Lord of the Files
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Melissa Welch
Southwest Oncology Network
6921 Shoreview Drive
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Amgen and Centocor Ortho Biotech Products Finalize ESA Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) With FDAe
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- Companies To Launch ESA APPRISE Program On March 24, 2010 For Patients With Cancer
- Medication Guide Available For All Indications
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., Feb 16, 2010 PRNewswire via COMTEX -- Amgen Inc. (Nasdaq: AMGN) and Centocor Ortho Biotech Products, L.P., today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) for erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs), which include Aranesp(R) (darbepoetin alfa), EPOGEN(R) (Epoetin alfa) and PROCRIT(R) (Epoetin alfa). The FDA has determined that a REMS is necessary for ESAs to ensure the benefits of these drugs outweigh the risks of shortened overall survival and/or increased tumor progression or recurrence as identified in clinical studies in patients with breast, non-small cell lung, head and neck, lymphoid and cervical cancers.
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| Making Sense of the Health Care Debate
A Handy Road Map for the Final Weeks.
WASHINGTON - This really is the home stretch in the health care debate. But after 199 laps around the racetrack, it is hard not to feel dizzy, and even a little lost. So here is a handy road map for the next three weeks - a sort of GPS guide to the health care finish line
HOUSE CALL After all the frenzy last year about whether there would be 60 votes in the Senate, the main action is now in the House, where some Democrats are eyeing March 18 as a target for a vote.
To prevent a Republican filibuster in the Senate, Democrats are planning to include the final revisions to the health care bill in a budget reconciliation measure, which can be adopted by a simple majority in both chambers.. .
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Aspirin Found to Aid Cancer Patients |
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Breast-cancer patients who take aspirin daily may cut their risk of dying of the disease by 50%, according to a study published Tuesday.
But more research is needed to determine whether taking aspirin is a good strategy to reduce the risk of the disease, the researchers said.
In a study involving 4,164 female nurses who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, those taking aspirin were not only more likely to survive through the end of the study, but their cancer was less likely to recur and spread beyond the breast than among those who didn't take the medicine.
The findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, were based on questionnaires the participants filled out on a regular basis and on epidemiological data. The study, known as the Nurses' Health Study, is a long-running research project at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. The women were diagnosed with breast cancer between 1976 and 2002 and followed until June 2006, or until their death.
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April 1: SGR Drop Dead Date?? October 1???
by: Roberta Buell
In a Statement, the White House Press Secretary announced that the President signed the Temporary Extension Act of 2010 (H.R.4691) into law on March 2, 2010. Among other things, H.R.4691 delayed the scheduled 21.2 percent Medicare payment reduction for physician services until April 1, 2010. In December 2009, the President signed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010 into law delaying the payment reduction until March 1, 2010.
Currently, there is a bill in Congress which is being voted on in the Senate to extend the update along with extending COBRA and unemployment benefits. This would extend the current conversion factor until October 1, unless this gets changed before the final vote.
The legislation "faces a key test vote in the Senate, its momentum helped by about 60 popular tax breaks for individuals and businesses that expired at the end of last year," The Associated Press reports. "All told, the measure would add $107 billion to the deficit over the coming decade. Democrats have labeled most of the bill an emergency measure, exempting it from stricter budget rules enacted just last month." In order to pass the measure, "Democrats need to muster at least one Republican vote to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to limit debate and guarantee an up-or-down vote. But Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, provided crucial help last week to keep the measure out of another procedural tangle, and Democrats sound confident they will prevail"
Don't look for a permanent fix to this any time soon. Estimates are astronomical for either a five- or ten-year fix. So, the shifting sands of the Sustainable Growth Rate (which is scheduled to fall over 40% over five years) will continue for the foreseeable future. |
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Speed Reading of DNA May Help Cancer Treatment |
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Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a way to monitor the progress of a patient's cancer treatment using a new technique for rapidly sequencing, or decoding, large amounts of DNA.
In the process, they have shaken up the textbook doctrine that everyone has a single version of the DNA in their mitochondria, the numerous energy-providing machines inside each cell. Besides the mutations, or changes, in DNA found in cancer patients, even healthy people turned out to have several variants in their mitochondrial DNA, though mostly in small proportions.
The finding, reported in the current issue of Nature, is part of a program by Dr. Bert Vogelstein, Kenneth W. Kinzler and colleagues to monitor the presence of cancer cells through the fragments of mutated DNA they shed into the blood. Such an approach was out of the question until the development a few years ago of methods for sequencing very large amounts of DNA at low cost.
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Suggested Reading
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Either Way I Win: God's Hope for Difficult Times
By Lois Walfrid Johnson
(As described on Amazon.com)
In this short book, Lois Walfrid Johnson offers readers hope. Not just heartfelt get-well wishes, but the life-giving hope that is found in the presence of Jesus. It is because Johnson understood her life to be in tune with the Spirit of God that she was able to say, "Either way, I win." It is her hope that this book will give anyone facing cancer or any difficult time the same reassurance.
For ordering information, click here. | |
