Tag Archives: Tampa Bay Times

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Tampa Bay Times: Coming soon at two Tampa Bay area hospitals: a cancer treatment that could replace chemo

By Justine Griffin

Benjamin Gilkey, 7, with his mother, Laura Gilkey, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2014. He was treated at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hosptial in St. Petersburg until his death in February. Doctors say CAR-T treatment might have helped "Benji" had it been available at the time. "It will draw more people to Johns Hopkins," Laura Gilkey said. [Photos courtesy of Laura Gilkey]

A new cancer treatment that could eventually replace chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants — along with their debilitating side effects — soon will be offered at two of Tampa Bay’s top-tier hospitals.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in August approved the first ever Chimeric Antigen Receptor Therapy, or “CAR-T cell therapy,” for children and young adults up to age 25 suffering from leukemia and other blood and bone cancers. And just this week, the agency approved the same immunotherapy for adults with large B cell lymphoma, a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg will be the first and only pediatric hospital in Florida to become a certified treatment center. Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa also will be among the first in the country to offer the same therapy on adults with blood cancers like B cell lymphoma.

CAR-T uses white blood cells from the patient’s immune system and re-engineers them in a lab to target and wipe out cancer cells. Specialists draw the cells from the patient’s blood and “re-program” them to go after blood and bone marrow-type cancer cells instead of the flu or any other bacteria or infection they would normally attack, said Dr. Frederick Locke, a principal investigator for the experimental therapy at Moffitt.

During the laboratory process, scientists work with receptors, which are molecular structures in cells that tell them what to do based on messages they receive in the bloodstream. In this instance, they add a chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR, to each T-cell. The CARs are programmed to target a specific protein, called CD19, found on cancer cells.

Then the newly trained T-cells are infused back into the body to do their job.

Read more here.

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Breaking News: New Beat at the Tampa Bay Times!

After six years or so covering retail and other consumer-related business topics for newspapers in Florida, I’m taking on a new beat.

I was named the health and medicine reporter at the Tampa Bay Times at the end of September. (There was some overlap of beats during and after Hurricane Irma.)

Got a story idea or tip? Please email me: jgriffin@tampabay.com

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Tampa Bay Times: For many, rising premiums for Part B Medicare will erase Social Security gains

By Justine Griffin

Christopher Wittmann, a physician assistant, examines a patient for lower back pain at Trinity Pain Center in Pasco County. Outpatient health care visits like this are covered under Medicare Part B, which will see premium increases of more than 5 percent on average in 2018. Medicare open enrollment begins Sunday and runs through Dec. 7, with a special extension to Dec. 31 for people affected by the recent hurricanes. [Times | 2014]

More than 2.4 million seniors in Florida rely on Medicare, and a good chunk of them could face rising health care premiums next year.

With Medicare’s annual open enrollment period beginning Sunday, most of the changes to plans and services seem slight for 2018. But experts say Floridians will be among the millions affected nationwide by anticipated rising premiums for Part B plans, which cover outpatient care, doctor bills, physical therapy and more routine health services.

Part B is optional to enroll in and costs most people a monthly premium, which was on average around $134 in 2017, depending on the enrollee’s income. However, participants paid around $109 a month if they chose to have the monthly fee deducted from their Social Security checks. These are the prices that will rise in 2018, analysts say.

And, for many, the hike will eat up most of the 2 percent increase in Social Security payments that the government announced on Friday. Typical recipients will get $27 more in their monthly check in 2018, but experts estimate that Part B premiums paid through Social Security will likely be $20 to $30 more a month.

Read more here.

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Tampa Bay Times: Feeling allergy symptoms? Blame Hurricane Irma

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By Justine Griffin

Tampa Bay Times, Oct. 4, 2017

Allergies out of whack?

You can blame Hurricane Irma for that. Well, kind of.

As many continue to wait for cleanup crews to haul away the sopping piles of withering tree debris in front of their houses from Irma, plenty of people across Tampa Bay are sniffling and coughing more than they were before the hurricane passed, narrowly sparing the region from the worst of its wrath.

“I’ve been telling my patients that it seems like Irma brought the allergy season on a little earlier,” said Dr. Rachel Dawkins, a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg. “We usually see the peak of it in the fall at the end of October and into November, when the trees start shedding their leaves. But right now we have a lot of trees on the ground, which means we have a lot of pollen on the ground, and there’s an uptick of mold from standing water.”

Read more here.

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Tampa Bay Times: Whatever happened to the Zika epidemic?

By Justine Griffin

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are responsible for transmitting Zika. Cases of the virus are down dramatically in Florida. Associated Press

Remember Zika?

The last time Gov. Rick Scott warned Floridians about the potential threat of the mosquito-borne virus was in July, when he urged residents to still be vigilant against bug bites and standing water. At the time, doctors and researchers were bracing for what was supposed to be another active summer season for the virus. Some expected it to be even worse than last year, when 1,100 travel-related cases were reported statewide and Zika spread into pockets of South Florida.

But it’s been quiet on the outbreak front ever since, as Zika cases have dropped dramatically this year.

The state Health Department counts only 180 Zika infections in Florida so far in 2017, on track to come in well below the 1,456 cases reported all of last year. The vast majority are travel-related cases brought to Florida by people who came from somewhere else, like Zika hotbed areas in Central and South America or the Caribbean, already infected with the virus. The rest, about 40, were cases where officials could not determine exactly where the patients contracted the virus or instances where people acquired it locally last year but weren’t tested until 2017.

Officials say they have determined one thing for sure: This year, there are no reported areas in Florida with active, ongoing local transmission of Zika, which means no known instances of mosquitoes carrying the virus.

Another piece of good news is that the number of pregnant women with the virus appears to be declining. With only 101 cases reported so far this year, it would be difficult to match last year’s total of 299 cases.

Read more here.