Healthcare Stories People Are Talking About
We’re launching a new feature on our blog today: Healthcare headlines people are talking about. It will be a regular recap of the biggest medical stories in the news with commentary from our practice leaders. Enjoy this first post in our new series:
• Eli Lilly announced a partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim to develop and market new diabetes drugs. Diabetes affects an estimated 285 million adults worldwide and more than 24 million people in the U.S.
• The FDA announced on January 13 that it would greatly restrict some of the nation’s most popular prescription painkillers that contain acetaminophen, like Percocet and Vicoden, saying these drugs put many patients at potential risk for severe liver injury. The problem arises when patients aren’t aware of their pill’s acetaminophen content and combine these drugs with over-the-counter acetaminophen painkillers like Tylenol. In 2009, an FDA advisory panel recommended a total ban on these pills, but the FDA today announced that the manufacturers of these drugs which combine narcotics with acetaminophen have 3 years to reformulate them or stop making them altogether. Under the new limit, the pills may combine no more than 325 milligrams of acetaminophen—less than half of the amount found in many of them now.
• On January 12, the journal Nature published results of a study in rats demonstrating that stimulating the vagus nerve while simultaneously playing a variety of sound tones over an extended period of time helps stop tinnitus—a condition characterized by persistent ringing in the ears. There is currently no cure for tinnitus, which can occur as a result of hearing loss. Tinnitus affects nearly two million Americans and is a common problem among soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The researchers plan to try the treatment next on tinnitus patients in Europe.
• Matt Lauer on the Today Show recently interviewed a 12-year-old boy, Andrew, who suffers from a rare and severe form of epilepsy, which caused him to have up to 20 seizures a day, any one of which could be fatal. According his Andrew’s mom, the family got a service dog, Alaya, to help take care of Andrew. Alaya can actually sense a seizure coming on. The service dog carries a magnet on her collar and when the boy is on the verge of a seizure, the dog licks his face and swipes the magnet over the vagus nerve stimulator in Andrew’s chest. This eases the severity of the seizure, and sometimes even stops it completely. Alaya has completely changed the family’s lives. Andrew can now go out and play, walk Alaya down the street and use the bathroom unaided. Unfortunately, the school district refused to allow Alaya to come to school with Andrew.
After this segment aired, school officials reversed their stand on the service dog, and agreed to allow Andrew to bring Alaya to school on a 3-to-6-week trial basis. This truly demonstrates the power of PR—or more so, the Power of Matt Lauer.
Tags: healthcare PR, healthcare stories, public relations, Schwartz Communications
Posted by Lauren Arnold on January 14, 2011 at 12:27 PM
