it. Moderate and severe cases were more prevalent among patients who reported recreational use.  The cross-sectional study was 108,950 adult patients who completed routine cannabis screening from March 2019 to September 2019. Of those, 5,000 were selected for a confidential marijuana use survey using stratified random sampling for frequency of past-year use and race and ethnicity. Among 1,688 respondents, 1,463…

Sepsis causes 11 million deaths annually so preventing that requires prompt recognition, source control, antibiotics, fluids and vasopressors. Sometimes adjunctive therapies such as orticosteroids help but the science is inconclusive. A recent study was designed to evaluate the role of corticosteroids in the management of patients with septic shock and the contradictory effects on mortality as recorded in past research and treatment. The results were that hydrocortisone was negligible in terms of overall survival but was associated with a decrease in the need for vasopressor drugs, an average…

If you buy TheraFlu or some other product and swear it helps, you may be right. The placebo effect is real and while OTC "remedies" and supplements can be sold with no proof needed, to be called actual medicine it can't simply work as poorly as a sugar pill. Yet about 30 percent of the time, people who take a placebo do feel better, the same way people who eat food labeled Non-GMO feel better taking a nocebo. Neither is improving health but a lot of things can sound like science or health if you look at statistics and create correlation. That's epidemiology, an entry point to science, and…