Medicine

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This is a community for medical professionals. Please see the Medical Community Hub for other communities.

Official Lemmy community for /r/Medicine.


!medicine@mander.xyz is a virtual lounge for physicians and other medical professionals from around the world to talk about the latest advances, controversies, ask questions of each other, have a laugh, or share a difficult moment.

This is a highly moderated community. Please read the rules carefully before posting or commenting.



Related Communities

See the pinned post in the Medical Community Hub for links and descriptions. link (!medicine@lemmy.world)


Rules

Violations may result in a warning, removal, or ban based on moderator discretion. The rule numbers will correspond to those on /r/Medicine, and where differences are listed where relevant. Please also remember that instance rules for mander.xyz will also apply.

  1. Flairs & Starter Comment: Lemmy does not have user flairs, but you are welcome to highlight your role in the healthcare system, however you feel is appropriate. Please also include a starter comment to explain why the link is of interest to the community and to start the conversation. Link posts without starter comments may be temporarily or permanently removed. (rule is different from /r/Medicine)

  2. No requests for professional advice or general medical information: You may not solicit medical advice or share personal health anecdotes about yourself, family, acquaintances, or celebrities, seek comments on care provided by other clinicians, discuss billing disputes, or otherwise seek a professional opinion from members of the community. General queries about medical conditions, prognosis, drugs, or other medical topics from the lay public are not allowed.

  3. No promotions, advertisements, surveys, or petitions: Surveys (formal or informal) and polls are not allowed on this community. You may not use the community to promote your website, channel, community, or product. Market research is not allowed. Petitions are not allowed. Advertising or spam may result in a permanent ban. Prior permission is required before posting educational material you were involved in making.

  4. Link to high-quality, original research whenever possible: Posts which rely on or reference scientific data (e.g. an announcement about a medical breakthrough) should link to the original research in peer-reviewed medical journals or respectable news sources as judged by the moderators. Avoid login or paywall requirements when possible. Please submit direct links to PDFs as text/self posts with the link in the text. Sensationalized titles, misrepresentation of results, or promotion of blatantly bad science may lead to removal.

  5. Act professionally and decently: /c/medicine is a public forum that represents the medical community and comments should reflect this. Please keep disagreement civil and focused on issues. Trolling, abuse, and insults (either personal or aimed at a specific group) are not allowed. Do not attack other users' flair. Keep offensive language to a minimum and do not use ethnic, sexual, or other slurs. Posts, comments, or private messages violating Reddit's content policy will be removed and reported to site administration.

  6. No personal agendas: Users who primarily post or comment on a single pet issue on this community (as judged by moderators) will be asked to broaden participation or leave. Comments from users who appear on this community only to discuss a specific political topic, medical condition, health care role, or similar single-topic issues will be removed. Comments which deviate from the topic of a thread to interject an unrelated personal opinion (e.g. politics) or steer the conversation to their pet issue will be removed.

  7. Protect patient confidentiality: Posting protected health information may result in an immediate ban. Please anonymize cases and remove any patient-identifiable information. For health information arising from the United States, follow the HIPAA Privacy Rule's De-Identification Standard.

  8. No careers or homework questions: Questions relating to medical school admissions, courses or exams should be asked elsewhere. Links to medical training communitys and a compilation of careers and specialty threads are available on the /r/medicine wiki. Medical career advice may be asked. (rule is different from /r/Medicine)

  9. Throwaway accounts: There are currently no limits on account age or 'karma'. (rule is different from /r/Medicine)

  10. No memes or low-effort posts: Memes, image links (including social media screenshots), images of text, or other low-effort posts or comments are not allowed. Videos require a text post or starter comment that summarizes the video and provides context.

  11. No Covid misinformation, conspiracy theories, or other nonsense

Moderators may act with their judgement beyond the scope of these rules to maintain the quality of the community. If your post doesn't show up shortly after posting, make sure that it meets our posting criteria. If it does, please message a moderator with a link to your post and explanation. You are free to message the moderation team for a second opinion on moderator actions.

founded 2 years ago
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Question Is a multicomponent vaccine against seasonal influenza and SARS-CoV-2 (mRNA-1083) immunogenic and well-tolerated in adults 50 years and older?

Findings In this phase 3 study, mRNA-1083 elicited noninferior immune responses against standard care immunization: licensed standard-dose or high-dose seasonal influenza vaccine (A/H1N1, A/H3N2, B/Victoria, B/Yamagata) coadministered with licensed SARS-CoV-2 (Omicron XBB.1.5) vaccine. The multicomponent vaccine mRNA-1083 had an acceptable tolerability and safety profile.

Meaning mRNA-1083 was demonstrated to be at least as immunogenic as recommended standard care vaccines against both seasonal influenza and COVID-19 and well-tolerated in adults 50 years and older.

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New bismuth-based organic-inorganic hybrid materials show exceptional sensitivity and long-term stability as X-ray detectors, significantly more sensitive than commercial X-ray detectors. In addition, these materials can be produced without solvents by ball milling, a mechanochemical synthesis process that is environmentally friendly and scalable. More sensitive detectors would allow for a reduction in the radiation exposure during X-ray examinations.

Research publication on https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40207598/ Open access to the research on https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202418626

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For all of you histology and clinical laboratory nerds, there is now a pathology community on mander.xyz. This will be the third pathology community on Lemmy, with the other two currently being unmaintained. Drop by for some pretty purple/pink stuff.

