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  • More Developments in the Study of Pulmonary Fibrosis

    This one actually didn’t seem too surprising to me, but it is cool that they were able to find the connection.

    New Light Shed on Deadly Lung Disease

    TUESDAY, Aug. 3 (HealthDayNews) — New research holds out hope for people suffering from pulmonary fibrosis, a deadly lung disease, by discovering that cells that travel to the organ to repair damage end up doing more harm than good.

    The study found these biological repairmen, which experts had thought originally resided in the lungs, were actually adult stem cells that migrated there from the patient’s bone marrow — and this migration can be halted.

    …

    “It’s certainly very exciting research, but the information is obviously very preliminary,” said Dr. Alfred Munzer, a lung specialist from Maryland and past president of the American Lung Association. “We have to see what meaning it holds.”

    Pulmonary fibrosis is a chronic and often fatal disorder that is characterized by extra scar tissue in the lungs. The disease, which affects some 80,000 individuals in the United States, has traditionally been treated with steroids and other immunosuppressive therapies, but with little effect. About 70 percent of people die within five years of diagnosis. “At the moment, there is no effective treatment for pulmonary disease, and it is not that uncommon a disease,” Munzer said. [medicinenet.com]

    What I think about this is that it gives me hope for people who get IPF in the future. I’m already well on my way to getting a new lung, but that honestly isn’t my first choice. And it isn’t something available to all people. In many ways I’m very lucky in that I haven’t gotten worse in well over a year (*knocks on wood*).

  • More Pulmonary Fibrosis News

    Here’s an interesting article from a few days ago:

    Adult Stem Cells Migrate to Lung, Contribute to Pulmonary Fibrosis

    09 Aug 2004

    UCLA researchers for the first time identified and then stopped a type of adult stem cell from migrating to the lung and contributing to pulmonary fibrosis in an animal model. Pulmonary fibrosis (i.e, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis) in humans is a devastating terminal disorder that causes an overabundance of scar tissue to form in the lung.

    IMPACT: The new study may offer novel therapies to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis– currently there are no effective treatments and the mortality rate is approximately 70 percent within five years of diagnosis. Over 80,000 individuals in the United States suffer from the disease. [medicalnewstoday.com]

  • Medbloggers

    Jon Udell has a great post on Medbloggers, something that I didn’t really realize existed until he wrote about it. Though we’ve got political bloggers, library bloggers, law bloggers, so it makes sense there would be medical bloggers.

    Medbloggers

    …

    The numbers are small. Starting with Pho’s blogroll, I began assembling a list of the medical bloggers who cross-reference one another. What I found confirmed Pho’s estimate that there are no more than 100 of these medbloggers, many of whom are aggregated at medlogs.com. Nor are these medblogs yet widely subscribed. Pho today has 14 Bloglines subscribers. One of the founders of the movement, medpundit, today has 58. Those numbers are one or two orders of magnitude shy of the readerships of many of the tech blogs I follow. But unless fear of malpractice strangles this baby in the cradle, that will be a temporary phenomenon. In the long run there will be many more people hungry for informed analysis of medical issues than for informed analysis of tech issues.

    This looks like a great opportunity to watch the blogging meme replicate throughout another community of practice. I’ll be fascinated to see how it changes, but also is changed by, that community. Corporate techbloggers, for example, are learning to walk a fine line between acceptable sharing of information and punishable transgression. Medbloggers face a different set of issues: libel, privacy, and of course malpractice. See this American Medical News article for a useful overview. [Jon Udell’s Weblog]

    As you can tell from some recent posts I’ve started following medical information on Pulmonary Fibrosis online, mostly inspired by this article. I even found a blog called Bronch Blog to subscribe to.

  • The Need For Patient Education

    One thing that amazes me is how much information is available on medical conditions and how few people ever find it. Hopefully things like this can help with that.

    Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis Announces Publication of New Educational Tools for Patients

    Preliminary Results From Latest Research Initiative Demonstrate Need for Lung
    Transplant and Pulmonary Rehabilitation Education for IPF Patients and
    Caregivers

    SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 17 /PRNewswire/ — The Coalition for Pulmonary
    Fibrosis     (CPF) announced today the publication of two new educational
    brochures: ‘Lung Transplantation: What Every Patient with Idiopathic
    Pulmonary Fibrosis Should Know’ and ‘Oxygen Management and Pulmonary
    Rehabilitation for the IPF Patient’.

