From BBC:

A South Korean couple who were addicted to the internet let their three-month-old baby starve to death while raising a virtual daughter online, police said.

An autopsy showed her death was caused by a long period of malnutrition.

The couple had become obsessed with nurturing a virtual girl called Anima in the popular role-playing game Prius Online.

Some psychiatrists still have doubts if Internet addiction exists but it looks pretty much for real in this video:

References:

From Mayo Clinic: May 11, 2010 — People use Twitter to share information: The latest news, current events, what people are talking about, even what's for dinner. Now, people are using it to get access to health care. Last year Mayo Clinic teamed up with USA today and scheduled a Twitter chat about a painful wrist injury. Today a woman who joined that chat is pain free.

Related:
Erin Turner's Mayo Clinic e-Patient Success Story.

"Martin Young still has "nagging doubts about doctors who post blogs or replies about healthcare issues without giving their names.

My blog as an extension of who I am as a doctor, putting a carefully considered face to the experience of caring for the sick, as a means of drawing attention to issues that do not get into medical journals. As do most other doctors who host their own blogs.

I often look at those replies to my postings that are anonymous and think, “Who are you? Why do you think the way you do? Why will you not put a name and face to your thoughts?” My personal belief is that the anonymous person may lack conviction, confidence or courage.

I would not accept a referral from an anonymous doctor, or give advice to one. In the same way, I may read anonymous replies to my postings, but they carry much lower weight."

Although I encourage physicians to blog under their own name, I do not think we should "force" them to do so. They should not feel obliged to host their own blog either if they can use such perfectly reasonable free services such as Blogger.com by Google and WordPress.

I assembled a short list of suggestion for medical bloggers several years ago. Here it is:

Tips for Medical Bloggers

- Write as if your boss and your patients are reading your blog every day
- Comply with HIPAA
- Do not blog anonymously. List your name and contact information.
- If your blog is work-related, it is probably better to let your employer know.
- Inquire if there are any employee blogging guidelines. If there are, comply with them strictly.
- Use a disclaimer, e.g. "All opinions expressed here are those of their authors and not of their employer. Information provided here is for medical education only. It is not intended as and does not substitute for medical advice."
- Get your blog accredited by the Heath on the Net Foundation

Dr. Schreiber sees 120 patients a week - 30% of them are enrolled directly in Medicare, while another 65% have private insurance plans that peg their payments on Medicare's rates. Only 5% pay on their own.

Medicare pays between 63-72% of the costs for Schreiber's patients.

Vasopressin antagonists increase the serum sodium concentration in patients who have euvolemia and hypervolemia with hyponatremia in the short term (30 days), but their safety and efficacy with longer term administration is unknown.

In a study, 111 patients with hyponatremia received oral tolvaptan (Samsca) for 700 days.

The most common adverse effects attributed to tolvaptan were pollakiuria, thirst, fatigue, dry mouth, polydipsia, and polyuria.

Mean serum sodium increased from 130.8 mmol/L at baseline to greater than 135 mmol/L throughout the observation period.

Responses were comparable between patients with euvolemia and those with heart failure but more modest in patients with cirrhosis.

In conclusion, prolonged administration of tolvaptan maintains an increased serum sodium with an acceptable margin of safety.

A quantitative content analysis was performed on 398 blog posts from a constructed 1-week sample of posts in WebMD, Yahoo!Health Expert Blogs, and independently hosted blogs.

Most health and medical blog posts highlighted and provided commentary pertaining to medical issues found in external media such as books, television, Web sites, magazines, and newspapers

Only 16% contained actual health or medical information.

Distinct differences in patterns of content were evident between credentialed and noncredentialed bloggers, as well as different blog hosts.

References:
Health and medical blog content and its relationships with blogger credentials and blog host. Buis LR, Carpenter S. Health Commun. 2009 Dec;24(8):703-10.

Comments from Google Buzz:

Shabber Hussain - Now if I can some how know about those 16% medical blogs that "contain actual health or medical information", it should make my day. Feb 26

From TED Talks/TED Med: Traditionally, David Agus explains, cancer treatments have had a short-sighted focus on the offending individual cells. He suggests a new, cross-disciplinary approach, using atypical drugs and computer modeling.

A new prescription lotion (Ulesfia) with benzyl alcohol treats head lice and is effective and safe for children as young as 6 months. The study shows it works by suffocating lice, a method that has long been tried with limited success using messy substances like petroleum jelly, olive oil, and even mayonnaise.

Overnight "home remedies" such as mayonnaise merely appear to kill lice, but don't because the bugs are able to close their spiracles long enough to survive. This is called the "resurrection effect" because, after rinsing, the lice thought to be dead are able to open their breathing spiracles and start biting again.

Existing over-the-counter head lice treatments contain neurotoxic pesticides as active ingredients, resulting in potential toxicity and other problems, including lengthy applications, odor and ineffectiveness.

References:

With a 500-million large audience, many practices find that creating a Facebook presence can be an easy -- and free -- way to stay in touch with patients or attract new ones.

