Lots of delays arriving at the 2012 American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago which included Christopher P. Adams, Ph.D. – a colorectal cancer survivor, economist at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and guest blogger who along with Fight CRC team Carlea Bauman, Kim Ryan and Anjee Davis is sharing the ASCO conference experience. Take it away Chris . . .
Counterfeit Adderall
The FDA is warning consumers about counterfeit Adderall advertised on the Internet.
The fake pills are not made by Teva Pharmaceuticals, contain none of the active Adderall ingredients, and instead have ingredients that may be dangerous.
Adderall is a stimulant approved by the FDA to treat attention deficit disorder and narcolepsy, but is occasionally prescribed off-label for cancer-related fatigue.
It is currently listed in shortage due to manufacturing problems at Teva. Read the rest of this entry »
Carey Goldberg of WBUR radio, a reporter with NPR’s CommonHealth blog, is writing a column about “best practices” to prep for a colonoscopy.
Feedback can range from:
She is contacting members of patient advocacy organizations to gather wisdom. Our partners at Inspire have let us know that the reporter is interested in hearing from members of Fight Colorectal Cancer.
We’d like your input, so please reply to this post with your tips and suggestions–the more detail about the best ways to prepare for a colonoscopy, the better. Be assured that you will not be quoted by name or your screen name.
Her deadline is end of day tomorrow, May 24.
Thanks for commenting below!
We are please to have an awesome staff presence at the upcoming American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting and even more pleased to have blogging for us: Christopher P. Adams, Ph.D. Chris is an economist at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. He conducts academic-style research that has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Marketing Science, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Economics Letters, Health Affairs, Health Economics and the International Journal of Industrial Organization. Expect many similar high quality posts highlighting ASCO happenings and events, so without further adieu – take it away Chris!
I’m very excited because in two weeks I will be traveling to one of my favorite cities, Chicago, to attend my first American Society of Clinical Oncology annual conference. This is an enormous conference, with some 30,000 doctors and researchers attending.
I will be attending as a “patient advocate” representing Fight Colorectal Cancer and the Focus on Research.
ASCO recently whet our appetites by releasing summaries of the 5,000 different research projects that will be presented at the conference. ASCO’s patient advocacy program had a webinar discussing 5 of the most interesting research results. These projects discussed some of the latest ideas in cancer research including finding drugs that are effective against particular cancers not because of the cancer’s location but because of the cancer’s gene mutation. Other work suggests the combining new therapies may be more effective than the drugs would be on their own, including reduced side effects.
Two projects stood out to me. The first was a study using a relatively old drug called Olanzapine (Zyprexa) (get details here). You may guess from the name that this is an anti-psychotic. It had been noticed that patients taking this drug suffered from weight gain. The researchers wondered if it might therefore help chemo patients suffering from nausea. The answer seems to be yes. However, this was a small study. An interesting question is how whether the researchers will be able to find the large sum of money needed to run a larger trial. The drug went generic in 2011 so it is unlikely a drug company would be willing to spend the money on the trials in order to get the FDA to approve the drug for reducing chemo related nausea. I asked, but the webinar speakers did not know about whether the drug caused hiccups.
The second study did not actually look at a new (or even an old) therapy but rather looked at what oncologists and primary care physicians knew about the long terms side effects (“late effects”) of treatments for colorectal cancer and breast cancer (get details here).
These late effects may include neuropathy or even cancer. The answer was that primary care physicians didn’t necessarily know that much about these things. In the webinar there was an interesting discussion about communication between oncologists and primary care physicians and efforts by ASCO and others to improve that communication. A big takeaway for me was that I need to start collecting information from my oncologist so that I can give it to my primary care physician or physicians as they see me over the next 10, 20?, 30??? years.
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Christopher P. Adams, Ph.D.
https://sites.google.com/site/christopherpadams/
Ask almost anyone after their first colonoscopy, and they’ll tell you, “The procedure was nothing, but the prep was awful.”
Now patients are reporting that combining MiraLAX®, an over-the-counter laxative, with 2 quarts of Gatorade tastes better and is easier to take than the standard 4-quart Golytely colonoscopy preparation. In a randomized clinical trial , almost 100 percent said they would repeat it again, compared to 1 out of 4 who wouldn’t take GoLYTELY® in the future.
In addition, doctors found no differences in how thoroughly the two preps clean the colon.
Splitting the dose between the night before the colonoscopy and the morning of the procedure did improve colon cleansing. But there was no difference in cleansing between split-dose GoLYTELY and split-dose MiraLAX with Gatorade. Read the rest of this entry »
Together we are Strong
