The Yellow Jersey

Before I begin, I need to talk about some cool new things.

#1 I have picked up my efforts for surveys. Hopefully I will be hitting that 200+ mark in no time. I am also waiting on a new battery for my wife's laptop so that I can walk around and bug people that way. I think the person-to-person contact will prove to be much more successful.
#2 One of the people who helps and supports the interns - Cathleen Marshall - has shown me a way to put a graphic of www.rateadrug.com on the top of my page. That is kind of cool, if you look to the left of this sentence you will see it there, it looks kind of like a pill, but it says rateadrug on it. That is a neat feature and I like being able to customize the thing.
#3 I learned - in my last post - how to enter text boxes so that I can make the text that I quote look a little better and be a little more compelling.
#4 At work the other night one of the nurses that I work with told me that a patient had received a drug known as Racemic-Epi. I know what that means! I understood what the name of the medication was and what it would do! That is thanks to this blog and internship, and thanks also to my Organic Chemistry course at school. I like learning, it's cool.
I think that Racemic-Epi will probably be the next DotW (Drug of the Week) feature, I will explain what that name means, and why I thought that was neat.
Hopefully by the end of this internship I will have learned even more stuff!

I have been pondering over the 'Drug of the Week' feature for this week, and I must admit I was somewhat stumped. Generally I focus on Neurological medications and functions/abnormalities as this is what I usually see; but, recently my unit at the hospital got a girl who was in renal (kidney) failure and was on Dialysis for it. I have known people who were on Dialysis for kidney failure, but I had never before seen the machine or seen the procedure. That got me thinking, I wonder if there are any medications that are actively prescribed for people who are undergoing dialysis or if there are any renal medications for that condition? This was the first time I had ever thought about this, and I needed to do some research about what, if any, medications someone on Dialysis might be required to take.
Not knowing much about Dialysis, I decided to do some research about that first, there are several different kinds of Dialysis and several causes for renal failure. After searching for some time though I came across a medication known as: Erythropoietin.

Erythropoeitin does not directly treat the kidney failure, instead it is used to treat symptoms of being in kidney failure and being on Dialysis. One of the big concerns about having this condition is the complications that go with it, and Anemia (loss of red blood cells) is one of those complications.

If you're undergoing hemodialysis for kidney disease or chemotherapy for cancer, you may be familiar with erythropoietin drugs that treat anemia — low red blood cell count. These medications are called erythropoiesis-stimulating agents, or ESAs. ESAs are genetically engineered forms of the human protein erythropoietin (uh-rith-ro-POI-uh-tin), which is important in the production of red blood cells.

...Erythropoietin is a hormone produced by your kidneys that stimulates bone marrow to make healthy red blood cells, which carry oxygen. The hematocrit level in your blood is a measure of the level of healthy oxygen-carrying red blood cells in your body. Anemia occurs when your hematocrit falls below the normal range. Usually, that's prevented by the kidneys making extra erythropoietin and prompting your bone marrow to produce more red blood cells.

One consequence of kidney disease is decreased production of erythropoietin. Chemotherapy also can cause decreased erythropoietin production and may decrease erythropoietin's effectiveness. In both of these instances, giving erythropoietin can increase red blood cell production, eliminating the need for blood transfusions and improving your well-being.

(http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/erythropoietin/DA00137)

I have often wanted to put a graphic that shows the concerted mechanism for the medication that I was discussing, but could not find one, or find one that anyone would let me use for free, but I found one for Erythropoietin:
Obviously a simplified mechanism, but cool nonetheless for understanding how this thing works in your body.
This is the organic molecule:

I must admit, knowledge of this thing is way outside of my understanding, but it is cool looking!
The use of Erythropoietin has come under fire since the 1980's when it was used as a simple and effective form of blood-doping among athletes. It was not until the Australian Olympic games of 2000 that a test was developed to combat this problem. EPO is used as a doping agent because it produces more Red Blood Cells (RBCs) which allows the blood to carry more oxygen and give an athlete an edge over their competition. It is especially rampant in professional cycling, the riders are tested for EPO regularly, but its use is still a problem.
(http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/doping-for-gold/the-dangers-of-doping)

That is also another interesting area of discussion for medications, that of abuse. For any number of legitimate uses for a medication there are the same number of abuses. Perhaps another feature, before I finish my internship will be to discuss some of the common abuses of medications. I find there is so much that I want to learn about that there is not enough time to get it done in.

But, that about wraps up our discussion on EPO. Thank you for coming.