July 8th, 2011
Podcast 125: The smoking-cessation drug varenicline poses some difficult tradeoffs.
There is a new meta-analysis from the Canadian Medical Association Journal that finds increased risks among smokers trying to quit and taking varenicline (Chantix). Among smokers with stable cardiovascular disease, the number needed to treat to cause an adverse cardiovascular event is about 30, yet the number needed to treat to achieve smoking cessation is 10. […]
June 25th, 2011
Podcast 124: Getting more accuracy into blood pressure measurements
Patients’ systolic pressures vary by about 10%, regardless of whether they are measured at home or under the duress of a visit to the doctor. That variation is troubling when deciding whether to put a patient on an antihypertensive regimen: how reliable are the measurements that will form the basis of your decision? How do […]
June 3rd, 2011
Podcast 123: Calcium’s benefits seem to peak out at about 800 mg daily
On the basis of evidence from a Swedish cohort, calcium intakes much above that country’s recommended 800 mg daily don’t have added protective value against fracture and osteoporosis. The authors of this BMJ paper suggest we’d be better off making sure those at the low end of the calcium-intake spectrum get their 800 mg, rather than […]
May 19th, 2011
Podcast 122: Most newer antiepileptics apparently safer in early pregnancy — but not all.
A paper from Denmark looks at five newer-generation antiepileptics and finds no strong birth-defects signal associated with their use in the first trimester. However, as the senior author points out in a statement to Clinical Conversations, one of the drugs — topiramate — has only recently been cited by the FDA as carrying a risk […]
May 14th, 2011
Podcast 121: NSAIDs Unsafe at Any Dose after MI
Guidelines warn about using NSAIDs after myocardial infarction, and a 10-year look-back study from Denmark shows that the warning should be even louder. Whereas current AHA guidelines advise using NSAIDs after MI for the briefest possible time, the Danish study, published last week in Circulation, finds that the risks for death and reinfarction begin within […]
May 6th, 2011
Podcast 120: Pass the salt!
European researchers say they’ve got the data to show that restricting salt in the general population is a bad mistake. By implication, the U.S. dietary salt guidelines are plainly wrong. How did they do this? They followed 3700 subjects for roughly 8 years, having first measured their 24-hour urinary sodium excretion. Their data show that lower […]
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