I have added a link on the sidebar to the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry with Practical Neurology. This journal is by subscription but if you follow the link above, you’ll get free access to the journal’s most highly cited articles in 2009.
The free link expires 12.09.11.
The strategic deals that secure a company’s future are the ones that diversify risk, not double down on it.
via Say Farewell to Lipitor but Don’t Forget Its Lessons – Christopher Bowe – Harvard Business Review.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Read the post. It’s worth your time.
Alcoholic Hepatitis
Original Article
Glucocorticoids plus N-Acetylcysteine in Severe Alcoholic Hepatitis
E. Nguyen-Khac and Others
Severe acute alcoholic hepatitis is a life-threatening liver disease. Although glucocorticoid treatment is recommended and improves survival, the mortality remains high, with 35% of patients dying within 6 months.
How does chronic alcohol consumption lead to hepatitis?
Chronic alcohol consumption increases intestinal permeability, worsens endotoxemia, stimulates Kupffer cells, and thus increases production of proinflammatory cytokines. High levels of tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) activate cell-death pathways and induce the production of reactive oxygen species, notably superoxide anions, by the hepatocyte mitochondria, leading to cell death.
The next time you get asked by a sales professional why you rated her client for ulcerative colitis pull out this cheat sheet for talking points.
Q. What is the risk of cancer in patients with ulcerative colitis?
A. On the basis of data from referral centers, the cumulative risk of colorectal cancer among patients with chronic ulcerative colitis may reach 20 to 30% at 30 years, but the incidence rate is much lower in population-based series (approximately 2%). Risk factors for cancer include a long duration of disease, regardless of clinical activity; extensive involvement; a young age at onset; severe inflammation; the presence of primary sclerosing cholangitis; and a family history of colorectal cancer.
Watch those QT’s.
Conclusion: Shortened and prolonged QT-interval durations, even within a reference range, are associated with increased mortality risk in the general population.
Nine years after discharge, the survival of patients hospitalized with a transient ischemic attack (TIA) was 20% lower than expected in the general population.
via Medical News: Life Expectancy Shorter After TIA – in Cardiovascular, Strokes from MedPage Today.
Nearly two days, no aftershocks, no earthquakes. Time to get back to underwriting!
A CDC review of death certificate data from 1999 through 2007 found that mortality due to hepatitis C virus HCV has risen dramatically, overtaking deaths due to HIV in 2006.
Welcome to the USGS – U.S. Geological Survey.
I would like to thank one and all who expressed concern for our well-being this past week. The most recent earthquake was a 4.7 in magnitude and came in the midst of severe thunderstorm and flash flooding activity. I heard a loud bang that was immediately followed by walls shaking in the house. Fortunately I reside around 60 miles from the epicenter of the recent quakes. Still OK in OK.
It’s been a rough year weather-wise out here in OK. Not that I’m keeping count but in the past year we have experienced:
If you’ve never experienced an earthquake your brain starts firing off like crazy trying to figure out what’s happening. The noise is one of the strangest noises I have heard in my life. Did something hit the roof? But when the house started shaking I said “Earthquake”!!!!
Then I went back to sleep.
Our life, as individual persons and as members of a perplexed and struggling race, provokes us with the evidence that it must have meaning. Part of the meaning still escapes us. Yet our purpose in life is to discover this meaning, and live according to it. We have, therefore, something to live for. The process of living, of growing up, and becoming a person, is precisely the gradually increasing awareness of what that something is. This is a difficult task, for many reasons.
Thomas Merton No Man is an Island
How fitting a coincidence that this is my 1000th post.
If you believe in coincidences.
lifeunderwriter.net 
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