April 2020
Should You Participate In A Clinical Trial?
Cancer patients who consider going on a cancer clinical trial often start out with fears: Will I be treated like a guinea pig? Will I get a real drug or just a placebo? Will they be experimenting on me? Key benefits and barriers in clinical trials are explained in this video. It also features breast...
FDA Approves Trodelvy for Triple Negative Breast Cancer
The FDA has granted accelerated approval to Immunomedics’ Trodelvy (sacituzumab govitecan-hziy), the first antibody-drug conjugate that targets the Trop-2 antigen. Trodelvy is indicated for treatment of relapsed or refractory metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Chemotherapy has been the standard treatment for TNBC, and patients who take Trodelvy must have received at least 2 previous therapies for the cancer. Further clinical...
April is Minority Health Month: Here Are 10 Amazing Minority Physicians Making An Impact
Celebrated every year in April, National Minority Health Month is an effort to raise awareness about health disparities that continue to affect racial and ethnic minority populations. Because many minority neighborhoods have a shortage of physicians and less access to medical care, increasing the supply of minority physicians has been proposed as an intervention that...
NIH Clinical Trial of Hydroxychloroquine For COVID-19 Begins
A clinical trial to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of adults hospitalized with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has begun, with the first participants now enrolled in Tennessee. The Outcomes Related to COVID-19 treated with hydroxychloroquine among In-patients with symptomatic Disease study, or ORCHID Study, is being conducted by the Prevention...
Coronavirus Hits Black Americans The Hardest
Early statistics and multiple news sources indicate that the coronavirus is infecting and killing African Americans at disproportionate rates. Yesterday (April 8, 2020) The New York Times reported that “African-Americans account for more than half of those who have tested positive and 72 percent of virus-related fatalities in Chicago, even though they make up a...
Dr. Ilan Shapiro On How COVID-19 is Uniquely Affecting Latinx Families
Dr. Ilan Shapiro is the Medical Director of Health Education and Wellness at AltaMed servicing 300K patients in LA County. We reached out to Dr. Shapiro to share his experience providing culturally sensitive care to his patients and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. MDNewsline: Before the COVID-19 pandemic became widespread throughout the U.S. it...
Sickle Cell Disease Treatment Options
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the most common genetic disease affecting 100,000 people in the U.S. According to the CDC 1 out of 365 African Americans and 1 out of 16,300 Hispanic- Americans have sickle cell disease. The majority of SCD patients are medicaid beneficiaries (less than 70% of doctors in the U.S. accept new...
Diabetes In Minority Populations: What Can Be Done?
Racial and ethnic minority groups are disparately affected by the burden of diabetes. Minorities have higher rates of the disease, worse diabetes control and higher rates of complications. Minority groups are more likely to have diabetes than non-minorities. Per the CDC, while 7.4% of white non-Hispanic adults were diagnosed with diabetes in 2017, 12.1% of...