Category Archives: In the News

Effects of Acupuncture, A “Superhero Businesskid”, Trading for Kids, and Breakthroughs for AML

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A Time Magazine question about the evidence examining the effect of acupuncture for pain cited a recent meta-analysis designed by Dr. Andrew Vickers, a biostatistician at MSK. “When comparing legit acupuncture to standard care, there was a statistically significant benefit to acupuncture, Vickers says. “We saw a measurable effect there,” he explains. “If acupuncture were a drug, we’d say the drug works.”

Citation: Vickers AJ, Cronin AM, Maschino AC, et al. Acupuncture for Chronic Pain: Individual Patient Data Meta-analysis. Arch Intern Med. 2012;172(19):1444-1453. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2012.3654.

Twenty year old student and business owner, Bobby Lenahan, invented the IV Hero, a super-hero themed sleeve to go over IV bags to make kids less scared. It is now being used in three hospitals, including MSK.

RBC Capital Markets raised $1M on June 28th during its second annual “RBC Trade for the Kids Day”. The monies raised from the day went to several charities including the Department of Pediatrics at MSK.

The breakthrough study at the Sanger Institute has shown that AML is at least 11 different diseases. Dr. Elli Papaemmanuil, joint first author, brought her expertise in genome interrogation to understand the cause of AML. “We combined detailed genetic analysis with patient health information to help understand the fundamental causes of AML. For the first time we untangled the genetic complexity seen in most AML cancer genomes into distinct evolutionary paths that lead to AML.”

Patient Navigators, AML, Our Four Legged Friends and More…

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The Latest in the World of Cancer Research

  • Adherence to cancer prevention guidelines may reduce risk of disease. A recent systematic review conducted by researchers at the University of Arizona found that studies consistently demonstrate reductions in overall incidence and mortality. Results are published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.
  • A clinical trial conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital found that the use of patient navigators increased cancer screening rates in low-income and ethnic minority groups. This randomized clinical trial was conducted from April 2014 to December 2014 in 18 practices and included 1,612 patients. The findings were published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
  • In a landmark study, scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and their international collaborators have shown that Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) is not a single disorder, but at least 11 different diseases, and that genetic changes explain differences in survival among young AML patients. The study results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Continue reading →

Internet Archiving and the Future of History, Happy Birthday PubMed, and Brexit, Oh My!

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Jenna Wortham’s piece from the NY Times Magazine, How an Archive of the Internet Could Change History, is a smart discussion of the importance of primary sources and the rare opportunity that preservation of today’s social media could provide historians in the future. Consider this;

“The internet is pushing us ­— in good ways and in bad — to realize that the official version of events shouldn’t always be trusted or accepted without question. And historians are constantly updating the record by looking for primary sources that were overlooked in earlier eras, often from marginalized figures. These days, such omissions will still happen, but we can catch them faster. Oversights that would have taken decades to correct are now resolved in weeks, even hours. We now get a kaleidoscopic view of events as they unfold, often in real time, on our screens and devices. History is not neutral or synonymous with truth, but the internet affords us a newfound vantage on the totality of passing time — the profound implications of which we are just now beginning to grasp.”

A hat tip to @SLA-NewYork for sharing this article.

PubMed is 20! The news came via a post in NLM’s Technical Bulletin which discusses recent enhancements to the database we use so much. Continue reading →