    The two brochures were created for patients, family members and physicians
    alike based on preliminary results of the CPF’s Basic Research Questionnaire,
    an education initiative launched last year to better understand the impact of
    idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) on patients and families, and to help the
    foundation grasp the educational needs that arise for those fighting the
    disease.

    To date, the CPF has received more than 1,400 responses to this
    ground-breaking survey, and based on educational gaps identified by patients,
    discovered the need for improved education and awareness on two very important
    topics for IPF patients; lung transplantation and pulmonary rehabilitation.

    Interim results of the CPF’s research questionnaire found that among
    current patients, 30 percent responded that their physician has not discussed,
    or even mentioned the topic of lung transplantation, a potential treatment
    option for IPF patients under 65. Of those patients under the age of 60,
    fewer than half (47 percent) said they have been advised to seek a lung
    transplant. Additional data from a Duke University study also indicates that
    more than 50 percent of those with IPF who are on transplant lists will pass
    away before a donor lung becomes available. [via Feedster Search: Pulmonary Fibrosis]

    This also makes me very thankful that I found the doctors I did as I went through my diagnosis. I was quickly forwarded to a pulmonary specialist and he was able to give me a preliminary diagnosis almost immediately. Once it was confirmed that I did actually have Pulmonary Fibrosis we sat down and talked about what it all means, what treatments were available, how things tended to progress, what it meant long term, the whole thing. I still find it kind of stunning that other people have not had this same experience.

  • Possible New Treatments for Pulmonary Fibrosis

    I’ve started hunting for news items to do with Pulmonary Fibrosis in my news reader, so will be making note of interesting developments that I find.

    Treatment for pulmonary fibrosis may be achieved by blocking cell death in the lung

    A research team at Yale has found that blocking a kind of cell death called apoptosis in fibrotic diseases of the lung, also blocks the fibrosis, opening new ways of looking at treatment for lung diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis. [via Feedster Search: Pulmonary Fibrosis]

  • Maggots!

    Every time I hear about the use of maggots for healing I think “whoa, cool”, then I think about it a bit more and go “ew icky!” Though, I guess if it works that well I’d cope with it if needed.

    Maggot Band-Aid
    David Pescovitz:
    First used centuries ago to treat battlefield wounds, maggots are proving to be a useful treatment to prevent post-operative infections. Maggot debridement therapy (MDT) calls for maggot dressing to be applied to wounds twice a week for up to 72 hours each time. From the press release about a recent study on MDT in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases:

    “Debridement, or the removal of contaminated tissue to expose healthy tissue, can be done surgically. However, maggots that have been disinfected during the egg stage so that they don’t carry bacteria into the wound have their advantages. The larvae preferentially consume dead tissue (steering clear of live), they excrete an antibacterial agent, and they stimulate wound healing–all factors that could be linked to the lower occurrence of infection in maggot-treated wounds.”

    Link [via Boing Boing Blog]

    Now I just need to find the article I remember reading about the medical uses of slugs.

  • More People Gasping For Breath

    Given my issues with my own lungs, I’m always keeping my ears out for news stories about them. The scary part is that I can see this leading to more people getting things like IPF earlier in life. Not something I’d wish on anyone.

    Pollution’s Long-Term Effects on Pre-Teens’ Lungs

    A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week indicates that current levels of air pollution have chronic adverse effects on lung development in children aged 10 to 18. The large study’s authors conclude that the exposure leads to clinically significant deficits in adult lung function. NPR’s Richard Harris reports. [via NPR News: Health & Science]

  • Whoa, trails…

    Oh my!

    He saw comet-tails on every pitch.
    The LSD No-Hitter:

    When the subject of baseball and drugs comes up, the story of Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis and his celebrated ‘LSD No-Hitter’ stands out above all others. On June 12, 1970, the 25-year-old pitcher was between starts, so he stayed back in his Los Angeles hotel while his team flew on to San Diego to play the Padres. Ellis invited his girlfriend over, and they dropped hits of acid around noon.

    As he tells it in his autobiography, In the Country of Baseball:

    ‘I had taken LSD … I thought it was an off day. That’s how come I had it in me. I took the LSD at 12 noon. At one, my girlfriend looked in the paper and said ‘Dock, you’re pitching today’.’”

    [Off On A Tangent]

    (Should I be admitting this here…?) Back in my partying days I certainly never took LSD, and while doing so never ever spun out at parties. And I definitely never learned to spin records while tripping. Because uh, drugs are bad. These days I stay away from that stuff, the last thing I need is to be high when I get the call for a new lung (talk about a recipe for a bad trip).