Monthly Archives: September 2016

World Heart Day-September 29, 2016 : Your Heart says, “Listen to the Murmurs!”

Awareness Day/Month

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a group of disorders of the heart and the blood vessels which include coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral arterial disease, ischemic heart disease, rheumatic heart disease, congenital heart disease, raised blood pressure, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and heart failure. The usual acute events are heart attack and stroke that are mainly caused by the blockage due to fatty-acid deposition which prevents the blood from flowing to the heart or brain.

Disease burden

  • Globally, CVDs are the prime cause of death
  • Around 17.5 million people died from CVDs in 2012
  • Around 7.4 million deaths were due to coronary heart disease only
  • More than half of the CVD deaths take place in low- and middle-income countries

Causes

Cardiovascular diseases may be caused due one or more of the following factors:

  • Tobacco and/or alcohol consumption
  • Unhealthy diet
  • Obesity
  • Physical inactivity
  • Hypertension
  • Diabetes
  • Dyslipidemia

Symptoms

A person experiencing any cardiovascular disease can be noted with the symptoms like:

  • Pain/discomfort in the centre of the chest(in case ofheart attack)
  • Discomfort in the arms, left shoulder, elbows, jaw, or back
  • Sudden weakness of the face, most often on one side of the body (in case of stroke)
  • Difficulty in walking, speech, or vision
  • Shortness of breath, fatigue, irregular heartbeats and chest pain (in case of rheumatic heart disease)
  • Light-headednessor severe headache
  • Cold sweating

Prevention

Thomas Fuller once said, “He who cures a disease may be the ‘skill-fullest’, but he who prevents it is the safest physician.”

Some precautionary measures and effective healthcare can definitely help in preventing the CVDs. Here are listed some healthcare measures that one should take to reduce the risk of cardiovascular problems:

  • Abstain from tobacco use
  • Reduce harmful consumption of alcohol
  • Cut down the intake of salt in diet
  • Include 5 servings of fruits and vegetables in daily diet
  • Exercise for 30 minutes every day
  • Get yourself checked for blood pressure, blood cholesterol and blood sugar (diabetes) every three months

Preventive measures suggested by the World Health Organisation include:

  • Comprehensive tobacco control policies
  • Taxation on foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt
  • Campaigns to encourage physical activities such as walking and cycling
  • Regulations to reduce the consumption of alcohol
  • Healthy school meals for children

Individual healthcare interventions targeted to those at high cardiovascular risks

Your heart is at the heart of your health. Together with the World Heart Federation, Turacoz Healthcare Solutions (THS) raises awareness about the CVDs and wants to make you understand what you can do to fuel your heart and give power to your life. You ought to give your heart the care it deserves. So eat healthy, reduce alcohol and tobacco consumption, and keep your heart healthy. Being involved in the medical writing services, THS provides assistance in publication writing, clinical research and regulatory writing, medico-marketing writing, and support for conducting medical advisory board meetings.

 

World Rabies Day, 28th Sep 2016 : Educate. Vaccinate. Eliminate.

Awareness Day/Month

This year marks the 10th World Rabies Day, which has become a global phenomenon since its beginning in the year 2007. The theme of this year is: “Educate. Vaccinate. Eliminate.” which emphasizes on the two important actions that we need to take to prevent rabies. Also, the theme reflects the global target of eliminating deaths due to canine rabies by 2030.

Rabies is a viral disease in mammals that is transmitted through the bite of a rabid animal and infects the central nervous system (CNS). Its symptoms range from fever, headache, and general weakness to insomnia, anxiety, confusion, hallucinations, agitation, and difficulty in swallowing. Once clinical signs and symptoms appear, the disease is nearly fatal and the patient can be given only supportive treatment. Thus, it is very important to prevent the disease. Rightly said, prevention is better than cure and after all, prevention is the only remedy for this deadly disease.

