Must reads

• A September 24, 2014 Pittsburg Post-Gazette opinion piece by Dr. Arthur S. Levine advocated for increased funding for medical research to save lives and give people hope. According to Dr. Levine, "The United States is the world’s leader in medical innovation. Nobody doubted that fact when the NIH appropriation doubled between 1998 and 2003. Now, China, India and other countries are challenging our dominance by vastly increasing public funding for medical research. By failing to sustain our commitment to medical research, we risk losing our leadership position at the most critical scientific frontier of the 21st century. We at the University of Pittsburgh, along with other U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals, urge Congress to restore the NIH budget and reaffirm medical research as a top national priority. Americans deserve cures, not cuts." Arthur S. Levine, M.D., is senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and the John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.
• A September 24, 2014 New York Times article reported on the link between anxiety drugs and Alzheimer's disease. According to the article, "Now French and Canadian researchers are reporting — in a study designed with particular care — that benzodiazepine use is linked to higher rates of subsequent Alzheimer’s disease, and that the association strengthens with greater exposure to the drugs. “The more the cumulative days of use, the higher the risk of later being diagnosed with dementia,” Dr. Antoine Pariente, a pharmacoepidemiologist at the University of Bordeaux and a co-author of the study, told me in an interview. He and his colleagues reviewed medical records of almost 1,800 older people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in the public health insurance program in Quebec, and compared them with nearly 7,200 control subjects. Most were over age 80. Does the study show that extended benzodiazepine use causes Alzheimer’s? No, an observational study like this can never directly answer that question. But “the stronger association observed for long term exposures reinforces the suspicion of a possible direct association,” the researchers wrote." Full article attached. 
• A September 23, 2014 UPI article reported that NIH has awarded $10.1 million in additional funding to 82 grantees exploring the "effects of sex" in medical research. According to the article, "The supplemental funding is part of a larger effort by NIH's Office of Research on Women's Health to rectify gender inequality in medical research. In May, the NIH began requiring researchers affiliated with or funded by any of the agency's departments to begin reporting on their plans to balance male and female cells and animals in their experiments." Also reported on by Marketplace.org, WBUR, U.S. News & World Report, among others.