Businesses, including physician practices, can create something similar: pages (previously "fan pages"). Anyone on Facebook who elects to "become a fan" or like your page receives, on his or her own home page, any updates, photos, videos or Web links that you post.

Rather than having patients "friend" you on Facebook, you can direct them to this page. Having a moderator is important, because having someone dedicated to responding to people makes them feel more connected and encourages respectful and on topic discussions.

References:
Amednews: How Facebook fan pages can connect with patients.

This study shows that variants of proteins that guide hydrolases to the lysosome are associated with stuttering. This unexpected finding implies a metabolic pathway in susceptibility to stuttering.

Video: Biology Homework about Lysosomes.

References:

Test scores dropped more than one point for each extra minute it took middle and high school students to complete a 1-mile run/walk fitness test.

From the NYTimes:

Instead of scrubbing, the workers would put their hands into a small box that bathes them with plasma — the same sort of luminous gas found in neon signs, fluorescent tubes and TV displays.

This plasma, though, is at room temperature and pressure, and is engineered to kills bacteria, including the drug-resistant supergerm MRSA.

References:
Hospital-Clean Hands, Without All the Scrubbing

From Social Media Examiner:

Wendy Piersall provides some insights into the "dark side" of being popular online:

- Fame does not pay the bills
- Being on the front page of Digg does not bring you success
- It takes lots of work to get internet fame and even more work to maintain the internet fame

See the video interview at Social Media Examiner.

References:
The Dark Side of Blogging Fame (a Wendy Piersall Interview). Social Media Examiner.

The health benefits of chocolate may include:

- Reduction of blood pressure by eating 6 grams of dark chocolate per day. Probably due to the flavonol epicatechin
- Reduction of platelet and endothelial cell activation
- Reduction of inflammatory mediators
- It can also inhibit oral caries
- It can cross the blood brain barrier and increase cerebral blood flow in humans

From Writer's Almanac:

Ode to Chocolate by Barbara Crooker (excerpt)

I hate milk chocolate, don't want clouds
of cream diluting the dark night sky,
don't want pralines or raisins, rubble
in this smooth plateau. I like my coffee
black, my beer from Germany, wine
from Burgundy, the darker, the better.

References:
The Essence of Chocolate. Dr Shock MD PhD, 2010.

From TEDtalksDirector — May 17, 2010 - William Li presents a new way to think about cancer treatment: angiogenesis, targeting the blood vessels that feed a tumor. The crucial first (and best) step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that beat cancer at its own game.

"We're probably forming microscopic cancers all the time in our body. Autopsy studies from people who died in car accidents have shown that about 40 percent of women between the ages of 40 and 50 actually have microscopic cancers in their breasts. About 50 percent of men in their 50s and 60s have microscopic prostate cancers. And virtually 100 percent of us, by the time we reach our 70s, will have microscopic cancers growing in our thyroid. Yet, without a blood supply, most of these cancers will never become dangerous. Dr. Judah Folkman, who was my mentor, and who was the pioneer of the angiogenesis field, once called this "cancer without disease."

One more sign of the increasing geriatric population - in 2009 the adult size diapers outnumbered the baby diapers at the U.S. waste sites for the first time.

From Twitter:

@drwalker_rph Who counted the diapers???

In healthy people, procalcitonin (PCT) concentrations are low, but in those with bacterial infection it occurs at high concentrations in the blood as early as 3 hours after infection. In people with viral infections, procalcitonin (PCT) levels rise only marginally, if at all.

A PCT-guided strategy applied in primary care in unselected patients presenting with symptoms of acute respiratory infection reduces antibiotic use by 41.6 percent without compromising patient outcome.

The FDA Approved an Automated Procalcitonin (PCT) Test in 2008.

References:
Simple test could cut excessive antibiotic use. Reuters, 2010.

Golfers playing in Vail, Colorado, at 2500 meters (roughly 8200 feet) above sea level, got significantly more burn protection from sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of 70+ compared to one with an SPF of 15.

There is 8-10 percent increase in sun exposure for every thousand feet of elevation. In the summertime, you can get anywhere from 40 percent to 50 percent greater sun intensity than at sea level.

References:
Sunscreen with high SPF needed at high altitudes, Reuters.

Lasofoxifene is a part of a class of drugs known as nonsteroidal selective estrogen-receptor modulators (SERMs). It has already been shown to decrease the bone loss associated with osteoporosis, like other SERMs, including tamoxifen and raloxifene. But until now its effect on other health conditions commonly experienced by postmenopausal women was unknown.

The women who took lasofoxifene had an 81% lower risk of estrogen-receptor (ER) positive breast cancer, a 32% lower risk of heart-related events like heart attack, and a 36% lower risk of stroke. "This is the first SERM that reduces the risk of all of these conditions at once."

However, not all the results were positive. As with other SERMs, women taking lasofoxifene had double to nearly three times the risk of experiencing a serious blot clot of the deep veins.

References:
Osteoporosis Drug May Fight Several Diseases. WebMD, 2010.