Had to look that up. Approved for 18 and up, not really in my wheelhouse. And not routine, as far as I can tell. We routinely vaccinate kids at 18 mo and 2 yr for Hep A in the States, which was my reference. TIL!
7 Likes
As you say, it’s not routine for adults, but we got Twinrix (recommended) a few years ago when planning a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia.
6 Likes
I advise anybody travelling to areas where water may be of questionable quality to get Hep A vaccine. It’s no fun at all. We have had 2 outbreaks here in my time, both associated with school cafeteria workers who were infected but asymptomatic. It’s not common, but certainly out there.
7 Likes
Looking it up, Twinrix (or equivalent) is in the recommended vaccination course for children in Canada now. But not typical for adults unless they are traveling to that part of the world. Definitely better than the advice given when I last traveled to the region in the pre-Hepatitis vaccine (avoid seafood, cold drinks and ice).
4 Likes
This is healthcare-adjacent and it’s odd in an ungood way:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03865-y
(doing the boxing here for Onebox bc Nature apparently does not love Oneboxing–)
- 11 December 2023
Surge in number of ‘extremely productive’ authors concerns scientists
Some researchers publish a new paper every five days, on average. Data trackers suspect not all their manuscripts were produced through honest labour.
By Gemma Conroy
Up to four times more researchers pump out more than 60 papers a year than less than a decade ago1. Saudi Arabia and Thailand saw the sharpest uptick in the number of such scientists over the past few years, according to a preprint posted on bioRxiv on 24 November. The increase in these ‘extremely productive’ authors raises concerns that some researchers are resorting to dubious methods to publish extra papers.
“I suspect that questionable research practices and fraud may underlie some of the most extreme behaviours,” says study co-author John Ioannidis, a physician specializing in metascience at Stanford University in California. “Our data provide a starting point for discussing these issues across all science.”
Ioannidis and his colleagues examined articles, reviews and conference papers indexed in the Scopus database between 2000 and 2022. They excluded physics authors, who tend to publish large numbers of papers because authorship practices in this field differ from those of other subjects. The researchers tracked how extremely productive authorship has changed over time in various countries and fields.
Overall, most extremely productive authors outside physics were in clinical medicine, which had nearly 700 of these supercharged researchers in 2022 (see ‘Hyper-productive fields’). Agriculture, fisheries and forestry saw the speediest growth in extremely productive researchers, increasing by 14.6 times between 2016 and 2022, followed by biology, and mathematics and statistics. …
doi: Surge in number of ‘extremely productive’ authors concerns scientists
3 Likes
Oh my god, this is still going on…
Among the notable points from the regulator was this stark pronouncement: No one should ever use any homeopathic ophthalmic products, and every single such product should be pulled off the market.
The point is unexpected, given that none of the high-profile infections and recalls this year involved homeopathic products. But, it should be welcomed by any advocates of evidence-based medicine.
For any who are unaware, Ars goes into a bit of rant mode, unusual for them:
Homeopathy is an 18th century pseudoscience that produces bogus remedies that work no better than a placebo and, if prepared improperly, can be toxic, even deadly. The practice relies on two false principles: the “law of similars,” aka “like cures like,” meaning a substance that causes a specific symptom in a healthy person can treat conditions and diseases that involve that same symptom, and the “law of infinitesimals,” which states that diluting the substance renders it more potent. As such, homeopathic products begin with toxic substances that are then extremely diluted—often into oblivion—in a ritualistic procedure. Some homeopaths hold that water molecules can have “memory.”
Three cheers for the FDA, finally calling it what it is. 90ish years is sufficient, thank you.
12 Likes
I’d really like the FDA to make some changes to the headline.
Every homeopathic
eye dropshould be pulled off the market, FDA says
3 Likes
Incoming.
NB: I am not saying the fate of North Americans will be identical to what the Dutch are now seeing. But.
The red line on this graph: it… bothers me…
English translation of the source:
(original source, in Dutch:
4 Likes
Aw, hell…
Given the piss poor uptake of the latest booster, and the concerted effort to hamstring any controls on spread, I’m not exactly surprised. But fully expect the same here.
