JAMA
03 Mar Many Diagnostic Tests For Chronic Kidney Disease Have Low Diagnostic Yield
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Mallika L. Mendu, MD, MBA
Division of Renal Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA
MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Mendu: Chronic kidney disease affects a significant number of adults in the United States, approximately 13%, and is associated with significant morbidity, mortality and cost. We conducted a review of 1487 patients referred for initial evaluation of chronic kidney disease to two academic medical centers in Boston over a 3-year period, and examined how often laboratory and imaging tests were ordered and how often these tests affected diagnosis and/or management. The main finding was that a number of tests (renal ultrasound, paraprotein testing, serologic testing) were commonly ordered despite low diagnostic and management yield. Urine quantification and hemoglobin A1c testing had the highest diagnostic and management yield.
03 Mar Growth Screening Facilitates Early Diagnosis of Celiac Disease in Children
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Antti Saari, M.D. Department of Pediatrics University of Eastern Finland and Kuopio University Hospital Kuopio Finland MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Saari: Growth monitoring is a fundamental part of the preventive child healthcare. It aims at early detection of growth disorders in children. Systematic...
03 Mar Strict Systolic Blood Pressure Control Might Impact Cognition In Elderly
Posted at 19:47h
in Author Interviews, Blood Pressure - Hypertension, Cognitive Issues, Geriatrics, JAMA
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Enrico Mossello
Research Unit of Medicine of Ageing
Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine
University of Florence
MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Mossello: In spite of the high prevalence of high blood pressure (HBP) and cognitive impairment in old age, their relationship is still controversial. While several (but not all) studies have identified high blood pressure as a risk factor for incident cognitive impairment, evidence regarding the prognostic role of blood pressure in cognitively impaired older subjects is scarce and inconsistent. To our knowledge, no longitudinal study has been published up to now regarding Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring (ABPM) in subjects with cognitive impairment. Moreover recent European and American guidelines on HBP leave decisions on antihypertensive therapy of frail elderly patients to the treating physician and do not provide treatment targets for cognitively impaired patients.
In the present cohort study of subjects with dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) low values of day-time systolic blood pressure measured with ABPM were associated with greater progression of cognitive decline after a median 9-month follow-up. This association was limited to subjects treated with anti-hypertensive drugs and was independent of age, vascular comorbidity and baseline cognitive level, holding significant both in dementia and in Mild Cognitive Impairment subgroups. A similar trend of association was observed for office systolic blood pressure, although this was weaker and did not reach statistical significance in all analyses.
03 Mar High Peanut Consumption Linked To Reduced Cardiovascular Disease Mortality
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Xiao-ou Shu M.D., MPH, Ph.D
Associate Director of Global Health
Co-Leader, Cancer Epidemiology Research Program
Ingram Professor of Cancer Research
Professor of Medicine (Epidemiology)
Cancer Epidemiologist
MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Shu: Nuts are rich in nutrients, such as unsaturated fatty acids, fiber, vitamins, phenolic antioxidants, arginine, and other phytochemicals. These are all known to be beneficial to cardiovascular health, probably through their anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory, and endothelial function maintenance properties. Previous studies, primarily conducted in white and affluent populations, have shown that nut consumption may be related to cardiovascular health. Much of the nut consumption in those populations would be tree nuts. In our study, we found that peanut consumption was associated with reduced total mortality and CVD mortality in a predominantly low-income black and white population in the US, and among Chinese men and women living in Shanghai. Because peanuts are much less expensive than tree nuts, as well as more widely available to people of all races and all socioeconomic backgrounds, increasing peanut consumption may provide a potentially cost-efficient approach to improving cardiovascular health.
03 Mar Very Easy For Minors To Purchase E-Cigarettes Online
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Rebecca S. Williams, MHS, PhD
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC
MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study?
Dr. Williams: In recent years, the e-cigarette industry has ballooned into a multi-billion dollar market, with at least 466 brands and 7764 unique flavors of e-cigarettes sold online. With both smokers and people who never smoked turning to e-cigarettes, there are concerns about their safety, lack of regulation and accessibility to teens. The CDC reported that 17% of high school seniors use e-cigarettes, more than twice as many as use traditional cigarettes; furthermore, that hundreds of thousands of youth annually are using e-cigarettes who never smoked cigarettes.
