Medicine in the News

Medicine > Medicine in the News

The more recent medicine advancements have been made in pain relief, Diabetes foot care, and the accelerated beneficial use of antioxidants. According to freelance writer, Jerry Karp, in his article in Biomechanics Magazine, “physicians have been writing prescriptions for ‘off-level’ drugs” for severe pain that is associated with Diabetes. As well, these drugs are in the unusual category (unusual as pain medication goes): they are found in antidepressants such as Elavil and antioxidants such as alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) to relieve pain, itching, and numbness—symptoms of Diabetes.

In another sector, medicine finds its way from marijuana fields to relief of more than just glaucoma complications and the nausea that comes with treatments of cancer and AIDS. According to one Science Daily writer, “marijuana-like compounds”, which have cannabinoid binding properties, have been found by scientists and researchers to alleviate and/or ease symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson's disease patients, to quell many kinds of illness and disease-related pain, and even to combat obesity.

And other problems besides pain and disease are being tackled. In the latest issue of New England Journal of Medicine, as well as new developments arising with Cytokine-based therapies for Crohn’s Disease, ethnically-based studies are finding treatment for such individuals as African Americans with heart failure and ethnicity-targeted therapies (that, by the way, Dr. Greg Bloch questions as an awkward query of whether or not we are moving into a “new era of race-based therapeutics.”

However awkward or controversial (consider the stem cell debate, for example), the medicine we knew 100 years ago has certainly gotten a reconstructive surgery of sorts.