Thursday, May 31, 2007

Flickr: Manhattan Equinox (Manhattanhenge)


Manhattan Equinox, originally uploaded by seth_holladay.

Flickr: Manhattanhenge


Manhattanhenge, originally uploaded by NewYorkDailyPhoto.com.

Flickr: NYC Street


NYC Street, originally uploaded by KidneyNotes.
Testing remote posting. Del.icio.us tag cloud now in the sidebar. Carry on.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

YouTube Video: Google Maps Street View

A hilarious introduction to Google Maps Street View.

Google Maps Update -- Street Level Pictures

The Google Maps update with street level pictures allows you to virtually walk around a neighborhood using only the arrow keys. Try it out.

Sun Coming Up Over the Pyramids



From my Mac dashboard widget of webcams. Time to sleep.

Kidney Notes Redesigned

I decided to make it more like a Tumblelog.
I also eliminated the del.icio.us "tag cloud" at the top.
Comments welcome.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Kidney Pathology on YouTube: Rapidly Progressive Glomerulonephritis

There's a whole tour of kidney pathology with a detailed discussion on YouTube.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Flickr: Getting Things Done


GTD: Getting Things Done, originally uploaded by Emborg.

Dr. Steven Nissen talks about Avandia

From the Wall Street Journal.

Monday, May 21, 2007

The FDA's Safety Alert on Avandia (Rosiglitazone)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is aware of a potential safety issue related to Avandia (rosiglitazone), a drug approved to treat type 2 diabetes. Safety data from controlled clinical trials have shown that there is a potentially significant increase in the risk of heart attack and heart-related deaths in patients taking Avandia. However, other published and unpublished data from long-term clinical trials of Avandia, including an interim analysis of data from the RECORD trial (a large, ongoing, randomized open label trial) and unpublished reanalyses of data from DREAM (a previously conducted placebo-controlled, randomized trial) provide contradictory evidence about the risks in patients treated with Avandia.

Patients who are taking Avandia, especially those who are known to have underlying heart disease or who are at high risk of heart attack should talk to their doctor about this new information as they evaluate the available treatment options for their type 2 diabetes.

FDA's analyses of all available data are ongoing. FDA has not confirmed the clinical significance of the reported increased risk in the context of other studies. Pending questions include whether the other approved treatment from the same class of drugs, pioglitazone, has less, the same or greater risks. Furthermore, there is inherent risk associated with switching patients with diabetes from one treatment to another even in the absence of specific risks associated with particular treatments. For these reasons, FDA is not asking GlaxoSmithKline, the drug's sponsor, to take any specific action at this time. FDA is providing this emerging information to prescribers so that they, and their patients, can make individualized treatment decisions.

"FDA remains committed to assuring that doctors and patients have the latest information available to make treatment and medication use decisions. In this case, FDA is carefully weighing several complex sources of data, some of which show conflicting results, related to the risk of heart attack and heart-related deaths in patients treated with Avandia," said Steven Galson, M.D., M.P.H., director of FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "We will complete our analyses and make the results available as soon as possible. FDA will take the issue of cardiovascular risk associated with Avandia and other drugs in this class to an Advisory Committee as soon as one can be convened."

Avandia was approved in 1999 for treatment of type 2 diabetes, a serious and life threatening disease that affects about 18 to 20 million Americans. Diabetes is a leading cause of coronary heart disease, blindness, kidney failure and limb amputation. Since the drug was approved, FDA has been monitoring several heart-related adverse events (e.g., fluid retention, edema and congestive heart failure) based on signals seen in previous controlled clinical trials of Avandia alone and in combination with other drugs, and from postmarketing reports. FDA has updated the product's labeling on several occasions to reflect these new data, most recently in 2006. The most recent labeling change for Avandia also included a new warning about a potential increase in heart attacks and heart-related chest pain in some individuals using Avandia. This new warning was based on the result of a controlled clinical trial in patients with existing congestive heart failure.