Our previous studies of Internet cigarette sales indicated that Internet Tobacco Vendors did a poor job of preventing sales to minors, which helped inform development of state and federal regulations to regulate such sales. In 2013, North Carolina passed a law requiring age verification for online e-cigarette sales. This study was the first study to examine age verification used by Internet e-cigarette vendors and the first to assess compliance with North Carolina’s e-cigarette age verification law.
MedicalResearch: What are the main findings?
Dr. Williams: It was very easy for minors to buy e-cigarettes online. It took little effort for them to bypass the age verification practices of the vendors because there was very little use of rigorous age verification. With only 5 orders rejected by vendors due to age verification, there was a youth e-cigarette purchase success rate of 94.7%. No vendors used age verification at delivery, and few used rigorous methods of age verification that could potentially block youth access. While 7 vendors claimed to use age verification techniques that could potentially comply with North Carolina’s law, only one actually did.
03 Mar Carpal Tunnel Surgery Can Be Done Safely In An Office-Based Setting
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Stephen Duquette MD Indiana University Department of Surgery, Division of Plastic Surgery R.L Roudebush VA Indianapolis, IN Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Duquette: Carpal tunnel syndrome is the most common compressive peripheral neuropathy, causing pain, numbness and weakness. Conservative treatment options include splinting, NSAID pain medications, and steroid injections. Most often the definitive therapy is carpal tunnel release (CTR). Over 500,000 procedures are performed in the US yearly, making it one of the most commonly performed hand surgery procedures. In the United States it is most common to perform this operation in the operating room, under sedation and locoregional anesthesia. Because it is a very common disease that is treated surgically, process improvement can have a major impact in time to OR, patient recovery, patient satisfaction, and overall throughput. This is especially valuable in the Veterans Administration (VA) system, where recent problems have arisen due to lack of adequate resources to care for all veterans. This study examined the impact of opening an office-based procedure room in a VA to perform awake hand surgery under local anesthesia only. This was compared to the prior practice of operating room carpal tunnel release though a number of performance metrics, including time to OR and complications. Although office carpal tunnel releases are performed routinely in Canada, some surgeons still believe that the complications would increase outside the very sterile environment of the operating room. The current study showed that wait times from initial consultation and initial visit to surgical intervention were significantly decreased in the procedure room group compared to the operating room. The complication rate was the same for both groups, showing that the procedure room and the operating room were both equally safe and efficacious in providing an environment that was ideal for the performance of carpal tunnel releases.28 Feb Oral Medication For Hepatitis C- HIV Combined Infection
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Shyamasundaran Kottilil MBBS, PhD
Division of Infectious Diseases, Institute of Human Virology, University of Maryland, Baltimore
Laboratory of Immunoregulation, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Kottilil: Due to shared routes of transmission, almost half of all HIV-infected patients also have HCV infection. Traditionally, interferon based therapies have resulted in lower cure rates of HCV in HIV-infected subjects. Treatment for HCV is rapidly changing from an injection (interferon) based therapy to oral well tolerated pill based therapy for a shorter duration.Our intention was to test whether a treatment regimen without the use of interferon and ribavirin can be effective in HIV/HCV infected patients.
Our study demonstrated that HIV/HCV connected patients without cirrhosis can be effectively treated with ledipasvir and sofosbuvir in 12 weeks. Overall 98% of patients were cured.
28 Feb HIV Diagnosis and Care Critical To Preventing Spread Of Virus To Others
MedicalResearch.com Interview With Jacek Skarbinski, MD Medical officer Centers for Disease Control and Prevention MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Skarbinski: Previous research has indicated that HIV diagnosis and viral suppression are important prevention tools that can help reduce continued transmission. However, this analysis is the first...
27 Feb NSAIDS After Heart Attack Increase Risk of Bleeding and Further Heart Attacks
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Anne-Marie Schjerning Olsen, MD, PhD Department of Cardiology Gentofte Hospital, University of Copenhagen Denmark MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Dr. Olsen: The question addressed in the study was: Do people who have had a myocardial infarction (heart attack) and are who taking drugs (known as antithrombotics) to reduce their risk...
27 Feb Amblyopia Helped By Two Hours of Patching
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Eric Crouch, MD, FAAO, FAAP, FACS
Vice Chair, PEDIGAssociate Professor
Department of Ophthalmology
Eastern Virginia Medical School Assistant Professor
Department of Pediatrics Eastern Virginia Medical School
Chief of Ophthalmology, Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters Norfolk, Virginia
MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study?
