3 ms·
New treatments give an example of how treating one patient can benefit others
- Herodotus38 3y agoThis is a good article. One of the sad things is that the rates of NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) are increasing in proportion to the increase we see in morbid obesity, diabetes, etc... and this can also lead to cirrhosis and the need for liver transplantation. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2760022 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... However, with the newer GLP-1 agonists (like Ozempic/semaglutide), we might be seeing an ability to better treat NAFLD and its downstream cirrhosis.
- m463 3y agoI've been listening to "The glucose revolution" and I believe getting glucose monitors into the hands of the general public might prevent a lot of this. Right now continuous glucose monitoring requires an expensive patch, lasts for a finite time and is available to few people. The holy grail would be a non-invasive monitor such as a watch. It seems avoiding glucose spikes might be the key to preventing much nafld, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, etc.
- thimkerbell 3y agoWhat is the most convenient and cost-effective spike-flattening food that you could take with your high-glycemic meal?
- m463 3y agoHaven't gotten through the whole thing, but it is enlightening in lots of ways, not just "eat this". For example, I like what it said about eating your food in a different order. With no change but the order - eating fiber first, then proteins and fats, and carbs last - your glucose spike will be minimized, by quite a lot. It also said we get cravings when our blood sugar drops. And it always drops after a spike. also, walking for 10 minutes after a meal helps lessen spike. EDIT: good summary someone prepared: https://www.believebig.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Glucose-Revolution-FFT-.pdf https://www.believebig.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Glucos...
- thimkerbell 3y agoA restaurant should do this, rather than bringing out the bread first. And show how helpful/healthful it is.
- thimkerbell 3y agoIf a physician randomly hands these blood glucose monitors out to some motivated but non-health-nut people, has them try it for a week, do they develop long-term better eating patterns?
- m463 3y agoI believe that's basically what happened in the author's case.
- uslic001 3y agoOne of the great successes of modern medicine. When I first started treating Hepatitis C patients in 1995 our Hepatitis C treatments had terrible side effects and rarely worked after 48 weeks of treatment. Now the treatments are 98% effective in 8-12 weeks and have minimal side effects. People need to stop saying that big pharma doesn't find cures.
- spondylosaurus 3y agoOne caveat to "big pharma finds cures" is that, to my understanding, a lot of the research is done via public institutions, big pharma just handles the manufacturing and distribution. I know adalimumab's discovery was funded (at least in part) by government grants, but Humira still made AbbVie richer than god.
- sudosysgen 3y agoBig Pharma also often handles the clinical trials and approvals. I don't know if there is a mechanism for a public lab to get approval for a medicine? Probably if we found a way to drive down the cost of clinical trials, we'd be able to structure the system in a way to eliminate the middle-men here, but that's much easier said than done.
- spondylosaurus 3y agoAh, good point... are clinical trials expensive to run?
- sjducb 3y agoA couple of billion per drug.
- PeterisP 3y agoThey are a bit more than half of the total drug R&D costs, so they cost more than all the research, experimental synthesis and pre-clinical experiments combined. If you've discovered a drug which works in vitro and on animals, and want to start clinical trials, you're not even halfway done.
- murphyslab 3y agoThere's a lot of literature in medicine of how often one small subset of patients consumes a disproportionate level of healthcare resources, i.e. the Pareto principle. It's fantastic seeing just how much providing effective treatment for that small subset offers drastic benefits to everyone else. For liver transplants, it's a very 1-to-1 situation, but for other resources such as hospital beds, the ripples probably go much farther.