FDA Approves Drug For Common Skin Cancer
On Monday, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a new type of drug to treat adult patients with advanced basal-cell carcinoma, the most common type of skin cancer. The drug's generic name is vismodegib and was developed by the US part of Roche Holding AG. It will be sold in the US by Roche's South San Francisco-based Genentech under the brand name Erivedge. Basal cell carcinoma is a slow growing, painless cancer that starts in the epidermis, the top layer of skin. It usually starts in places that are regularly exposed to the sun or UV light.
Children With Severe Burn Injuries Are At A Much Higher Risk Of Health Complications And Death
A study published Online First by The Lancet has found that children with burn injuries covering 60% or more of their total body surface area (TBSA) are at a much higher risk of experiencing severe complications or death. The authors urge the need for more attention to be given to such patients, with more vigilant and improved forms of therapy. The study, led by by Dr Marc Jeschke, Ross Tilley Burn Centre, University of Toronto, Sunnybrook Research Institute, ON, Canada, and Dr David N Herndon, Shriners Hospital for Children and University of Texas Medical Branch, TX, USA colleagues, involved assessing 952 paediatric burns patients aged 6 to 10 at the Shriners Hospital for Children Galveston, TX, USA between 1998 and 2008.
Are All Itches The Same? - Probably Not
Gil Yosipovitch, M.D., Ph.D., professor of dermatology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and a world-famous itch expert, who has proven the pleasure ability of itching in his previous studies, has now published a new study online in the British Journal of Dermatology, in which he analyses itch relief at different sites on the body and the associated pleasure, showing that how good scratching an itch feels is related to the itch's location. Yosipovitch explained: "The goal of this study was to examine the role of the pleasurability of scratching in providing relief for itch.