CHICAGO --- About 80 percent of patients with moderate to severe psoriasis saw their disease completely or almost completely cleared with a new drug called ixekizumab, according to three large, long-term clinical trials led by Northwestern Medicine.

The results of these phase III trials were compiled in a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"This group of studies not only shows very high and consistent levels of safety and efficacy, but also that the great majority of the responses persist at least 60 weeks," said Dr. Kenneth Gordon, a professor of dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and first author of the paper.

How can you buy a new car and still appear socially responsible? Make it a hybrid or electric car. The manufacturing strain on the environment is the same, and the energy production strain is worse because the energy density is far less than combustion, but you can appear socially responsible to others.

Gut microbes are all the rage and scholars everywhere are latching onto the fad. If you are over the age of 30, you have seen this too many times to count. Sugar causes diabetes, salt causes heart disease, trans fats cause everything, saturated fats were bad until they were good. 

Now a paper in Nature claims an altered gut microbiota causes obesity. 

In an earlier study, Gerald I. Shulman, M.D., the George R. Cowgill Professor of Medicine, observed that acetate, a short-chain fatty acid, stimulated the secretion of insulin in rodents. To learn more about acetate's role, they conducted a series of experiments in rodent models of obesity. 

If we want to cut down on antibacterial resistance, we should certainly stop buying that stupid hand soap, but we should also stop doing symptom-based medicine when it comes to sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs), which the regular medical community abandoned years ago.

Leave that kind of 'act first, think later' approach to homeopaths, naturopaths and chiropractors.

If we did, 75 percent of emergency department patients with symptoms of gonorrhea or chlamydia would not just be handed antibiotics only to test negative.  

Euthanasia with the use of physicians is supported by a majority of California and Hawaii residents, regardless of their ethnicity - as reliable as an Internet survey can be, that is.

Older people were more likely than younger people to feel it is acceptable for physicians, who obey the Hippocratic oath, to prescribe life-ending drugs for terminally ill patients who request them. Even among people who consider themselves spiritual or religious, about 52 percent supported the practice.

Following record-high temperatures and melting records that affected northwest Greenland in summer 2015, a new study provides the first evidence linking melting in Greenland to the anticipated effects of a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification.

Clermont, Fla, (June 9, 2016) ­ Rather than make appointments to see their family doctor on a regular basis, men are often more likely to make excuses for not going, according to a new survey that lists the top excuses men most often make.

The survey, commissioned by Orlando Health, and found that the top excuse men make to avoid scheduling annual appointments with their primary care physician, is that they are too busy. The survey showed that the second most common excuse men make is that they are afraid of finding out something might be wrong with them. Men also say that they are uncomfortable with certain body exams such as prostate checks, which rounds up the top three excuses.

DETROIT - The yuck factor may be an effective tool for boosting hand hygiene compliance among health care workers, according to a study at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Infection Prevention and Control specialists observed that showing magnified images of bacteria found on things common in the health care environment like a mouse pad or work station, even a person's hand, swayed workers in four patient care units to do a better job of cleaning their hands. Compliance rates improved on average by nearly 24 percent.

Ashley Gregory and Eman Chami, Henry Ford Infection Prevention and Control specialists and study co-authors, say they both were surprised by the results.

People with cancer are often told by their doctors approximately how long they have to live, and how well they will respond to treatments, but what if there were a way to improve the accuracy of those predictions?

A new method could help, using data about patients' genetic sequences to produce more reliable projections for survival time and how they might respond to possible treatments. The technique is an innovative way of using biomedical big data -- which gleans patterns and trends from massive amounts of patient information -- to achieve precision medicine -- giving doctors the ability to better tailor their care for each individual patient.

I have recently put a bit of order into my records of activities as a science communicator, for an application to an outreach prize. In doing so, I have been able to take a critical look at those activities, something which I would otherwise not have spent my time doing. And it is indeed an interesting look back.


The blogging

Overall, I have been blogging continuously since January 4th 2005. That's 137 months! By continuously, I mean I wrote an average of a post every two days, or a total of about 2000 posts, 60% of which are actual outreach articles meant to explain physics to real outsiders. 

My main internet footprint is now distributed in not one, but at least six distinct web sites: