Health and Medicine – Page 27

Your Medications: Making Sense of Treatments, Benefits and Risks

These days, medications of all kinds are being developed at an extremely fast pace. There are new treatments for everything from high cholesterol to high blood pressure, diabetes to indigestion, weight loss to male pattern baldness. Even more alarming, many of these meds, once prescription only, are available over the counter making medication use more complicated and mistakes in use more likely.

This series, Your Medications: Making Sense of Treatments, Benefits and Risks, explores how today’s healthcare providers choose, monitor, and weigh the risks and benefits of common drug therapies for you and your child.

Appropriate Antibiotic Use in the Community Setting

Anticoagulants

Weight Loss, Dietary Supplements & The Pursuit of Happiness

Adverse Drug Events in the Community

Medications in Kids

For these programs and more, visit the Your Medications series.

Discovering New Drugs and Biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease

Watch the latest Alzheimer’s Disease programs from the Brain Channel:

1761 Embracing Innovation: Discovering New Drugs for Alzheimer’s Disease
How can we create more effective drugs for Alzheimer’s disease? Michael Jackson, PhD joins William Mobley, MD, PhD to discuss the process of turning an idea into a drug. Creating connectivity between basic scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and the physicians on the front lines is a critical step as is embracing new ideas that may lead us to new therapeutic options.

1761 Seeking the Biomarkers of Alzheimer’s Disease
The biomarkers for many diseases can be found through blood tests, can Alzheimer’s disease eventually be diagnosed this way? Douglas R. Galasko, MD joins William Mobley, MD, PhD to discuss the search for these biomarkers and how they might one day lead to earlier and more accurate diagnoses of the disease, improved therapies, clear maps of progression, and much more.

The Brain Channel’s flagship series On Our Mind takes a closer look at Alzheimer’s disease. Join Dr. William Mobley as he meets with those on the front lines of this disease to discuss current and potential therapies, testing, clinical trials, neuropathology, public policy and so much more.

Watch all of the Alzheimer’s Disease programs.

When Drugs Do More Harm Than Good – Three Takeaways

Recently published research in The American Journal of Psychiatry shows that steroid therapies can cause neuropsychiatric damage.

Commonly prescribed medications such as prednisone can lead to erratic and self-destructive behavior among patients. Dr. Lewis Judd and Dr. Sherwood Brown, two of the paper’s authors, sat down with Nick Binkley of the Diana Foundation to share their findings in-depth. Here are three great takeaways from their discussion:

• Glucocorticoid treatment is associated with a seven-fold increased risk of a suicide or suicide attempt.

• Women appear more likely to develop depression during glucocorticoid treatment while men may be at greater risk for mania, delirium, confusion or disorientation.

• Despite the prevalence and potential seriousness of adverse effects, patients are often not warned about the risks before starting treatment.

To learn more and find out how patients and doctors can work together to reduce risk factors, watch When Drugs Do More Harm Than Good: Adverse Effects of Glucocorticoids on the Brain.

Fighting Cancer with a Virus

Can cancer cells be killed without harming the healthy cells around them? A new clinical trial is testing that hypothesis using a treatment based on the vaccinia virus. Vaccinia has played a huge role in eradicating smallpox but is now taking on a new part in the fight against cancer.

Dr. Loren Mell, a radiation oncologist at UCSD Moores Cancer Center, explains how this treatment built on the vaccinia virus backbone may be the key to more effective cancer fighting tools. Dr. Mell and host Dr. David Granet discuss this current research and the importance of clinical trails for cancer patients. Dr. Mell is the Principal Investigator of many clinical trials at UCSD and oversees several nationally and industry-funded research grants.

Watch Fighting Cancer with a Virus.

Browse more programs in the Health Matters series.

Your Legs, Your Life: The Importance of a Healthy Lower Half – Research on Aging

The life expectancy of humans has increased fifty percent over the last century and is projected to continue lengthening in the coming decades. This comes with some potential issues. As we live longer, we develop more chronic conditions, including diabetes and high blood pressure that worsen the quality of life and increase health care costs.

Healthy, functional legs can help stave off some of these chronic conditions and are critical in maintaining a vibrant lifestyle, as well as preventing injury and disability, particularly among older individuals. Dr. Matthew Allison discusses the importance of sustaining healthy legs. He describes ways to maintain mobility and increase stamina and activity. Dr. Allison also talks about various diseases that impede leg function, such as peripheral arterial disease, chronic venous disease, and neuropathy in the legs; and potential treatment options in this Stein Institute for Research on Aging presentation.

Watch Your Legs, Your Life and browser other programs from the Stein Institute for Research on Aging.