Dynamic duo: Flu vaccine plus adjuvant bolsters immunity
I don’t think a fly in the ointment makes the ointment work better. But it’s well established that certain irritant substances added to vaccines make those vaccines work much better. From Wikipedia:...
View ArticleTropical disease treatments need more randomized, controlled trials, say...
We in the United States may not think about it much, but more than one billion people are affected by tropical diseases such as schistosomiasis and leprosy. These diseases cause chronic disability and...
View ArticlePatients share clinical trial experiences at Stanford
A new video series produced by the Stanford Cancer Institute highlights three cancer patients and their motivation for participating in clinical trials. In this video, mother-of-three Louisa shares...
View ArticleFlu-vaccine study participant shares his experience
Stanford researchers are currently recruiting participants for a clinical trial to study the immune response to an experimental, seasonal DNA flu vaccine and boosted by one of two licensed seasonal flu...
View ArticleNew blood test could bring lymphedema detection (and treatment) into the 21st...
About one in four breast-cancer survivors eventually develops lymphedema, a painful inflammatory condition resulting from the blockage of lymphatic vessels that ordinarily drain fluid from the tissues...
View ArticleNew drugs for systemic Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis raise hope and questions
Systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is a chronic disease that takes a real toll on its young patients. In addition to painful, arthritic swelling and stiffening of some of their joints, these...
View ArticleCancer drug shortage implicated in relapses among young Hodgkin lymphoma...
A shortage of a cancer drug used to treat Hodgkin lymphoma has been linked to increased cancer relapses among children with this type of lymphoma, or cancer of the lymph glands, according to a report...
View ArticleAdvice for caregivers and patients about clinical trials
In a previous Scope entry, Inspire contributor and cancer patient Linnea Duff explained why she no longer views clinical trials as a last resort, but rather as her “next good chance.” Similarly, in a...
View ArticleFunding basic science leads to clinical discoveries, eventually
When I first interviewed Brian Kobilka, MD, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize for Chemistry in October, I was struck by an off-hand comment about his motivation for his near-obsessive two-decades long...
View ArticleA call for mega-trials for blockbuster drugs
Drug therapies with sales exceeding $1 billion should be subject to a mega-trial, a randomized clinical trial with at least 10,000 patients. That’s what John Ioannidis, MD, DSc, chief of the Stanford...
View ArticleSurvey confirms that small number of U.S. adults, children participate in...
In a 2011 cover story for Stanford Medicine magazine, my colleague Krista Conger outlined one of the big hurdles in getting new cancer treatments to patients: the clinical-trial process. And, more...
View ArticleWhen mice mislead, medical research lands in the trap
An article in today’s New York Times highlights just-published work by Massachusetts General Hospital researchers and Stanford genomics expert Ron Davis, PhD, in which the scientists presented...
View ArticleSearching for a cure for pediatric food allergies
Food allergies affect one in every 13 American kids, yet when a child is diagnosed, modern medicine can’t do much to help. As parents of newly diagnosed kids quickly learn, the standard advice is to...
View ArticleTrial results promising for new anti-clotting drug
Research published online yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine shows a novel anti-clotting drug to be superior at preventing blood clots during coronary stenting procedures compared to the...
View ArticleNPR explores the need for improving diversity in clinical trials
In case you missed it yesterday, NPR had a segment discussing the importance of having more diversity among participants of clinical trials: …[A]ccording to the National Cancer Institute,...
View ArticleNew evidence about safer central venous catheters for kids
Pediatric surgeons have been slow to adopt a technique that could keep their patients safer during a common but risky hospital procedure. But the Stanford scientist behind a new study of the procedure...
View ArticleA mom’s perspective on a food-allergy trial
We’ve written here about the food-allergy work being done by Kari Nadeau, MD, PhD. But what’s it like for the parents of children with severe allergies who participate in one of Nadeau’s trials? As the...
View Article“Clinical trial in a dish” may make common medicines safer, say Stanford...
This last winter has been a tough one for my small rural community. Every time I turned around, more people were sniffling and sneezing, coughing and feverish. We’ve all been just as likely to compare...
View ArticleA closer look at caregivers and clinical trials
A recent blog entry on the Huffington Post focuses on an issue I haven’t seen much written about: the role of caregivers in the clinical-trial process. Noting that the caregiver “is the closest and...
View ArticleResearchers call for “democratization” of clinical trials data
In response to recent questioning of the integrity of the dissemination of results in biomedical literature, three medical researchers from Stanford and Duke University are pointing to the need for...
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