Emergency Physician, Educator, Researcher, interested in the microbiome, evolution, and medicine
Writing assignment: A start-up biotechnology company has come out with a novel long-acting fever reducing drug. Instead of lasting 4 hours like acetaminophen (Tylenol) and ibuprofen (Motrin), the new drug Qoolaid lasts much longer. A single dose of Qoolaid reduces body temperature and prevents fever for 2 weeks. The company […]
I took the above photo from 18,700 feet near the summit of Cotopaxi, an (active) volcano in the Ecuadorean Andes. We were suffering from a bit of exertional and hypoxic stress in this photo. On the other hand, native people of the Andes can cope with hypoxia at altitude better […]
Class, here is the link to Baba Brinkman’s ode to senescence (with lyrics): http://music.bababrinkman.com/track/senescence Understanding age-related risk of death and age-related disease are the result of tradeoffs and occur because of evolved life history traits. We are going to cover evolutionary hypotheses of senescence for next weeks class. These hypotheses […]
Why is evolution important for medicine? Because evolution kills. Evolution also cures. We will explain in this first session. For the first meeting of the 2015 Evolutionary Medicine Course we will define evolutionary medicine, give a broad overview, and discuss the evolution of antibiotic resistance. We are also lucky to […]
The 2015 UNM Evolutionary Medicine course begins in 1 week, August 18th, 2015! If you are lucky enough to be enrolled, prepare to have your mind blown. You will learn: Amazing case studies that show why evolution matters to real patients. Cutting edge topics from expert guest lecturers in evolutionary […]
Obesity is on the rise, as has been widely covered in the media and scientific literature. This would not be a problem, except that obesity is linked with increased diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and a higher rate of all-cause mortality. However, obesity is not all bad. In fact, the most […]
Rohrscheib et al have a recent paper in Applied and Environmental Microbiology showing a new way that microbes can manipulate host behavior. Male Drosophila inoculated with Wolbachia were found to engage in fewer aggressive behaviors than uninfected controls. In effect, Wolbachia transformed male fruit flies into pacifists. How does this […]
A recently published study in the Lancet continues to reinforce the view that less is more for blood transfusions. Jairath and colleagues tested whether a restrictive approach (in which patients were transfused when hemoglobin concentration fell below 80 g/L) versus a liberal approach (in which transfusion was initiated when the […]
I have vivid memories of my training in the trauma intensive care unit where some of my patients clung to life while receiving life support, especially an unfortunate young man who had suffered a shotgun injury to the abdomen and died a prolonged death. We got increasingly concerned as the […]
Since publishing our clinical brief on illness anorexia (Alcock and Legrand 2014), described in the last entry on this blog, a recent trial examined whether giving intensive nutrition to critically ill patients with lung injury helps survival. Based on what we have proposed in EMPH and also the idea of […]
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