geoffrey modest medical blogs

  The NY Times had a recent article on cytisine as an effective treatment for smoking cessation:  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/well/quit-smoking-cytisine.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb   they make a few well-substantiated points: -- it is pretty easy to stop smoking, the issue is maintaing abstinence (and 47%  of those who try to quit are smoking 1 year later:  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3723776/  ) -- cytisine was developed as a pill in Bulgaria in 1964 and has been used in Eastern Europe for 50 years for smoking cessation -- cytisine was approved in Canada in 2017 and Britain last year for smoking cessation -- there have been many scientific articles showing a great effect of cytisine in smoking cessation (several noted below), with a 2014 editorial by Nancy Rigotti referring to cytisine as “a tobacco treatment hiding in plain sight”:  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1412313     Commentary: --   cigarette smok

  a recent article found that aspirin reduced the severity of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD): NAFLD aspirin dec liver fat JAMA2024  in dropbox, or doi:10.1001/jama.2024.1215. The commentary section below details the new nomenclatures for steatotic liver diseases, per the AASLD (the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases)   Details : -- 80 participants 18 to 70 years old who had established MASLD were enrolled in a six-month phase-2 randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial     -- patients were excluded if they had other causes of hepatic steatosis, including significant alcohol intake (at least three drinks per day for men or two drinks a day for women), diagnosis of viral hepatitis, hemochromatosis, alpha-1 anti-trypsin deficiency, Wilson’s disease, autoimmune hepatitis, or HIV -- patients were randomized to aspirin 81 mg versus matching placebo, along with standard nutritional counseling for MASLD; medication a