Oct 4th, 2022 - This discussion was recorded on August 31, 2022. This transcript has been edited for clarity. Editor's Note: All views expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the opinions of any affiliates. Medscape reached out to Anthem with an opportunity to respond to claims made regarding payment denials mentioned in this interview. Since the alleged claims are currently the subject of liti...

Oct 4th, 2022 - Physician Bias Against Disabilities Some clinicians are refusing to take people with disabilities on as patients, according to a new study. Though small, the research sheds an alarming light on why people with disabilities have worse outcomes, including undetected cancer, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. Many simply cannot get a doctor to see them. Broken system: There is physician bias at ...

Oct 4th, 2022 - (Reuters) - Shares of LogicBio Therapeutics skyrocketed on Monday after Britain's AstraZeneca's said it would buy the U.S.-based gene therapy developer at a rare 660% premium for $68 million. LoigBio's shares, which have traded below $1 since February, were up 637% at $2 before the bell, close to AstraZeneca's offer price of $2.07 per share. LogicBio is developing gene editing therapies to trea...

Oct 4th, 2022 - People with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases who are taking immunosuppressants don't mount as strong of an immune defense against the Omicron variant as they did against the original SARS-CoV-2 wild-type virus, according to two studies published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. One of the studies further showed that vaccinated individuals taking immunosuppressants have poorer cross-neu...

Oct 4th, 2022 - A new study provides additional support for universal germline genetic testing for women with breast cancer. The study found that adhering to current restrictive guidelines on germline testing misses a substantial number of women with pathogenic or likely pathogenetic (P/LP) variants, knowledge of which would alter patient management. The study used the multigene cancer panel from Invitae, whic...

Oct 4th, 2022 - New data from the United States bolster the case for dementia prevention. At the same time, noninvasive stimulation procedures are still not being used to treat Alzheimer's disease (AD) in day-to-day clinical practice. Since it will still be a long time until effective antidementia medication is successfully developed, dementia researchers and health officials have emphasized the prevention of ...

Oct 4th, 2022 - Every Sunday from November to April Dennis Thomas starts his day by hitting the beach at Coney Island for a dip in the frigid Atlantic Ocean — no matter how low the mercury plummets. Thomas, president of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club, says these winter swims offer more than just a bracing rush of adrenaline. He believes they're the reason that, at age 67, he is fiddle-fit physically, tack-sh...

Oct 4th, 2022 - This transcript has been edited for clarity. Michael Wechsler, MD: Hello, and welcome to Medscape's InDiscussion series on moderate to severe asthma. I'm Dr Mike Wechsler, professor of medicine at National Jewish Health in Denver, Colorado. This is episode four of the first season. First, let me introduce my guest, Dr David Jackson. Today, we'll be discussing the topic of multidisciplinary appr...

Oct 4th, 2022 - To be cost-effective compared with metformin for initial therapy for type 2 diabetes, prices for a sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitor or a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist would have to fall by at least 70% and at least 90%, respectively, according to estimates. The study, modeled on US patients, by Jin G. Choi, MD, and colleagues, was published online October 3 in the Anna...

Oct 4th, 2022 - MILAN – In the current spread of monkeypox among countries outside of Africa, this zoonotic orthopox DNA virus is sexually transmitted in more than 90% of cases, mostly among men having sex with men (MSM), and can produce severe skin and systemic symptoms but is rarely fatal, according to a breaking news presentation at the annual congress of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology....

Oct 4th, 2022 - An online prediction tool provides personalized risk estimates to help clinicians and patients choose between laparoscopic and abdominal surgery for hysterectomy for benign disease. The tool, which integrates 11 routinely available predictors, had "acceptable" predictive ability and "moderate" discrimination. Krupa Madhvani "The overall numbers of hysterectomies are declining, and there are als...

Oct 4th, 2022 - Bariatric surgery may raise the risk of developing epilepsy, new research suggests. Analyzing health records, investigators compared almost 17,000 patients who had undergone bariatric surgery with more than 620,000 individuals with obesity who had not undergone the surgery. During a minimum 3-year follow-up period, the surgery group had a 45% higher risk of developing epilepsy than the nonsurge...

Oct 3rd, 2022 - The antifibrotic pirfenidone (Esbriet) did not change the decline in forced vital capacity percentage (FVC%) from baseline of 10% or more or the risk of death compared with placebo in patients with rheumatoid arthritis-associated interstitial lung disease (RA-ILD). However, the drug appeared to slow the rate of decline in lung function, a phase 2 study indicated.

Oct 3rd, 2022 - We now know that the effects of COVID-19 don’t always end when the infection seems over. Long COVID—the postacute sequelae—can encompass a wide range of extrapulmonary organ dysfunctions.

Oct 3rd, 2022 - Training patients with asthma in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) improves clinically relevant outcomes and may therefore enhance asthma management, especially among those with comorbid psychopathology, according to study findings published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity – Health. Asthma exacerbation risk is elevated in individuals with psychological distress and comorbid psychopatho...

Oct 3rd, 2022 - HealthDay News — There is an association between vaccine-associated aluminum and persistent asthma among children with and without eczema, according to a study published online in Academic Pediatrics. Matthew F. Daley, MD, from Kaiser Permanente Colorado in Aurora, and colleagues conducted a retrospective cohort study in the Vaccine Safety Datalink to examine the association between cumulative ...

Oct 3rd, 2022 - Patients undergoing lung cancer screening (LCS) who self-reported lung-related comorbidities did not have differing outcomes compared with those not reporting conditions. These findings were published in JAMA Network Open. Current guideline recommendations indicate people aged 50 to 80 years who had a 20 pack-year smoking history should undergo annual LCS. These recommendations do not specify w...

Oct 3rd, 2022 - Following COVID-19 infection, the risk for developing neurological disorders remains high after 2 years, while the risk for psychiatric disorders subsides earlier. These are the findings of a study published in Lancet Psychiatry. Researchers analyzed outcome data in a multinational, retrospective cohort study. They obtained data from the TriNetX electronic health records network between January...

Oct 3rd, 2022 - In patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA)/psoriatic arthritis (PsA), holding vs continuing methotrexate (MTX) after the second dose of the ChAdOx1 nCov-19 (Oxford-AstraZeneca) vaccine results in a higher antibody response, according to the results of a study published in The Lancet Rheumatology. The researchers sought to evaluate the impact of holding MTX for 2 weeks after each dose of the COV...

Oct 3rd, 2022 - John worked as a handyman and lived on a small sailboat in a marina. When he was diagnosed with metastatic kidney cancer at age 48, he quickly fell through the cracks.