John Canady, MD
Forbes magazine
Personal misuse of super-strength botulinum toxin caused a Florida osteopath, his girlfriend, and two of his patients to become paralyzed and hospitalized for months in 2004. At the time, Bach McComb was an osteopathic physician who was continuing to practice in Oakland Park, Fla., after his license had been suspended. In the four cases described, McComb did not use a medical version of Allergan Inc.'s Botox. Instead, he mistakenly gave himself and the three others four to six injections of a preparation of paralyzing botulinum toxin that was 2,800 times stronger than that typically used on patients, according to the authors of an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This formulation was only intended for laboratory work. The incident does not reflect on the safety of standard treatments of Botox, stressed Canady, a professor of plastic surgery at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and vice president of the American Academy of Plastic Surgeons. “This was clearly not Botox,” Canady said. “More than 3 million people got Botox injections in 2005, which is the last year we have statistics on, and I don't believe any reaction such as this has been reported.”

Louis Kirchhoff, MD
New York Times
After years of delays, the Food and Drug Administration approved a test for a fatal parasitic infection that is common in Latin America and increasingly prevalent in the U.S. blood supply. The nation's major blood banks said they would quickly adopt the test for Chagas disease, which in Latin America is usually transmitted by the bite of a parasite-carrying insect called the kissing bug, but can also be passed from mother to child or through blood transfusion or organ donation. Until now, the only treatments for Chagas are two drugs, nifurtimox and benznidazole, which can cause unpleasant side-effects. They cure up to 95 percent of recently infected children, according to Kirchhoff, a Chagas expert at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, but they are successful in fewer than 10 percent of adults with long-dormant infections. Complicating matters, it is nearly impossible to tell when treatment of such patients has worked because the antibodies detected by the test linger in the blood, he said.

Helena Laroche, MD
New York Times
Adults who live with children eat more fat, and more saturated fat, than those who do not, according to a new study. The report was published online in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. The correlation between adults’ and children’s diets has usually been attributed to parental influence. But in the case of fat intake, it may be that children and teenagers, who consume more fat than other age groups, influence the diets of their parents. “I think the important thing we should take away from this study,” said Laroche, the lead author and an associate professor of internal medicine at University of Hospitals and Clinics, “is that healthy nutrition should focus on the entire family, and not only on specific individuals within the family.”