A new study summarized in a research letter to be published in JAMA Pediatrics reveals that a number of factors, including negative impacts from the pandemic during pregnancy and reports of discrimination, made it less likely that infants received their recommended vaccinations in the first months of their lives.
It’s well known that smoking causes lung cancer. But a new study suggests you can lower―or even erase―the risk of dying from lung cancer associated with continuous smoking if you quit when you’re young.
Patients who made appointments to see their primary care doctors by video or over the phone did not seek substantially more follow-up care overall than those who had traditional in-person visits, according to Kaiser Permanente research published November 16 in JAMA Network Open.
In recent studies, researchers find 1) Few people get a timely diagnosis of dementia, especially if they are of color with no college degree. 2) No dementia risk in members of military over 65. 3) Link to hearing and dementia.
A large analysis of health records from 87 health care centers across the United States found that people taking a class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), particularly fluoxetine, were significantly less likely to die of COVID-19 than a matched control group.
Geochemist Lex van Geen works at the intersection of public health and environmental risks.
Patients with a rare immunodeficiency disorder who are treated with lifelong immunoglobulin replacement therapy (IRT) have a lower risk of premature death than patients treated with a hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT), but they also have a reduced quality of life and must assume a substantial financial burden, according to a new study led by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Using a computational model to calculate the costs and benefits of IRT and HSCT for patients with agammaglobulinemia, the researchers concluded that the high cost of IRT in the U.S. undermines its cost-utility, particularly when compared to Canada and European countries, where the cost of IRT is nearly a third of what it is in the U.S.
Female physicians who are parents made more changes and experienced greater depression and anxiety during the pandemic than male physician-parents. Data from before the pandemic shows a gender gap in new-onset depression.
Consuming a low amount of caffeine during pregnancy could help to reduce gestational diabetes risk, according to researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
A Cleveland Clinic study shows that patients with obesity and advanced fatty liver disease who had bariatric weight loss surgery significantly lowered their future risk of liver disease complications and serious cardiovascular disease compared with patients who did not have surgery.
A new Cleveland Clinic study shows that patients with obesity and advanced fatty liver disease who had bariatric surgery (weight-loss surgery) significantly lowered their risk for severe liver disease and serious cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke, compared to patients who did not have the surgery.
In a large study led by Yale Cancer Center, more men received a prostate-specific antigen or PSA test to detect prostate cancer following revisions to the recommendation by the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force on screening. The results also showed significant increases in PSA testing among older men, a group for whom screening is not routinely recommended.
A new Cleveland Clinic study found that people with certain sleep disorders have more severe outcomes from COVID-19, including a 31 percent higher rate of hospitalization and mortality.
Cancer patients who are ineligible for clinical trials receive immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) at greater rates than patients who are trial eligible despite no survival benefit, according to a new study by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The study, published in JAMA Oncology, suggests that the positive results for phase 3 clinical trial participants receiving ICI treatment may not translate to patients who are ineligible for trials due to factors such as organ dysfunction.
A new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study of nearly 800,000 men found that between 2011 and 2017 black patients were 24% less likely than white patients to have a prostate MRI after receiving an elevated (prostate-specific antigen) PSA score. For patients with an elevated PSA, use of prostate MRI prior to prostate biopsy has increased substantially in recent years as MRI can improve identification of clinically significant prostate cancer and obviate the need for biopsy, thus decreasing overdiagnosis of these cases. This JAMA Network Open study was based on 794,809 men, age 40 or older, with a PSA test using claims data from the Optum Clinformatics Data Mart Database. Of these men, 51,500 had an PSA score >4ng/mL. The study found that patients with Medicare compared to commercial insurance were less likely to have a prostate MRI as were patients with HMO insurance plans compared to other plan types.
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The study used information from Statistics Canada to compare 16 months of alcohol and cannabis sales before and after the pandemic began (November 2018 to February 2020 compared to March 2020 to June 2021). During the pandemic period, Canadians bought 1.86 billion dollars more alcohol than was predicted based on the pre-pandemic trend. Increases in cannabis sales were $811 million higher, nearly a billion dollars above the predicted amount.
