On a chilly spring morning in 2017, Boris Heifets took the podium to talk about MDMA in an Oakland, California, hotel ballroom packed with scientists, therapists, patients, and activists. If he noticed the occasional whiffs of incense and patchouli oil coming from the halls of the Psychedelic Science meeting, he didn't let on. After all, anyone studying the therapeutic benefits of the drug that sparked an underground dance revolution 30 years ago knows that ravers, Burners, and old hippies flock to this meeting. It's the world's largest gathering on psychoactive substances.
Ecstasy enthusiasts and university professors alike heard several research teams report that MDMA helped patients recover from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other disabling psychiatric conditions after conventional treatments had failed. Meeting rooms buzzed with excited chatter about the prospect of MDMA getting approved as a prescription therapy for PTSD. That could come as early as 2021 if it proves safe and effective in large clinical studies that are just getting underway. For many advocates of this work, regulatory approval can't arrive too soon.
But Heifets, a Stanford neuroanesthesiologist, had come to lay out an even grander role for the drug federal officials banned in 1985 in a futile effort to quash the burgeoning rave scene. Psychiatric treatments lag decades behind the rest of medicine, even though serious mental disorders carry just as much risk of disability and death as cardiovascular disease, Heifets explained. Psychiatrists desperately need more targeted therapies to give their patients the same kind of rapid, enduring relief that stents and bypass surgery provide for heart patients. He thought they'd benefit from thinking like surgeons. "I don't want to suggest that we can cure psychiatric disease in 30 minutes in the operating room," Heifets said. But we can harness powerful drugs like MDMA that act like a surgeon's knife to alter consciousness and exorcise psychological demons.
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https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/22/18628271/mdma-molly-ecstasy-drug-ptsd-therapy-mental-health?
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
A.I. Took a Test to Detect Lung Cancer. It Got an A. - The New York Times
Computers were as good or better than doctors at detecting tiny lung cancers on CT scans, in a study by researchers from Google and several medical centers.
The technology is a work in progress, not ready for widespread use, but the new report, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, offers a glimpse of the future of artificial intelligence in medicine.
One of the most promising areas is recognizing patterns and interpreting images — the same skills that humans use to read microscope slides, X-rays, M.R.I.s and other medical scans.
By feeding huge amounts of data from medical imaging into systems called artificial neural networks, researchers can train computers to recognize patterns linked to a specific condition, like pneumonia, cancer or a wrist fracture that would be hard for a person to see. The system follows an algorithm, or set of instructions, and learns as it goes. The more data it receives, the better it becomes at interpretation.
The process, known as deep learning, is already being used in many applications, like enabling computers to understand speech and identify objects so that a self-driving car will recognize a stop sign and distinguish a pedestrian from a telephone pole. In medicine, Google has already created systems to help pathologists read microscope slides to diagnose cancer, and to help ophthalmologists detect eye disease in people with diabetes.
More ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/health/cancer-artificial-intelligence-ct-scans.html
The technology is a work in progress, not ready for widespread use, but the new report, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, offers a glimpse of the future of artificial intelligence in medicine.
One of the most promising areas is recognizing patterns and interpreting images — the same skills that humans use to read microscope slides, X-rays, M.R.I.s and other medical scans.
By feeding huge amounts of data from medical imaging into systems called artificial neural networks, researchers can train computers to recognize patterns linked to a specific condition, like pneumonia, cancer or a wrist fracture that would be hard for a person to see. The system follows an algorithm, or set of instructions, and learns as it goes. The more data it receives, the better it becomes at interpretation.
The process, known as deep learning, is already being used in many applications, like enabling computers to understand speech and identify objects so that a self-driving car will recognize a stop sign and distinguish a pedestrian from a telephone pole. In medicine, Google has already created systems to help pathologists read microscope slides to diagnose cancer, and to help ophthalmologists detect eye disease in people with diabetes.
More ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/health/cancer-artificial-intelligence-ct-scans.html
Opinion | What Superbug Hunters Know That We Don’t - The New York Times
Antibiotic-resistant superbugs are everywhere. If your hospital claims it doesn't have them, it isn't looking hard enough.
Hospitals are losing an important public relations battle over the expanding threat of superbugs, including the deadly fungus Candida auris. Though states are tasked with conducting outbreak investigations, they aren't required to disclose their findings to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (and in many cases they haven't). Grieving families are pushing for more transparency, while patient advocates smell a cover-up, likening the scenario to a restaurant failing to report an outbreak of food poisoning. In the midst of all this mistrust, hospital spokesmen are declining to comment. This is a mistake.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but these microbes are in our homes, cars and grocery stores. One study found that even after the use of disinfectant, more than half of hospital rooms still contain a superbug. Nurses and doctors carry these things around, too. Roughly 5 percent of health care workers are colonized with MRSA, a bacterium that kills thousands of people in the United States every year, and another study found that 10 percent of patients entering a hospital had a multidrug-resistant species on their hands. You don't want to know what's hiding on a handkerchief.
Here's the thing: You almost certainly don't need to worry about any of this. Potentially deadly bacteria and fungi live harmlessly on our hands, feet, and faces, and may never cause a problem. There are trillions of bacteria living inside all of us. Why are we pretending they aren't on our gurneys, blood pressure cuffs and X-ray machines?
More ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/opinion/hospitals-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria-superbugs.html?
Hospitals are losing an important public relations battle over the expanding threat of superbugs, including the deadly fungus Candida auris. Though states are tasked with conducting outbreak investigations, they aren't required to disclose their findings to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (and in many cases they haven't). Grieving families are pushing for more transparency, while patient advocates smell a cover-up, likening the scenario to a restaurant failing to report an outbreak of food poisoning. In the midst of all this mistrust, hospital spokesmen are declining to comment. This is a mistake.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but these microbes are in our homes, cars and grocery stores. One study found that even after the use of disinfectant, more than half of hospital rooms still contain a superbug. Nurses and doctors carry these things around, too. Roughly 5 percent of health care workers are colonized with MRSA, a bacterium that kills thousands of people in the United States every year, and another study found that 10 percent of patients entering a hospital had a multidrug-resistant species on their hands. You don't want to know what's hiding on a handkerchief.
Here's the thing: You almost certainly don't need to worry about any of this. Potentially deadly bacteria and fungi live harmlessly on our hands, feet, and faces, and may never cause a problem. There are trillions of bacteria living inside all of us. Why are we pretending they aren't on our gurneys, blood pressure cuffs and X-ray machines?
More ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/opinion/hospitals-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria-superbugs.html?
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