This week, Amol, general internal medicine resident at the University of Toronto, and Fahad, staff internist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, discuss 2 recent papers:
Is dementia in decline? A study using the well-characterized Framingham cohort found that dementia rates in the last four decades have declined by 20%. Fahad evaluate the quality of this data, and the generalizability of the Framingham cohort to the global population. For a discussion about healthcare costs in dementia, check out our “Cognition Edition” episode.
Existing guidelines recommend using erythropoietin stimulating agents to treat anemia in chronic kidney disease. However, a systematic review and meta analysis found that erythropoietin stimulating agents didn’t improve patients’ health related quality of life. Given the heterogeneity of the studies included, how robust is this result?
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The Papers
1. Incidence of dementia: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1504327
2. EPO-agents for anemia in kidney disease: http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2491918
Good Stuff
1. IBM and Watson Health: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/technology/ibm-buys-truven-adding-to-growing-trove-of-patient-data-at-watson-health.html?_r=0
2. Gut microbes in infants: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/right-gut-microbes-help-infants-grow?utm_source=sciencemagazine&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gutbabies-2478
Music Credits (Creative Commons)
In your Robotic Heart – Nicolai Heidlas https://soundcloud.com/nicolai-heidlas/in-your-robotic-heart
Drive – Nicolai Heidlas https://soundcloud.com/nicolai-heidlas/drive-fresh-upbeat-pop-background-music
Vintage Dream – Nicolai Heidlas https://soundcloud.com/nicolai-heidlas/vintage-dream-loungejazzy-background-music
All tracks have been modified for the purposes of this podcast.