A new study led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that a widely used heart failure drug named sacubitril/valsartan is no better than valsartan alone in patients with severe heart failure. The study also provides evidence that the treatment with valsartan may be slightly safer for patients with advanced heart failure.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights provides a glimpse into recently published studies in basic, translational and clinical cancer research from MD Anderson experts. Current advances include the cost-effectiveness of expanded lung cancer screening criteria, a novel biomarker for predicting immunotherapy responses, development of a technique for multiplex single-cell chromatin profiling, combination immunotherapy for bone metastatic prostate cancer, understanding drivers of lung cancer metastasis, and enabling new T cell therapies for treating COVID-19.
Many parents fretted over their children’s screen use during the pandemic with good reason, according to a new study in JAMA Pediatrics.
The Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), the premier global, molecular diagnostic professional society, today announced a new article in JAMA Health Forum.
A new analysis led by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers finds that the number of U.S. adults who report they have a disability is 27%, representing 67 million adults, an increase of 1% since the data were last analyzed in 2016. In this new study, which used data collected in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers found a wide array of disparities between socioeconomic and demographic factors that persists among those who identify as disabled and those who do not.
In what is believed to be one of the largest studies of its kind, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have shown that antibody levels against SARS-CoV-2 (the COVID-19 virus) stay more durable — that is, remain higher over an extended period of time — in people who were infected by the virus and then received protection from two doses of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine compared with those who only got immunized.
New research addresses the misconception that children are less susceptible to infection with the new coronavirus. According to a recent report in JAMA Pediatrics, children and adults have similar risks of becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2, but a much larger proportion of infected children do not show symptoms of COVID-19. When one household member is infected, there is a 52% chance they will transmit it to at least one other person with whom they live.
UAB’s Julie Kanter, M.D., says statewide surveillance programs for sickle cell disease can help facilitate progress to improve outcomes.
The leading cause of HCV in the U.S. is injection drug use as a result of opioid use disorder (OUD), which has seen a rise in most populations, including pregnant people, in recent years. HCV rates have also risen. Between 2009 and 2019, the overall rate per 1,000 live births of HCV in pregnant people increased from 1.8 to 5.1.
People who purchased firearms during the 2020–2021 purchasing surge – particularly first-time buyers – were more likely to have thoughts of suicide, according to a Rutgers study.
A new nationwide study led by researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine published online today in JAMA Network Open suggests that living in neighborhoods with higher availability of fast-food outlets across all regions of the United States is associated with higher subsequent risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
New UCLA research finds that misinformation and politicization, awareness of past injustices involving medical research, and fears about the inequitable distribution of vaccines all contributed to hesitancy to be vaccinated among Los Angeles' People of Color.
As the intensity of fighting in current conflicts has declined over the last several years, military surgeons have been challenged to maintain their skills for treating combat casualties. In response, the Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA) Clinical Readiness Program was developed by the Uniformed Services University (USU) in collaboration with the American College of Surgeons (ACS) to measure clinical readiness and ensure quality care throughout the Military Health System (MHS). A new study, published in JAMA Surgery, used the KSA program to explore trends, and its findings could help inform changes to patient workflow to increase surgical workloads and ultimately enhance readiness.
New research addresses ongoing concerns regarding risks of allergic reactions after receiving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, particularly for individuals with a history of severe allergic reactions.
Researchers report waiting list registrations and deceased donor liver transplants in the U.S. for alcoholic hepatitis, which can develop after a short period of alcohol misuse, increased during COVID-19, exceeding volumes forecasted by pre-COVID-19 trends, while trends for alcohol-related cirrhosis and non-alcohol-associated liver disease remained unchanged.
Registrations for the national organ transplant waiting list related to alcoholic hepatitis as well as the number of deceased donor liver transplants for the inflammatory liver condition rose significantly during the pandemic, Michigan Medicine researchers found.
