All Scrubbed goes cooking with Prixige...

Nope. Not part of the Anarchy Cookbook on interesting ways to heat up an anti-inflammatory - but rather some pharmaceutical DRM (that's Doctor Relationship Management for those in the know).

The Wicked Food Cooking School played host to the latest round of Novartis talks on Prixige's Lumiracoxib - the Cox2 inhibitor (not as rude as it sounds) to end all Cox2 inhibitors - or so they tell me. The introductory speech washed over me like morphine - very few intelligent questions from the nonDoc. Except one interesting case scenario:

56 year old banker. Presenting with Osteo-Arthritis in the knee. Panado just wasn't cutting it because the poor bugger was walking 5km, 4 times a week. Stop me when it's starting to sound like crazy talk... but what 56 year old South African banker has the time to walk 20km a week!? God is in the details after all.

Turns out the answer was easy. Prescribe Lumiracoxib. (PS. That's why doctors are so smart... you can only prescribe Lumiracoxib if you can SAY Lumiracoxib.)

Jokes aside, the message was pretty clear. This wasn't any old anti-inflammatory. And in the days of some pretty serious gastric ulcers - you want a drug with the least gastro-intestinal side effects that also keeps those CV issues (yes, at first I was wondering whether it was my high school or university education that was threatening) at bay. The cardio-vascular ones.

Then to the cooking. At first, I must say, I wondered about the brand connection between an anti-inflammatory and cooking. Then I stopped wondering. As if in a surreal dream, I was cooking next to Barry Lambson. His wife, the lovely Dr. Lambson had hauled him away from the 1987 reruns of Western Province vs. Orange Free State at Newlands. Pharaceutical event. Barry Lambson. Box wine. And some spicy tomato soup.



As the haze of Claret Select finally descended... Barry left me. I think I was taking too long chopping the mushrooms - he went in search of greener pastures - the can opener for a particularly stubborn can of tomoatoes most likely.

All in all, great evening. I was left pining for samples and prepped with enough knowledge to dangerously convince someone I knew what I was talking about.

Can't wait for the Cox3 function.

(Note: Thanks to Dawn and Zama for making it a helluva evening. Also thank to the Wiki Wicked Food School for whipping my culinary skills into shape. Highly recommended.)