Body
No-deductible preventive drugs lower costs, increase medication use for low-income diabetes patients
PHILADELPHIA - With doctors and researchers around the world searching for effective treatments for COVID-19, many drugs approved to treat other diseases are being used in hopes that they'll be effective against the virus, a use that's known as "off-label." New research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania catalogued every use documented in medical literature so far and found physicians have reported on the use of more than 100 different off-label and experimental treatments.
Out of concern for fetal safety, pregnant people have typically been excluded from drug trials. And when human health is on the line, drug studies assessing fetal safety in animal models may be viewed as far from definitive.
Due to sheer lack of data concerning implications for fetal and maternal safety, clinicians are often unsure about prescribing drugs to pregnant patients.
Patients with a vascular condition called abdominal aortic aneurysm did not benefit from taking the common antibiotic doxycycline for two years to shrink the aneurysm when compared to those who took a placebo, according to a Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
For every ten adults in the world, four suffer from functional gastrointestinal disorders of varying severity. This is shown by a study of more than 73,000 people in 33 countries. University of Gothenburg scientists are among those now presenting these results.
Functional gastrointestinal disorders, FGIDs, is a collective term for chronic disorders in the gastrointestinal tract, with severe symptoms, for which clear explanations or connections with objective findings from routine investigations are lacking.
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic not only affects patients who have the virus, but strikes the entire healthcare system including the care for patients with cancer. Aggressive cancers, such as pancreatic cancer, require the continuation of oncological care during the pandemic. However, pursuing care exposes both healthcare professionals and vulnerable patients to COVID-19.
United States has been facing a serious problem of drug abuse and addiction, and has seen around 700,000 deaths within a span of 20 years (1999 to 2017) due to drug overdose. Opioid abuse, among other drugs, has been a prime cause of deaths due to overdose and misuse. In order to control this opioid epidemic, Highmark Inc., a national health plan and the second largest integrated delivery and financing system in USA devised, implemented and assessed a series of quality management-focused opioid interventions with the help of a three-pronged public health strategy.
Growing evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, can be spread by asymptomatic people via aerosols -- a reality that deeply underscores the ongoing importance of regular widespread testing, wearing masks and physical distancing to reduce the spread of the virus, say Kimberly Prather and colleagues in a new Perspective. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations for social distancing of 6 feet and hand washing to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2 are based on studies of respiratory droplets carried out in the 1930s.
DALLAS, May 27, 2020 -- Palliative care is valuable for heart failure patients, and, for those who are hospitalized, it can significantly lower the risk of repeated hospital admissions and the need for invasive procedures such as mechanical ventilation and defibrillator implantation, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access journal of the American Heart Association.
Researchers from the group of Hans Clevers at the Hubrecht Institute have modeled the development and progression of high-grade serous ovarian cancer in mini-versions of the female reproductive organs of the mouse. They found out that the cells of the oviduct, the equivalent of fallopian tubes in humans, are more prone to develop into tumors than those of the ovarian surface epithelium, the outer layer of the ovaries. In the future, such mini-versions, or organoids, of human tissue may be used to better understand how this disease, that is often diagnosed very late, develops.
Vaping is most heavily concentrated in U.S. schools with a higher proportion of white students, schools in the South and West, and schools where more students smoke cigarettes, a new University of Michigan study shows.
Overall, more than one in 10 American middle and high school students report having used e-cigarettes within the last month. In certain schools, as many as 60% of students said they vaped during that time.
Berkeley -- Hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the U.S. are enduring longer hospital stays and facing higher rates of intensive care unit (ICU) admission than patients in China, finds a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Kaiser Permanente.
The results suggest that hospitals in the U.S. may be harder hit by the coronavirus pandemic than initially thought, as many forecasts of disease burden -- particularly the number of hospital beds and ICU units needed at the peak of infection -- are based on data out of China.
Malignant tumors consume nutrients and oxygen faster than healthy cells. To do so, they recruit blood vessels in their environment. Depending on tumor type and genetic profile, there are differences on how tumors look internally. Typically, tumors present different patterns across their volume. The role of this spatial heterogeneity is not well understood or studied in living tumors.
In women with a history of miscarriage, higher levels of physical activity were associated with a greater risk of subclinical, or very early, pregnancy loss, according to new research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Among women with confirmed pregnancy, physical activity and miscarriage risk were unrelated.
A new study by Johns Hopkins researchers found that it may take between seven and 16 months for surgeons to complete the backlog of elective orthopaedic surgeries that have been suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic. This accounts for more than a million surgeries in the U.S. for spinal fusion and knee and hip replacements.
The study was published online May 12 in The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.