Episode Details

Episode 76: Eating Disorders. 

The malaria vaccine is announced by Dr Parker, eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia are briefly discussed by Sophia, Jeffrey and Dr Arreaza. 

Introduction: Introducing the malaria vaccine (RTS,S)
Written by Hector Arreaza, MD; read by Tana Parker, MD.  

Today is November 26, 2021.

Malaria is a devastating disease that continues to kill thousands of people every year around the world. Since the year 2000, there have been 1.5 billion cases of malaria and 7.6 million deaths. In 2019, there were 229 million new cases, and 409,000 deaths, mostly children under 5 years of age.

Effective vaccines for many protozoal diseases are available for animals (for example, the vaccine against toxoplasmosis in sheep, babesiosis in cows, and more.) However, vaccines for protozoal disease in humans had not been widely available … until now. 

The RTS,S is a vaccine against malaria approved by the European Medicines Agency in July 2015 for babies at risk, and it was rolled out in pilot projects in Malawi, Ghana and Kenya in 2019.  In October 2021, the World Health Organization announced the recommendation of this anti-malaria vaccine. The trade name of this vaccine is Mosquirix®. The vaccination is recommended for children in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions with moderate to high transmission of Plasmodium falciparum, which is considered the deadliest parasite in humans.  

The approved vaccine has shown low to moderate efficacy, preventing about 30% of severe malaria after 4 doses in children younger than five years old. Implementation of vaccination is not free from challenges, and it should be executed not as the solution for the disease, but as part of the solution, along with other efforts such as mosquito control, effective health care, and more.

RTS,S is an add-on to continue the fight against malaria worldwide. Hopefully we can lighten the heavy burden of malaria for more than 87 countries that suffer the severe consequences of poor control of this devastating disease. 

This is Rio Bravo qWeek, your weekly dose of knowledge brought to you by the Rio Bravo Family Medicine Residency Program from Bakersfield, California. Our program is affiliated with UCLA, and it’s sponsored by Clinica Sierra Vista, Let Us Be Your Healthcare Home. 

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Eating Disorders. 
Written by Sophia Dhillon, MS3, Jeffrey Nguyen, MS3. Discussion with Hector Arreaza, MD. 

This is not intended to be a comprehensive lecture on eating disorders. This episode is intended to give you basic information, hoping to motivate you keep learning about it. 

Let’s start talking about eating disorders today, specifically anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. 

What is an eating disorder? An eating disorder is a disturbance of eating that interferes with health. As a reminder, health is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.” So, an eating disorder, in a wide context, is any eating pattern that is out of what is considered “normal”, and that variation in feeding causes health problems. But in general, when we talk about eating disorders in medicine, we refer to anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, but it includes also avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, binge eating disorder, night eating disorder, pica, and rumination disorder. 

ANOREXIA

In general, anorexia is characterized by immoderate food restriction, inappropriate eating habits or rituals, obsession with having a thin figure or an irrational fear of weight gain as well as distorted body self-perception. There are 2 main subtypes of anorexia: restricting type vs binge-eating/purging type. Tell us the difference between anorexia restrictive type and binge eating-purging type.

Anore