4 Likes
2 Likes
Just a friendly little drive-by PSA as we get ready for family gatherings!
Keep yourself and your loved ones safe!
4 Likes
More pharma fuckery
More and more folks are using this. Be very careful.
In its warning, the FDA said consumers and healthcare workers should not “distribute, use, or sell” one-milligram injectable Ozempic products with the lot number NAR0074 and serial number 430834149057.
5 Likes
It’s unclear what specific information was exposed but it can include name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, medical diagnoses, mental/physical condition, health insurance information, treatment cost information and billing and claims information, the release said.
Anybody up there who might be affected, get your stuff secured. And who are these guys using for cybersecurity??
5 Likes
The Michigan AG office seems to list a few breaches of medical data associated with HealthCE and Welltok. I found a HIPAA Journal notification about the breach which indicates that HealthEC is the affected provider in the most recent incident. What caught my attention is that a majority of the 90 people listed as “associated” on LinkedIn are working from 
.
While I’ve no doubt that many individual firms there are good actors, some firms have, for quite some time, been doing a lot of hacking for hire. Given the current geopolitical climate, the inclination of governments on the wrong side of the 
war to sow chaos as a matter of course, and the economic incentives in a country with severe wealth inequality, outsourcing there is IMO a really bad idea.
2 Likes
2 Likes
Hospitalization rates were 81.7% for RSV, 31.5% for omicron, and 27.7% for influenza, Dr. Pontus Hedberg and researchers from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm reported. The results appeared in a JAMA Pediatrics.
The numbers here do not reflect this study (81% hospitalization rate for RSV?) but the proportions are similar. Just a reminder that Beyfortus is available for infants under 1 year in their first RSV season.
5 Likes
Assholes are reaping record profits, and still raising prices at 2-3x the rate of inflation. Cannot say it often enough:
PROFIT MOTIVE HAS NO PLACE IN HEALTHCARE!!
8 Likes
@anon29537550 I find that report to be a total mess, but I think the takeaway is RSV is worse for pedes than covid, which we pretty much knew already.
They did report a 2:1 mortality ratio covid:rsv, but had only three deaths total, so not a useful number for me (though it was very unclear if that was 30 day mortality, in hospital mortality, ICU admit only mortality, all death mortality, etc).
Such terrible reporting might make for a good headline, but provided zero usable data for my weekend in the ER.
We saw about 200 patients per day this weekend (all ages ER, not a pedes ER), up about 30 per day from last weekend, but there was a lot of vomiting, not just an increase in respiratory complaints. It -seemed- to be an even split between covid, rsv, and influenza B, though I had a couple influenza A patients as well. Admission predicatability in the respiratory population seemed skewed more toward age and negative vaccination status than anything else.
7 Likes
Yeah, I honestly could not make heads or tails. With those hospitalization numbers, the patient population must have been hella skewed. We all know RSV is a beast in young babies, especially premies, but I cannot for the life of me come up with a scenario where over 80% of patients would require hospitalization. 
Bad headline, bad statistics, still nasty respiratory season. No clue.
6 Likes
With all the usual caveats about preliminary studies and relatively small sample sizes, this is something to keep in mind (full disclosure: My mother and her brother both died of pulmonary fibrosis, and the thought of it terrifies me, so…)
Healthy Omega-3 Fats May Slow Deadly Pulmonary Fibrosis | Connect (uvaconnect.com)
“We found that higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids in the blood, which reflects several weeks of dietary intake, were linked to better lung function and longer survival,” said researcher John Kim, MD , a pulmonary and critical care expert at UVA Health and the University of Virginia School of Medicine. “Our findings suggest omega-3 fatty acids might be a targetable risk factor in pulmonary fibrosis.”
Original publication:
Associations of Plasma Omega-3 Fatty Acids With Progression and Survival in Pulmonary Fibrosis - ClinicalKey
5 Likes