Recently, the manufacturer of Avandia provided FDA with a pooled analysis (meta analysis) of 42 randomized, controlled clinical trials in which Avandia was compared to either placebo or other anti-diabetic therapies in patients with type 2 diabetes. The pooled analysis suggested that patients receiving short-term (most studies were 6-months duration) treatment with Avandia may have a 30-40 percent greater risk of heart attack and other heart-related adverse events than patients treated with placebo or other anti-diabetic therapy. These data, if confirmed, would be of significant concern since patients with diabetes are already at an increased risk of heart disease.

Avandia is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, which is based in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Flickr: View of several volcanoes in a caldera from Gunung Penanjakan (2700m). Indonesia, Surabaya.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Link for 2007-05-15: Charles Stross on Futurism

  • Charlie's Diary: Shaping the future
    I understand that you're expecting a talk about where the next 20 years are taking us, how far technology will go, how people will use the net, and whether big shoulder pads and food pills will be fashionable.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Links for 2007-05-14: Corzine, Humor in Science, Anemia Drugs, Starting a Medical Blog

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Link for 2007-05-12: The Five Second Rule Explained

Friday, May 11, 2007

Link for 2007-05-11: iPods and Pacemakers

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Links for 2007-05-10: Slate on Angioplasty

YouTube: The Encyclopedia of Life

Monday, May 7, 2007

Links for 2007-05-07: Prices for generic Ambien (Zolpidem)

Saturday, May 5, 2007

Link for 2007-05-05: Google Techtalks

  • Google Techtalks
    Google TechTalks are designed to disseminate a wide spectrum of views on topics including Current Affairs, Science, Medicine, Engineering, Business, Humanities, Law, Entertainment, and the Arts.

Friday, May 4, 2007

24 Hours of Flickr on 05.05.2007 to Benefit Doctors without Borders

From Flickr:

It's coming! 24 Hours of Flickr: A global Flickr community event

What happens around the world in one day? In a word – life. Here on Flickr, our members are sharing the world that they see: snapping daily moments, recording history, telling stories, capturing beauty.

To celebrate this global community, we invite you to join us in 24 Hours of Flickr, a day-long global photo project. On May 5 2007, grab your camera and whatever else you need, and chronicle your day in pictures.

Join the 24 Hours of Flickr group to get ready for the big day. After the big day, post your best photo to the group. We'd love to see the group photos on a map as well, so make sure you add your photos to the map using the Organizr.

Remember! We want the photos here to illustrate one day in the life of the Flickr community — May 5, 2007 — so, you can only submit a photo taken on May 5. (You'll have until May 21 to add your photo.)

The event will be commemorated by a companion 24 Hours of Flickr book, which will contain a selection of photographs chosen from the group. Additionally, the group's photos will be featured at Flickr events around the world this summer.

Books will be sold at cost (the amount will be available in the near future) with Flickr donating $1 for each book sold to Médecins Sans Frontières up to a total of $10,000 USD.

By adding your photo to this group, you understand that it may be selected for publication in the 24 Hours of Flickr commemorative book and/or displayed at a Flickr-sponsored event this summer.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Grand Rounds is up at Shrink Rap

Grand Rounds, this week's best posts of the medical blogosphere, is up at Shrink Rap. Thanks for including my posts, An Introduction to Medical Podcasts.

Links for 2007-05-03: Webby Awards, Disappearance of Bees, Hypochrondria 2.0, State of the Live Web, Tekturna

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Links for 2007-05-01: Sermo, Google Earth, Searching for Health Information Online

  • The Wisdom of the Medical Crowd - BusinessWeek
    Sermo, a social-networking site for physicians, thinks large investors may be willing to pay big bucks for doctors' collective insight.
  • Google Earth
    Most people are surprised to learn that we have more than one source for our imagery. We collect it via airplane and satellite, but also just about any way you can imagine getting a camera above the Earth's surface: hot air balloons, model airplanes...
  • Tech Medicine: Searching for Health Information Online (Part 4)
    In this part, I'll look at two other ways of searching for more detailed, professional-level health information: PubMed and Google Scholar.