Author Archives: Tony Breu

Why can antiphospholipid antibodies be falsely positive during an acute illness? Many readers have likely heard that one should avoid sending antiphospholipid antibody tests during active inflammation. Is the reason related to thrombosis? Is it related to the inflammatory state? Or is it instead related to issues related to the lab tests themselves. For thisContinue reading “Episode 43 – In Vivo Veritas”

Why are some rashes acral? For this episode, Hannah, Avi, and Tony were joined by Dr. Steven Chen (@Dr.StevenTChen), a dermatologist and internist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Steven brought along a fascinating question: why are some rashes acral? In order to answer the question, one must first recall that an “acral” rash is one foundContinue reading “Episode 42 – A Solely Acral Rash”

Why doesn’t daptomycin reliably treat pneumonia? For this episode, the team examined an odd limitation of the antibiotic daptomycin – it doesn’t treat reliably bacterial pneumonia? This is a clinical pearl that nearly everyone learns in medical school. And yet most don’t fully understand the mechanism. There is in vitro animal and clinical human dataContinue reading “Episode 41 – Of Antibiotics and Soap”

Why do we use a vaccine (BCG) to treat an unrelated malignancy (bladder cancer)? This episode was dedicated to the intersection of infectious diseases and cancer. More specifically the use of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG), an attenuated form of Mycobacterium bovis, to treat a totally unrelated malignancy, bladder cancer. First, some background. M. bovis is oneContinue reading “Episode 40 – Infectious Cancer Therapy”

Why does the right side of the brain control the left side of the body (and vice versa)? In this episode, we investigated one of the great mysteries in biology: why are our brains cross-wired? Specifically, why does the right side of the brain control the left side of the body, and vice versa? It’sContinue reading “Episode 39 – Neurons, Double-Crossed”