Dr. Crouch: In this letter PEDIG is reporting on the improvement in vision during the run-in phase of a study in children 3 years of age to less than 8 years old. During the run-in phase, the children were followed at 6 weeks intervals and served as the baseline for entering into a randomized trial for increasing the amount of patching. The patients were randomized to either 2 hours of prescribed patching or 6 hours of prescribed patching once they completed the run-in phase.
MedicalResearch: What are the main findings?
Dr. Crouch: For amblyopic children, even those who have moderate or severe amblyopia in the 20/100 - 20/400 range, clinicians can start treatment with patching two hours a day.
25 Feb Personalized Medicine: Gene Predicts Neuropathy from Vincristine Chemotherapy
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
William E. Evans, Pharm.D.
Member, Pharmaceutical Sciences
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Evans: We are currently curing over 85 percent of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common cancer in children. While we continue to focus on pushing cure rates closer to 100 percent through the development of new treatments, we are also increasingly focused on reducing the acute and chronic side effects of treatment. This is important to improve the quality of life for patients during treatment and as they become adults after being cured, because some side effects can persist for decades after treatment is completed.
One of the medications that every child with acute lymphoblastic leukemia received 30-40 times during their 2+ years of treatment is vincristine. The major side effect of vincristine is peripheral neuropathy (about 25 percent of patients develop this side effect), which can cause loss of sensation, numbness, neuropathic pain and alter their motor skills including manual dexterity, balance and ability to walk properly. This can have very practical consequences, such as writing, using a smart phone, and the use of eating utensils. It can also alter their gait.
Our main finding is we discovered that an inherited variant of the CEP72 gene enhanced the risk and severity of vincristine neuropathy in two groups of patients we studied. Those children who inherited two copies of the high-risk CEP72 gene (one from each parent, about 16 percent of patients) had a significantly higher likelihood (about 3.5-fold) of developing vincristine neuropathy and had a more severe form of neuropathy (about 2.5-fold higher severity).
The CEP72 gene encodes a protein essential for normal microtubule formation in cells—a critical process for cell division. Vincristine inhibits this same cellular process. The inherited form of CEP72 that increases the risk and severity of vincristine neuropathy is associated with lower expression of the CEP72 protein. When coupled with vincristine treatment, CEP72 increases a cell’s sensitivity to vincristine. We were able to reproduce this in the laboratory by lowering CEP72 expression in human neurons made from induced pluripotent stem cells and in human leukemia cells, increasing the sensitivity of both to vincristine. We also showed that the leukemia cells from patients who inherited two copies of the CEP72 risk allele were more sensitive to vincristine, suggesting it may be possible to treat these patients with a lower dose of vincristine to reduce their neuropathy without compromising the treatment of their leukemia—a possibility we plan to test in our next clinical trial at St. Jude.
24 Feb Anesthesia Drug and Deep Sleep Use Same Neural Circuits In Brain
MedicalResearch.com Interview
Professor Nick Franks
Professor of Biophysics and Anaesthetics
Professor William Wisden,
Chair in Molecular Neuroscience
Department of Life sciences
Wolfson Laboratories, Imperial College, South Kensington London
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Profs. Franks and Wisden: We were interested in finding out how a particular type of sedative drug, dexmedetomidine, works in the brain. This drug is increasingly used during intensive care for sedation of patients, but unlike other powerful sedatives, it induces a state whereby the patient can be temporarily woken up. This is a highly useful property because it means patients can be both sedated and responsive during procedures. The drugged sedative state induced by dexmedetomidine struck us as being highly similar to the deep sleep that we all need to have if we have been extensively sleep deprived. If people and animals are kept awake for extended periods of time, they have to sleep. Most people know this from common experience - catching up on lost sleep. But how and why we need to sleep after sleep deprivation is not known. We found that dexmedetomidine-induced sedation and this recovery sleep used the same brain circuits, in a tiny area at the base of the brain called the preoptic hypothalamus. To do this we used a new genetic technique in mice that allowed us to mark or "tag" which neurons in the mouse’s brain were active during sedation or recovery sleep after sleep deprivation. The beauty of this technique is that we could then specifically reactivate these same neurons several days later with a special molecule that only binds to the tagged neurons. This reactivation caused the mice to go into a deep sleep. We concluded that the sedative drug dexmedetomidine copies or hijacks the mechanism used by the brain to respond to sleep deprivation and trigger deep sleep.
