Amir, PharmD
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theamirimani.bsky.social
Amir, PharmD
@theamirimani.bsky.social
2.7K followers 720 following 280 posts
I talk about drugs, diseases, drugs, misinformation, and drugs. Opinions mine and not particularly good.
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Remaking this #SkyRx / #MedSky

🎉 Supplement/OTC toxicities you not know about 🌈

⭐Transplant immune suppression failure from St John's Wort

⭐Kidney stones from high dose vitamin C

⭐Blunted response to platinum-based chemo due to antioxidant supplement

⭐Hypercalcemia & falls from high dose Vit D
Those kids are probably too autistic to be allergic to peanuts smdh
Reposted by Amir, PharmD
Fewer toddlers developed peanut allergies after guidelines recommended introducing peanut products in infancy, a large primary care registry study showed. 🥜⬇️
2030: "A pair of thieves made off with a Rembrandt after successfully distracting Louvre Security by yelling 'Hey! What's that?!'"
Happy to see the tradition of "robbing the Louvre in the most basic way possible" return.
*Looking over at the US*
"Damn that's fucked up"

*Get email from Ontario grad student union*
"Hey wait a minute"
I agree. I think the destructiveness of gambling addiction/problem gambling never really reached the public eye?
I spent so much talking to people about ivermectin or HCQ or Azithro. So much time on vaccines making you magnetic or infertile or autistic.

There are valuable discussions to be had and questions to ask in healthcare. Those weren't it.
One of the insidious problems with medical disinformation is that it "hogs the air".

We spend time debunking BS and assuaging fears that we could have spent having actually valuable discussions.

#MedSky #RxSky
Giving real life Quietus vibes
A 0.5% risk of a severe outcome led to a generational change.

Something to keep in mind
There's another lesson in polio too. Humor me a bit:

❓What percentage of kids with polio actually went on to develope paralytic poliomyelitis?

A) 5%

B) 12%

C) 0.5%

D) 3%
"Canadian values" probably meaning something different to pretty much every single person polled.
Fun fact: This year is the *1000 year anniversary* of The Canon of Medicine. An encyclopedia that was used in European universities until the 17th century.

One that was influenced by and organized Persian, Greek, Chinese, and Indian medical knowledge of the time.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Can...
The Canon of Medicine - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I grew up learning about Persian scientists during the Islamic Golden Age like Avicenna or Al-Razi. Their work was foundational for later advances in the renaissance and modern medicine as we know it.

They considered their work universal. Never described it as practicing “Western Medicine”.
*Tiny soapbox*

Calling it "Western Medicine" whitewashes historical and ongoing contributions made to modern medicine by the global community. It's meaningless and unnecessarily divisive.

#RxSky #MedSky
Also turmeric in food is fine folks. Very hard to overdo it there.

I'd be very sad if this post led people to under-seasoning their food 😭
Honestly maybe they'll find something. But data so far is lacking.

Plus one of the reasons turmeric "worked" in some in vitro studies is because it messes with some lab tests.

I wrote a few lines about efficacy in 1 study here

bsky.app/profile/thea...
And unfortunately, if you care about significant safety outcomes like liver injury, a sample size of 70 is just not gonna cut it 🤷

That's not the authors' fault. That's just how more rare side effects work.
⏩ The pain score they use (VAS) is out of 100mm.

⏩ 9.1 points doesn't meet the authors' own definition of a "Minimum Clinically Important Difference/MCID" (i.e. the bare minimum improvement that folks would actually care about).

⏩ There were no changes in synovitis or quality of life.
Look at the company's material or the study results and it looks pretty good!

Statistically significant reduction in pain scores!

9.1mm! That's a number!

But folks who know the literature or who have the University affiliation/money to look at the full study would point out...
It's niche knowledge even among HCWs
If this was a prescription medicine, regulators would demand new safety data if you wanted to alter your formulation this way.

But it's a supplement so people are left to fend for themselves. Wild West stuff 🤠
The problem is that most safety data is based on regular turmeric supplements that don't use black pepper extract to boost absorption.

Turmeric's systemic absorption sucks, which makes it safe.

You start boosting that absorption with an additive and the math changes.