A Brief Medical Wrap Up

This week's medical wrap up is much briefer because they take a long time and I've had mocks all week.

Trastuzumab Emtansine is the new cancer drug developed by Roche. Unfortunately it costs £90,000 for an extra six months of life per patient and the NHS have decided that it's too expensive. Pressure is being put on Roche to lower prices.

26% of Doctors are non-British in NHS hospitals. This causes some concern as they may not be as highly qualified or as able as people who get turned away at interview in the UK (cough can we have more places for Med School, seriously, please let me in).

Imperial have done several statistical health maps. It's pretty interesting to look at:

Full posts shall resume shortly

Medical News Wrap Up (2)

Story of the Week

The £473mil we spend on Tamiflu may have been a waste of money

During the Swine Flu epidemic of 2009 we spend £473 million on Tamiflu, a drug that was supposed to prevent the outbreak of flu and stop hospitalisation. A new study has shown several things:

1. It does not reduce the risk of pneumonia or hospitalisation
2. It does not prevent transmission of flu
3. Tamiflu has serious effects, such as "psychiatric adverse events, renal adverse events and metabolic adverse events"

It has a similar effectiveness as paracetamol on flu.

Some believe it is effective to slightly reduce the symptoms of flu, so should be useful in the long run.

The Law

A law has been passed to sell HIV tests over the counter.

It is now legal to test for HIV at home using an over-the-counter test. The only problem is that these tests does not yet exist in the UK. They have existed since 2012 in the US and should be sold in the UK this year or 2015. Kits can currently be bought online but a lot give false results.

The aim of this is to diagnose the estimated 25000 undiagnosed HIV positive patients in the UK. The reason there are so many suspected undiagnosed patients is because they don't want to get tested due to the stigma of HIV.

Statistics on Population with HIV from 2012 (77610 patients)

The NHS

There is an online petition against the raise nurses and midwives registration fees

The government raised nurses and midwives annual registration fees from £76 to £100 two years ago and now want to raise the figure to £120. Nurses and midwives currently contribute more than £67 million to the nurses and midwives council per year.

If you do want to find out more/sign the petition the link is below.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/60164

Illnesses and Conditions

There is a "breakthrough" for Hepatitis C

A clinical trial for a new drug for Hepatitis C has had very positive results. Out of 208 patients, 191 haven't got Hepatitis C after 12 weeks. Currently only 3% of patients opt for the current treat, which only works 50% of the time.

Hepatitis C is a STD. 90% of people were cured in 12 weeks with this drug and 96% in 24 weeks. This could be a major breakthrough.

Young men with eating disorders are being overlooked

Eating disorders are often considered as a "female condition," even though 1/4 of anorexics are male. Eating disorders in men are "underdiagnosed, undertreated and underresearched" which is partly because men do not have the same awareness as women and as a result don't come forward. It is estimated the NHS spends £70 million on eating disorders per year.

Spending time on Facebook could lower confidence in women

A study suggests that spending time on Facebook looking at selfies and other photos the more they criticise themselves. This could be more influential than pictures of celebrities. The study used 881 college students in the US and answered questions on Facebook use, eating and exercise regimes, and body image.

Medical News Wrap Up

The biggest medical news stories from this week.

News

Fake HIV negative certificates can be bought in Ugandan Clinics

In private clinics in Kampala sell fake negative HIV certificates due to the stigma of the disease and the limitations of getting a job with HIV.

HIV rates were at 18.5% in 1992, dropping to 6.3% in 2005 and had gone up to 7.2% by 2012.

There's been an Ebola Outbreak in Guinea

86 people have died in Guinea recently due to an outbreak of ebola. There is no current cure or vaccine for Ebola. Ebola causes membranes to break down in the body which causes a lot of bleeding. Some strains are more dangerous than others.

Statistics

Scarlet Fever cases have reached the largest weekly peak since 1982. 

There were 883 cases this week. There has been a higher outbreak of Scarlet Fever in 2014 than in previous years; from weeks 5-8 of this year there were 868 reported cases, compared to an average of 444 from the previous four years.

Scarlet Fever is caused by the bacteria Streptococcus progenies. It is a red-pink rash that feels like sandpaper. It is extremely infectious, however it is much milder now due to the treatment by antibiotics.

Picture from NHS Website