24 Feb CT Lung Cancer Screening Guidelines May Miss Some At Risk
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: David Mithun, M.D. Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota Medical Research: What is the background for this study? Dr. Mithun: Lung cancer screening should be pursued for those people at highest risk who are otherwise in good enough health to be able to undergo curative intent treatment if cancer is found. The current criteria for screening recommended by the US Preventive Services Task Force of age 55-80 years, 30 pack-years of smoking, and if quit, have done so within 15 years and are based on the National Lung Screening Study (NLST). Medical Research: What are the main findings? Dr. Mithun: Our data was retrospective over a 28 year time period and showed that an increasing number of people who actually got cancer would not have been candidates for screening based on the current criteria. This suggests there may be some degree of mismatch between risk as defined by the current criteria to screen and those who developed cancer. An increasing number of those who would not have been candidates for screening yet got lung cancer were among those who quit smoking 15 years or longer.24 Feb Cognitive Function Test Helps Predict Future Memory Loss
Posted at 13:48h
in Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, JAMA, Memory
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Rebecca E. Amariglio Ph.D.
Massachusetts Alzheimers Disease Research Center
Massachusetts General Hospital
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Amariglio: As the field of Alzheimer’s disease moves towards early detection and treatment, new tests that can measure very subtle changes in cognitive functioning are needed. A new instrument developed by the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study that measures subjective report of memory changes of both the study participant and a study partner (usually a family member) was associated with cognitive decline over four years. Specifically, greater report of memory concerns was associated with worse memory performance over time.
24 Feb Finnish Sauna May Be Heart Healthy
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Jari Laukkanen Cardiologist, MD, PhD
Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition
University of Eastern Finland
Kuopio, Finland
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Laukkanen: We have been studying many risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the general population, and especially exploring protective factors of sudden cardiac death. In our qualified and well defined data on the KIHD prospective study, there were also many questionnaires about other health habits such as the use of sauna (how much, how often, temperature and so on). It was very logical to investigate further sauna use and the risk sudden cardiac death/CVDSs, because sauna is a part of our culture here in Finland. In this country, we have tradition to trust, that its healthy habit, although there are not previous studies showing the value of sauna in the prevention of cardiovascular disease. So we have to study this kind of health habit and CVVs in Finland based on our common traditions...
24 Feb Researchers Examine Racial and Age Disparities in Cancer Survival
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Wei Zheng, MD, PhD
Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine,
Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center,
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Wei Zheng: Substantial progress has been made in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, resulting in a steady improvement in cancer survival. However, the degree of improvement by age, race and sex remains unclear. We quantified the differences in the improvement of cancer survival by race, age, and sex over the last two decades.
We used cancer diagnosis and follow-up data from more than 1 million cancer patients, collected in nine SEER registries, to investigate trends in improved survival for seven major cancers in the United States by age, race, and sex between 1990 and 2010. We found that elderly patients experienced a smaller improvement in survival for cancers of the colon/rectum, breast, prostate, lung, and liver than their younger counterparts. In particular, the age-related disparities were most pronounced for those cancers with the greatest advancements in diagnosis and treatment over the past two decades, including cancers of colon/rectum, breast and prostate. African Americans experienced poorer survival than whites for all cancers. Because of a greater improvement in prostate cancer survival in African Americans than for whites, the racial difference in the survival of this cancer decreased during the study period. For ovarian cancer, however, the survival rate declined in African Americans but slightly increased in whites, leading to a wider racial gap in the survival of this deadly cancer. No apparent disparities in survival improvement by sex were noted.
22 Feb Men with Favorable Intermediate-Risk Prostate Cancer May Also Be Candidates for Active Surveillance
Posted at 14:19h
in Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, JAMA, Prostate Cancer, Radiation Therapy
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Ann Caroline Raldow, M.D.
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Resident in Radiation Oncology
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Raldow: Active surveillance (AS) means monitoring the course of prostate cancer (PC) with the expectation to start treatment if the cancer progresses. Men who enter an AS program are able to defer and possibly avoid the side effects of prostate cancer treatment.
According to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines, active surveillance is currently considered as an initial treatment approach for men with low-risk PC and a life expectancy of at least 10 years. However, no direct comparison has been made between favorable intermediate-risk and low-risk PC with regard to PC-specific mortality or all-cause mortality following treatment with high-dose radiation therapy such as brachytherapy, where radioactive seeds are placed inside the prostate to kill the cancer. We therefore assessed whether the risks of prostate cancer-specific mortality and all-cause mortality following brachytherapy were increased in men with favorable intermediate-risk versus low-risk prostate cancer. The study consisted of more than 5,000 men who were treated with brachytherapy at the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Chicago.