KEY FACTS BY WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

·         Dogs contribute to 99% of all the rabies transmissions to humans

·         Rabies causes tens of thousands of deaths every year, majorly in Asia and Africa

·         40% of people bitten by suspected rabid animals are below 15 years of age

·         More than 15 million people get post-bite vaccinations globally, every year

 

Preventing rabies

Rabies can be easily prevented by vaccination. Following measures can help in easy eradication of the disease:

  • Vaccinating dogs to eliminate rabies.
  • Pre-exposure immunization in people, especially those involved in high risk occupations like laboratory workers dealing with animals, children etc.
  • Post-exposure prophylaxis immediately after exposure to rabies can prevent the infection from entering the CNS. This can be done via:
    • Local treatment of the bitten area/wound immediately after exposure
    • Administration of potent rabies vaccines
    • Administration of rabies immunoglobulin, if needed

Turacoz Healthcare Solutions, a medical writing company, aims to spread awareness about the rabies and ways to prevention, in order to help attain the global target of attaining ZERO deaths due to canine rabies by 2030. We offer services to healthcare professionals in publications writing, clinical research and regulatory writing, medico-marketing writing, and support for medical advisory board meetings. We aim to provide health solutions for everyone to live a happy and healthy life.

Turacoz Healthcare Solutions opens its new WING in Pune

Press Release

Turacoz is a medical communications company providing customized and cost-effective solutions to healthcare and pharma industries. The team of young, dynamic, and energetic professionals contribute to the core service spectrum, which includes publication writing;

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Importance of Macro-Editing in Medical Writing

Medical Writing

Editing is an important task that is performed by an editor with a good scientific background and good editing skills. Once a manuscript is finalized, it is reviewed for editorial concerns. It includes checking the content or the information in order to ensure that the thoughts or concepts are expressed clearly and in a logical way to form a comprehensive and meaningful information on the whole. Editing requires critical thinking and careful analysis of the information. It is broadly divided into micro- and macro-editing.

Micro-editing deals with the technical aspects and ensures the language and style are correct and consistent. On the other hand, macro-editing ensures transparency, accuracy, and consistency of the information in the document. Following things are generally rectified during macro-editing :

  1. Logical flow of story from one paragraph to the next
  2. Clarity and completeness of the information
  3. Clearly mentioned rationale/purpose of the document
  4. Information is oriented towards the target reader
  5. Accuracy of data
  6. Tables and figures are cited appropriately in the document
  7. Supportive references are accurate and mentioned appropriately in the text
  8. Conclusions are succinctly summarized
  9. Other things that are taken care during editing include sentence structure, repetitiveness of information, language style (tone and voice), parallelism in the statements, paragraph structure, and word and phrases usage with proper meaning depending on the context

The best way for macro-editing is that the writer self-checks the document based on the below-mentioned questions:

  • Is the introductory paragraph clear enough to indicate the purpose and provide a broad outline of the content?
  • Is every statement relevant to the purpose of the study, with no deviations?
  • Does the text flow reasonably from one paragraph to the next paragraph?
  • Are the sentence structures and language varied enough, without too much repetition?
  • Are the evidences or references given to statements appropriate?
  • Is the terminology consistent throughout the text, or if more than one term has been used to refer to something, is it clear that they are one and the same thing?
  • Is the language and tone appropriate for the reader?
  • Does the information provided in the document meet the readers’ needs?
  • Are the conclusions clearly and effectively summarized?
  • Is the content in the draft aligned as per the journal or congress guidelines?
  • Are the page, text, tables, figures, references, and other information formatted as per the style sheet?

Turacoz Healthcare Solutions (THS) shares the importance of macro-editing in medical writing. Being a medical writing company, Turacoz is involved in publication writing, training solutions, and skill development program. We offer medical writing solutions at par with the latest trends in journal-publication.

Role of a Medical Writer in Advisory Board Meetings

Medical Writing, ,

Medical writing is a multidimensional profession which requires creating numerous scientific/non-scientific documents for various phases of a drug life-cycle. Different types of documents prepared by a medical writer are later utilized by the pharmaceutical companies in procuring approval from the regulatory bodies and for knowledge sharing with the healthcare stakeholders. These documents may include (but are not limited to) documents for pre-clinical studies, clinical trials, and post-marketing studies,reports of advisory board meetings, patient educational material, and promotional material. Among all the above-mentioned documents, writing reports for advisory board meetings is an integral part of the medical writing profession.