A new analysis by a researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) finds a link between large gatherings of unvaccinated county residents – both students and non-students – and an increase in COVID-19 infections in the university’s community.
A targeted drug has shown promising activity against brain metastases resulting from kidney cancer, achieving a 50 percent response rate, and supporting further studies of the drug in this patient group whose poor prognosis has created a significant unmet need.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights provides a glimpse into recently published studies in basic, translational and clinical cancer research from MD Anderson experts. Current advances include new targeted therapy approaches for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML), predicting survival following follicular lymphoma treatment, understanding how AML responds to checkpoint blockade therapy, identifying disparities in colorectal cancer screening, pregnancy outcomes following surgery for early-stage cervical cancer, and the discovery of a novel SHP2 targeted therapy.
E-cigarette use did not help smokers quit and may make smokers more likely to relapse, according to a study by Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at University of California San Diego and Moores Cancer Center.
By collecting data from Yelp reviews on health care facilities and matching them to location data, Penn research shows how online reviews can provide a window into better care
Cancer is an unwelcome blow for anyone, but those diagnosed with cancer who live in low-income and rural areas face an increased risk of suicide compared with those living in high-income and urban areas, according to a study by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston).
Americans who get seriously ill from COVID-19 in 2021 might have to pay thousands of dollars in bills from their hospitals, doctors and ambulance companies, a new study suggests. Most health insurance companies voluntarily waived co-pays, deductibles and other cost-sharing for hospitalized COVID-19 patients in 2020, but many major insurers lifted those waivers in early 2021.
An analytical study examined levels of vaccine efficacy and mitigation strategies. If 100 percent were vaccinated with 90 percent vaccine efficacy, testing and quarantine did not substantially reduce infections. At 75 percent efficacy, weekly testing substantially reduced the number of infections; at 50 percent, testing and quarantine markedly reduced infections. At 50 to 75 percent efficacy, testing reduced infections up to 93.6 percent. Quarantining for 10 days only modestly reduced infections until vaccine efficacy dropped to 50 percent. Findings suggest that testing and isolating positive cases may remain important mitigation strategies for universities even with 100 percent of students vaccinated.
Physicians from the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University discovered that for patients with severe Covid-19 pneumonia who had higher ferritin in their blood and were treated with a corticosteroid, fewer intubations and deaths resulted. Their findings are reported in JAMA Network Open.
More than half of the 236 million people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 worldwide since December 2019 will experience post-COVID symptoms — more commonly known as “long COVID” — up to six months after recovering, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.
Following the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion, access to bariatric surgery as a treatment for obesity increased by 31% annually for lower-income Medicaid-covered and uninsured white adults age 26 to 64 but not for Hispanic and Black adults, according to research conducted by scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine.
A research team led by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has analyzed the birth volume and geographic distribution of obstetric hospitals across the United States and found that a plurality of those hospitals delivers fewer than 500 infants per year. The researchers also found that nearly a fifth of low-volume hospitals are more than 30 miles from another obstetric hospital, and more than half are in rural communities.
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Care for the 15 most prevalent types of cancer in the U.S. cost approximately $156.2 billion in 2018, according to a team of Penn State College of Medicine researchers.
Cesarean birth rates are on the rise, and this is especially true for high-risk pregnant women who have undergone organ transplantation. While cesarean births account for 31% of all deliveries in the United States, the rate of cesarean births for pregnant people with kidney transplants is 62.6% and 44.6% for liver transplants.
The U.S. is seeing an increased use of cannabis resulting from its legalization for recreational purposes, according to a study conducted at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Researchers estimate that up to $101 billion in health care spending is wasted each year due to over-treatment or the delivery of “low-value care.”
An inexpensive anti-seizure medication markedly improves learning and memory and other cognitive functions in Alzheimer’s patients who have epileptic activity in their brains, according to a study published in the Sept. 27th issue of JAMA Neurology.
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