Here are some interesting items I've encountered on the internet lately, via directed searches or via random reading. Hope you enjoy!
I'm studying for certification this year, and since our boss is a neuro who's big on everything spinal cord, I've done some reading on MS lately.
There are lots of things coming out in literature about treatments that may stall or stop MS from progressing. First, this article from the Saskatoon Star Phoenix discusses vitamin D and its role in MS. Another article discusses the use of immunosuppressants in treating MS.
On the subject of immunosuppressants, I recently went to a great CE presentation on working with post-transplant patients. Kidneys are the most commonly transplanted solid organs, so this presentation discussed many aspects involved in kidney transplants. The docs also talked about things such as CMV, diabetes and osteoporosis.
There was a great graph on kidney disease course and it showed how going on dialysis is just as difficult in terms of quality of life as transplant, but patients tend to bounce back faster from transplant than long-term dialysis. I found a very interesting DaVita article (by one of their social workers) which discusses quality of life. This is a very big deal in kidney disease as jo the dialysis nurse could probably tell us multiple times.
While transplantation short-term survival is up, long-term rates are flat. At the current time, there may be no breakthroughs in transplant treatments this decade, but there are plenty of promising agents in trials, such as ISA247. All we can do now is wait...and see.
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