After a median follow-up of 7.69 years, there were no significant differences in prostate cancer-specific mortality and all-cause mortality between men with low-risk and favorable intermediate-risk prostate cancer, suggesting that men with favorable intermediate-risk prostate may also be candidates for AS.
21 Feb Active Surveillance May Be Appropriate for Ill Patients With Prostate Cancer
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Karim Chamie MD
Department of Urology
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center
UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Active surveillance has been shown to be safe and effective. There are multiple longitudinal studies that have demonstrated the safety of active surveillance for men with indolent prostate cancer. In this context, we sought out to determine national practice patterns for localized prostate cancer. Moreover, we wanted to identify patient, tumor, and physician factors that influence treatment decision. What we found was that the vast majority of patients undergo radiation therapy, regardless of patient age and health or severity of tumor. Instead, by far the most significant predictor of whether a patient undergoes radiation therapy is whether they have been referred to a radiation oncologist. On the other hand, surgeons significantly incorporate patient age and health and tumor severity when considering radical prostatectomy (surgery).
20 Feb High DNA Mutation Rate In Teenage Dads May Lead To More Birth Defects
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Peter Forster PhD
Fellow of Murray Edwards College and
McDonald Institute at the University of Cambridge
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Forster: As a result of our paternity testing work at the Institute for Forensic Genetics in Munster (Germany), we have accumulated a pool of over 24,000
parents and their children, of whom we know for certain that they are
biologically related. Occasionally we observe a new mutation in these
children, which must have come either from the sperm or the egg of one
of the parents. As we analyse highly variable microsatellite DNA (a
repetitive type of DNA, also know as STR DNA, which stands for "short
tandem repeat" DNA), we can fairly easily find out whether the mutation
has come from the mother or the father. It turns out that the fathers
contribute 6-7 times more mutations to the children than the mothers do.
This has long been known. What is new is that we have observed that the
male and female teenagers at puberty do NOT set out with the same low
mutation load, but instead, the teenage boys already have a sixfold
higher mutation load in their sperm than the girls in their oocytes.
19 Feb Non-Adherence to Guidelines May Lead To Inappropriate Radioactive Iodine Treatment for Thyroid Cancer
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Sanziana Roman MD FACS
Professor of Surgery Duke University
Section of Endocrine Surgery
Director of the Endocrine Surgery Fellows and Scholars Program
Duke University School of Medicine
Chief, General Surgery and Associate Chief of Surgery for Clinical Affairs, DVAMC
Medical Research: What is the background for this study?
Dr. Roman: Adjuvant radioactive iodine (RAI) is commonly used in the management of differentiated thyroid cancer. The main goals of adjuvant RAI therapy are to ablate remnant thyroid tissue in order to facilitate long-term follow-up of patients, decrease the risk of recurrence, or treat persistent and metastatic lesions.
On the other hand, Adjuvant radioactive iodine ( therapy is expensive, with an average cost per patient ranging between $5,429.58 and $9,105.67. It also carries the burden of several potential complications, including loss of taste, nausea, stomatitis with ulcers, acute and/or chronic sialoadenitis, salivary duct obstruction, dental caries, tooth loss, epiphora, anemia, neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, acute radiation pneumonitis, pulmonary fibrosis, male infertility, and radiation-induced malignancies. Therefore, Adjuvant radioactive iodine ( should be used only for appropriately selected patients, for whom the benefits would outweigh the risks.
Based on current guidelines, adjuvant RAI is not recommended for patients with papillary thyroid cancers confined to the thyroid gland when all foci are ≤1 cm (papillary thyroid microcarcinoma, or PTMC). Similarly, Adjuvant radioactive iodine ( does not have a role in the treatment of medullary and anaplastic thyroid cancer. Given the fact that variation in treatments exist, our goal was to analyze patterns of inappropriate adjuvant RAI use in the U.S. in order to identify potential misuses leading to an increase of costs for the healthcare system and unnecessary patients’ exposure to risks of complications.
