Dr. RR Baliga's 'Podkast for the Kurious Doc'

Dr. RR Baliga's 'Podkast for the Kurious Doc'

Bertrand Russell showed that clear thinking is a moral act 🧠✨ As a founder of analytic philosophy, he taught us to question assumptions, sharpen language, and let logic guide both ideas and action 📐📘 From Principia Mathematica to public debates on freedom and peace, Russell reminds us that clarity, courage, and doubt belong together 🕊️📚

Dr. RR Baliga's 'Podkast for the Kurious Doc'

🧠🩸 A finger-prick may change how we detect Alzheimer’s disease. A new Nature Medicine study shows that dried capillary blood spots can reliably measure key Alzheimer’s biomarkers—p-tau217, GFAP, and neurofilament light—with strong concordance to venous plasma and cerebrospinal fluid results. 📊 In the DROP-AD multicenter study (7 sites, 337 participants), capillary p-tau217 correlated strongly with plasma (r≈0.74) and predicted amyloid pathology with good accuracy (AUC ≈0.86).   🚀 Why this matters: • Enables minimally invasive, scalable, and potentially remote...

Dr. RR Baliga's 'Podkast for the Kurious Doc'

🧬 Why Coronary Artery Disease Runs in Families   Coronary artery disease is not just lifestyle—it is deeply genetic. Rare monogenic disorders like familial hypercholesterolemia and hundreds of common variants together shape lifelong risk, with polygenic risk scores identifying individuals whose inherited risk rivals traditional factors 🫀.   The good news: genetic risk is modifiable. Early LDL lowering, healthy lifestyles, and precision prevention deliver the greatest benefit in those at highest inherited risk 🔬.   A timely synthesis from The New England Journal of...

Dr. RR Baliga's 'Podkast for the Kurious Doc'

🧬⚖️ Cancer and Acute Coronary Syndromes: Precision Where It Matters Most   As cancer survival improves, more patients live long enough to face acute coronary syndromes (ACS)—often with competing risks of death, bleeding, and ischaemia. Yet these patients have been largely excluded from ACS trials, leaving clinicians to navigate uncertainty.   A landmark Lancet study introduces ONCO-ACS, the first cancer-specific, externally validated risk tool that simultaneously predicts 6-month mortality, major bleeding, and ischaemic events using 11 routine admission variables. 📊🧠...

Dr. RR Baliga's 'Podkast for the Kurious Doc'

🫀 Rethinking DCD Heart Transplantation   A new JAMA Original Investigation reports encouraging early outcomes using rapid recovery with extended ultraoxygenated preservation (REUP) for donation after circulatory death (DCD) heart transplantation—without donor heart reanimation or machine perfusion.   🔬 In a 24-patient case series, REUP achieved 96% 30-day survival, low primary graft dysfunction (4%), and minimal early rejection, even with older donors and prolonged ischemic times. ⚖️ By avoiding reanimation, REUP may reduce ethical concerns, cost, and logistical...

Dr. RR Baliga's 'Podkast for the Kurious Doc'

  ⏰🧬 Timing matters in cancer. A superb JCI Review, Rhythms of risk: the intersection of clocks, cancer, and chronotherapy, shows how circadian clocks regulate cell cycle, DNA repair, metabolism, immunity, hypoxia, and even metastasis—and how circadian disruption (e.g., night-shift work) can reshape cancer risk and treatment response. ⚖️💊 The takeaway: clock biology is context-specific, and aligning therapy with circadian phase may enhance efficacy while reducing toxicity—an underused lever in precision oncology. 🎯 Worth a careful read for clinicians, scientists, and...

Dr. RR Baliga's 'Podkast for the Kurious Doc'

🫀 Residual Risk in Coronary Artery Disease Even after “optimal” therapy, many patients remain at risk. Why? Because atherosclerosis is more than LDL—it’s thrombosis 🩸, inflammation 🔥, and metabolism ⚖️ working in concert.   This FAQ-based slide deck distills contemporary insights on residual thrombotic, lipid, metabolic, and inflammatory risk, and highlights emerging therapies—from dual-pathway inhibition 💊 to GLP-1 receptor agonists 🧬 and colchicine—that help close the gap between treatment and outcomes.   📊 Key message: precision, not complacency....

Dr. RR Baliga's 'Podkast for the Kurious Doc'

Swami Vivekananda reminded the world that spiritual strength and social service are inseparable 🕉️🔥 From Chicago in 1893 to India’s national awakening, his message was simple yet radical: each soul is potentially divine—and serving humanity is serving the Divine 🌍🤝 More than a monk or philosopher, Vivekananda remains a timeless call to courage, compassion, and inner awakening ✨📚

Dr. RR Baliga's 'Podkast for the Kurious Doc'

🫀🧠🛡️ Sense. Signal. Scar.   A striking Cell study reframes myocardial infarction as a systems disease, not a heart-only event. Using single-cell and spatial transcriptomics in murine MI, the authors identify a triple-node heart–brain–immune loop: TRPV1-positive vagal sensory neurons (injury sensing) → hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus AT1aR neurons (central integration) → superior cervical ganglion IL-1β signaling (sympathetic–immune effector arm).   Intervening at any node improved ejection fraction, reduced infarct size, and normalized autonomic...

Dr. RR Baliga's 'Podkast for the Kurious Doc'

🦵🌙 Restless Legs Syndrome: more than a sleep complaint   RLS affects ~3% of adults and is frequently missed or misdiagnosed as insomnia or anxiety. The latest evidence underscores three practical shifts: think iron (even when “normal”), choose gabapentinoids first, and beware dopaminergic augmentation.   For internists and frontline clinicians, recognizing RLS early can meaningfully improve sleep, mood, and quality of life—and may even reduce downstream cardiovascular risk. 🧠🩺💤   #RestlessLegsSyndrome #SleepMedicine #InternalMedicine #IronDeficiency...