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The last type of chemotherapy that David Easton tried in his five-year fight against prostate cancer left him living a life that was really no life at all.

The retired Ontario autoworker slept 20 hours a day. His little time awake was spent hunched on or over the toilet at his home in Ayton, a small community about two hours northwest of Toronto.

He and his wife, Ann Easton, decided in February of 2024 that he would stop chemotherapy, even though he had exhausted all other treatments and very much wanted to live.

Then, about a year later, Mr. Easton was presented with a new option: a radioactive drug delivered by IV that would target his cancer and spare his healthy cells, unlike chemotherapy. “The nurse said that chemo was like being hit with a sledgehammer,” Ms. Easton said, “and this stuff is like being tickled with a feather.”

The only catch was that the 73-year-old would have to limit time with his wife and grandchildren for a few days after the drug was injected into his bloodstream because he would be radioactive.

The radiopharmaceutical that Mr. Easton received at London Health Sciences Centre on March 20 is called Pluvicto, and it is part of a new class of treatments that proponents predict will soon be a fourth pillar of cancer care, alongside surgery, chemotherapy and traditional radiation.

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Computed tomography scans have become vital, even lifesaving, medical imaging for diagnosing and monitoring health conditions. But they do expose patients to ionizing radiation at levels linked to higher risks of cancer. In a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers tried to estimate what those higher risks are exactly—and although the estimates come with uncertainty, they may seem startling.

Based on data from 93 million CT scans performed on 62 million people in 2023, the researchers estimated that the CT scans would lead to 103,000 future cancers. To put that in context, those 103,000 cancers would account for about 5 percent of cancers diagnosed each year, based on the current cancer rates and the current usage of CT scans. And the estimate puts CT scans on par with alcohol consumption and obesity in terms of risk factors for developing cancer.

The most common types of cancers estimated to be a result of CT scans were lung cancer and colon cancer—two cancers that are becoming more common in younger people for reasons experts do not fully understand. The types of CT scans linked to the greatest number of cancers were abdomen and pelvis CT scans.

Read full article

Comments

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As we saw during COVID, it's very important that we improve our pharmaceutical manufacturing and medical supply chains here in Canada. I also see this as a reason why an extensive national pharmacare plan is important. Countries that have implemented such programs have been able to negotiate better deals for the drugs by acting as a single unit instead of many smaller provincial and private organizations. Instead of cutting healthcare services, we could stop paying unreasonably high prices on pharmaceuticals.

Finally, maybe it's time that Canada reevaluated some of the IP protections that american pharmaceutical companies get.

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Marketing for the new Last of Us season is out of control /s

A fungal superbug called Candida auris is spreading through hospitals and nursing homes at an “alarming rate,” with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently calling it an urgent antimicrobial resistance threat.

Last week, the CDC warned about the increasing threat of Candida auris, also called C. auris, as it not only is highly resistant to multiple antifungal drugs but also can withstand common hospital disinfectants.

“CDC has deemed C. auris as an urgent AR [antimicrobial resistance] threat, because it is often resistant to multiple antifungal drugs, spreads easily in healthcare facilities, and can cause severe infections with high death rates,” the statement read.

This worry extends beyond the U.S.

Since the pathogen was first discovered in Japan in 2009, it has spread worldwide, triggering prolonged and challenging outbreaks in hospitals and long-term care homes, including in Canada.

In January, Public Health Ontario officially labelled the fungal pathogen a “disease of public health significance.” This means it’s now considered a public health risk and needs to be closely monitored, with measures in place to prevent and control its spread.

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In his resignation letter, Marks wrote that health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wanted "subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies."

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Finasteride — or Propecia, its most popular brand name — was invented by Merck. The pharmaceutical company insists that it's rare for men on the medication to experience side-effects, and has long maintained they vanish once the medication is stopped.

But 25 people interviewed by CBC/Radio Canada during a six-month investigation of finasteride's side-effects tell a different story. They say the drug caused sexual, psychological and physical side-effects for them that have lasted months if not years after they ceased taking the drug.

The men interviewed by CBC/Radio-Canada said their symptoms are debilitating: loss of libido, erectile dysfunction, infertility, cognitive and physical issues, anxiety, insomnia, depression and, in many cases, suicidal ideation.

"It's a complete chemical castration where you have no chemical reaction to anything sexual, anything in life," said Michael, a British Columbia man who says his symptoms have lasted more than 15 years.

"It's important to remember that the majority of patients will not experience permanent symptoms with this type of medication," he said. "The problem is that we don't know which men could develop these symptoms or why."

(emphasis mine)

Since its launch, Propecia's product monograph has mentioned the risk of side-effects such as decreased libido, erectile dysfunction and ejaculation disorder, but states that "the incidence of each of the above side-effects decreased to ≤0.3 per cent by the fifth year of treatment."

In these internal exchanges, however, a Merck scientist calls this safety data "misleading." He points out that to achieve such a low number, his colleagues had excluded all men who had left the studies because of sexual side-effects.

While the company has long claimed that side-effects disappear when users stop the drug, other internal emails suggest some of the clinical trial participants did have persistent adverse effects after cessation.

"Nothing has been reported about these men who developed these persistent side-effects. So we don't know if they ever recovered or not," said Irwig.

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