18 Feb JAMA Study Confirms Better Anticoagulation Choice After Myocardial Infarction
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Karolina Szummer, MD, PhD
Section of Cardiology, Department of Medicine
Karolinska Institutet Karolinska University Hospital
Stockholm, Sweden
Please note: This work is comparing the anticoagulant fondaparinux with low-molecular-weight heparin (not heparin).
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Szummer: Since the publication of the OASIS-5 trial in 2006, many hospitals chose to change their medical practice and start using fondaparinux instead of low-molecular-weight heparin in the treatment of myocardial infarctions. In this study from the nation-wide near-complete myocardial infarction registry we were able to follow how the use of fondaparinux instead of low-molecular-weight heparin translated in clinical life was associated to a reduction in bleeding events and death. It is a very satisfying study, that confirms that the randomized clinical trial results are transferred with improvements in outcome to the treated patients.
17 Feb Varenicline – Chantix – Helped More Smokers Quit Gradually
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Jon Ebbert, M.D.
Associate director for research
Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Ebbert: Some cigarette smokers prefer to reduce the number cigarettes that they smoke before quitting smoking completely. Previous studies have evaluated the use of nicotine replacement therapy and one smaller study looked at varenicline to help smokers quit through smoking reduction. We wanted to conduct a larger study with varenicline using a longer duration of treatment.
We enrolled cigarette smokers who had no intention of quitting in the next month but who were willing to reduce the number of cigarettes they smoked while working toward a quit attempt in the next 3 months.
17 Feb How Much Does Specialized Melanoma Screening Cost?
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Caroline Watts| PhD Candidate Cancer Epidemiology and Services Research | Sydney School of Public Health The University of Sydney MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: A clinic for people at high risk of melanoma was established at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney in 2006 to look at the impact of surveillance regime which included regular full body skin examination supported by dermoscopy and total body photography at 6 monthly intervals. If a suspicious lesion was identified, the lesion was either removed or sequential digital dermoscopy was performed and the patient returned in 3 months for review. This study aimed to estimate the costs associated with surveillance in this type of specilaised clinic. The mean number of clinic visits per year was 2.7 (95% CI, 2.5-2.8) for surveillance and 3.8 (95% CI, 3.4-4.1) for patients requiring surgical excisions. The mean annual cost per patient to the health system was A $882 (95% CI, A $783-$982) (US $599 [95% CI, US $532-$665]) and mean annual societal cost per patient (excluding health system costs) was A $972 (95% CI, A $899-$1045) (US $660 [95% CI, US $611-$710). Diagnosis of melanoma or non-melanoma skin cancer and frequent excisions for benign lesions in a relatively small number of patients was responsible for skewed health system costs.16 Feb Mindfulness Training Improved Sleep Quality In Older Adults
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
David S. Black, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine
Keck School of Medicine of USC.
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Black: Sleep disturbances pose a significant medical and public health
concern for our nation’s aging population. An estimated 50% of people
aged 55 years and older suffer from some form of sleep problem,
including initiating and maintaining sleep. Sleep can be affected by a number of things. There are obvious factors like disturbances, dealing with insomnia or any form of aches and pains. But there is also one that many people have probably not considered. Traffic noise. Just like the factors listed previously, there is always a solution to a problem. There isn't anything that cannot be fixed. If you are someone that is having trouble sleeping due to the high level of traffic noises around your area, it may be best to look into a site like soundproofpanda.com to find a solution that can help reduce this issue and eventually provide you with a good's night sleep. Older adults report the highest prevalence of sleep problems compared to younger age groups when quantified by both self-report and biological assessment.
Moderate sleep complaints in older adults are often associated with
deficits in daytime functioning, including elevated levels of fatigue,
disturbed mood such as depressive symptoms and reduced quality of
life, and lead to the onset of clinical insomnia. Addressing moderate
sleep complaints and sleep-related daytime dysfunction using
community-accessible programs is a promising public health approach.
Our main findings indicate that the mindfulness training program,
which is available to the general community, resulted in improvement
in sleep quality at post-intervention relative to a highly active and
standardized sleep hygiene education program. Effect size for
improvement in sleep quality was large (0.89) and of clinical
relevance considering that effect sizes obtained from all types of
behavioral interventions on self-reported sleep quality outcomes
averages 0.76 in older adults. Meta-analyses comparing treatment
modalities indicate that the mean effect size for self-reported sleep
improvements resulting from pharmacotherapy (0.87) (i.e.,
benzodiazepines, benzodiazepine receptor agonists) and behavioral
therapy (0.96) are of medium-to-large magnitude in mixed-age adult
samples with primary insomnia. Thus, our observed changes are
consistent with previous studies and are at the level of a minimally
important difference for insomnia severity. The mindfulness program
also yielded relative improvements on sleep-related daytime
impairments of depression and fatigue symptoms that were of
medium-to-large effect size.