What is an Advisory Board?

Advisory boards are considered as an important tool for understanding the unmet medical or healthcare needs of a drug/product. By forming an ‘advisory board’, the pharmaceutical companies or medical societies aim to engage their key opinion leaders (KOLs)in order to get better insights on the various medical benefits/limitations of their products from the medical fraternity. Productive discussions held during the advisory board meetings are used to gather visions on possible research opportunities, including guidance on the clinical development and trial protocols, as well as unmet health care needs of current clinical practices that might drive future clinical strategies. The organizing body usually involves a medical writer during an advisory board meeting for capturingevery detail of the discussion held at the medical advisory board meeting and later drafting an objective-driven report which is shared at different knowledge sharing platforms.

What is the Role of a Medical Writer?

The responsibility and role of a medical writer vary according to the objective of the advisory board and according to the type of report required by the organizing body. This may include:engaging KOLs for an advisory board, preparing questionnaires, conducting online surveys (for understanding unmet needs), preparing a pre-meeting report to be shared with KOLs, preparing presentations for the advisory board meeting, hosting an advisory board, capturing minutes of meeting, preparing draft for meeting report, and modifying the report into a publication-ready literature. Hence, it is very important that a medical writer has a prior understanding of the objective of the meeting and nature of deliverable.

Turacoz Healthcare Solutions provides end-to-end support for conducting an advisory board and preparing high-quality scientific reports of the meeting. We have successfully conducted several national and global advisory boards related to preclinical research and product positioning in the past two years and look forward to partnerships in future. Turacoz has experienced medical writers who understand the requirements of our clients and efficiently capture the body and soul of an advisory board meeting.

Triclosan and Memory Loss in Children

Health & Fitness

What is Triclosan?

Triclosan is commonly used as a disinfectant or an antiseptic to reduce and control the bacterial contamination. It is an organic compound with a slight phenolic smell. It is a very well-known biocide for over 40 years. Although its main application is in cosmetics (maximum allowed concentration 0.3%), triclosan is also ubiquitously usedinanti-bacterial soaps and toothpastes (even upto the concentration0.46%). About 75% of liquid anti-bacterial soaps and 30% of bars use triclosan as an active ingredient. The drug, which was originally used strictly in hospitals and healthcare centres, was adopted by manufacturers of soaps and other home products in course of time.

Triclosan Causes Memory Loss

Triclosan is believed to cause endocrine disruption; even low levels of triclosan may disrupt thyroid function. Poor thyroid function, in turn, may lead to depression, weight gain, fatigue, and memory loss. Also, triclosan degrades to dioxins in the body, which can destroy brain cells. As a result, neurological disorders and emotional distress might happen.

Triclosan attaches itself to the receptor molecules on the surface of brain cells and leads to increased calcium levels inside the cells. As a result, cells become over-excited, leading to cellular death. Over-excitation of brain cells may lead to developmental delays and autism in children.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) research, along with countless independent studies, have shown that triclosan does not provide any health benefits as compared to the old-fashioned soaps. Using triclosan-containing anti-bacterial soaps does not give any added advantage over triclosan-free normal soaps in providing antimicrobial protection.

The U.S. FDA has issued a proposed rule requesting additional scientific data to support the safety and effectiveness of such active ingredients used in topical antiseptic rubs (including hand sanitizers) marketed over-the-counter (OTC).

How to Reduce Exposure to Triclosan

Anti-bacterial soaps and hand-sanitizers mostly contain triclosan, which is harmful for children. However, you must ensure that children clean theirhands before eating. A few tips can help you to avoid exposure to triclosan:

  • Choose a safer soap or liquid hand soaps which do not contain triclosan.
  • Encourage washing hands with soap and water, the best way to reduce the number of microbes in most of the situations.
  • If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol.

Exposure to triclosan can disrupt normal brain function and cause memory loss in children. We, at Turacoz Healthcare Solutions, consider it our corporate social responsibility to raise awareness for the minimal use of triclosan-containing antibacterial hand sanitizers, especially in children. Protect your children from the toxic effects of triclosan.