Volume XXVll, No. 3
June 2013
The Independent Medical Business Newspaper
Genetic research and cystic fibrosis Targeted drug development leads to improved treatment By Warren Regelmann, MD
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It’s not easy being green
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our waste invades landfills; hese days, we hear a lot Why should tion; our dependence on disposable about “greening,” as supplies is staggering. The irony health care communities, businesses, is, health care professionals recschools, and government organicare? ognize the essential truth that zations are swept up into an environmental health emerging eco-revolution. As a By Crystal Saric and patient health are society, we are realizing that if Fashant, MPNA interconnected. We we begin reducing our waste, understand that when lessening our energy consumpwe promote healthy environtion, and valuing product stewardship, we ments—what we breathe, what can enjoy an improved natural environwe eat, what we expose our bodment. But what does “green” have to do ies to—we will promote healthy with health care specifically? Read on. communities. And healthy comThe truth is that health care, as an munities are what we “do” in industry, takes an enormous toll on the health care. environment. Our energy creates air pollu-
n January 2012, treatment of inherited diseases took a giant leap forward when the Food and Drug Administration approved Kalydeco (ivacaftor), a drug that improves the lives of people with cystic fibrosis (CF) by restoring function to one variant of the protein that causes CF. CF affects about 30,000 children and adults in the United States and is the most common inherited life-limiting disease among Caucasians, but it occurs in most other races as well. Ivacaftor will very likely improve and prolong the lives of patients who have a rare mutation in their cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). For them, this drug represents a major SPECIAL FOCUS: advance. However, this new drug is exciting MEDICAL not only because it FACILITY offers CF patients an DESIGN improved quality of life Page 22 but also because it
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BEING GREEN to page 10
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