13 Feb Patient Demands Not A Significant Driver Of Health Care Costs
Posted at 01:33h
in Author Interviews, Cancer Research, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, University of Pennsylvania
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Ezekiel Jonathan Emanuel MD PhD
Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy
Perelman School of Medicine and
Department of Health Care Management
The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
Editor’s note: Dr. Emanuel is a medical oncologist as well as director of the department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Emanuel was kind enough to answer several questions regarding his most recent study, published in the new JAMA Oncology journal, Patient Demands and Requests for Cancer Tests and Treatments.
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Emanuel: The genesis for this study is twofold.
One, the first referenced article, by John Tilbert1 discussed how physicians explain US health care costs. In this study, physicians felt patients, insurance companies, drug companies, government regulations and malpractice lawyers...all were more to blame than doctors themselves for the high cost of US health care.
Secondly, I give lots of presentations to doctors who offer two explanations for escalating health care costs: fear of malpractice litigation, and demanding patients, who request extensive testing and drugs. We decided to see whether the impression doctors frequently held of patients’ demands driving up health care costs, had been previously investigated. We could find no article to substantiate this belief. In addition, demanding patients were not common in my medical experience.
In our study we included 5050 patient encounters. We asked the clinician coming out of the encounter, did the patient make a demand or request? (By asking immediately after the doctor left the examination room, there was little risk of inaccurate recall of the specifics of visit). In 8.7% there was a patient request and of these, over 70% were deemed clinically appropriate as determined by the physician (i.e. a request for pain medication, palliative care or imaging to address a new symptom or finding). In only 1% of all encounters (50/5050) was a clinically inappropriate request made as determined by the doctor, and the doctors hardly filled any of these inappropriate requests (total of 7 of 5050 encounters).
We concluded that it is pretty rare for patients to make demands or requests, at least in this oncology setting, and even less common for the demands to be complied with by the doctor. Therefore it seems unlikely to us that health care costs are significantly driven by inappropriate patient requests. It is possible that there are more or different patient demands in other health care settings but we were very surprised to find no difference in patient requests based on patient-income, i.e. wealthier, more educated patients made no more demands than patients of lesser means.
12 Feb Patients with Tourette Syndrome Likely To Have Additional Psychiatric Symptoms
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Carol Mathews
Professor, Psychiatry
UCSF School of Medicine
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Mathews: The background for this study is that, as a part of ongoing genetic studies of Tourette Syndrome, the Tourette Syndrome Association International Genetics Collaborative (TSAICG) has collected a wealth of information about commonly co-occurring psychiatric disorders in individuals with Tourette Syndrome and their families, providing us with an opportunity to explore questions about Tourette Syndrome that are relevant to individuals with Tourette Syndrome, their families, and their treating clinicians.
12 Feb Shared Medical Decision Making Improves Cancer Patient Satisfaction
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Kenneth L. Kehl, MD
Division of Cancer Medicine, MD Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, Texas
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Prior studies have demonstrated that most patients with cancer wish to participate in their treatment decisions. We studied a cohort of patients with lung or colorectal cancer and assessed whether patient involvement in decision-making was associated with perceived quality of care or ratings of physician communication. We found that patients who described a more shared decision-making process gave higher ratings of their care quality and physician communication. This effect was independent of patients' stated preferences regarding involvement in decision-making.
12 Feb Patients With Mental Disorders Have Increased Risk of Death
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Elizabeth Walker, PhD, MPH, MAT
FIRST Postdoctoral Fellow
Center for Behavioral Health Policy Studies
Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
Medical Research: What is the background for this study?
Response: Mental disorders are a major cause of disability globally and are associated with premature mortality. Quantifying and understanding excess mortality among people with mental disorders can inform approaches for reducing this burden. The purpose of this study was to systematically review the literature in order to estimate individual- and population-level mortality rates associated with mental disorders. We conducted a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis, which included 203 studies from 29 countries.
Medical Research: What are the main findings?
Response: We estimated that 8 million deaths worldwide per year are attributable to mental disorders. People with mental disorders have over 2 times the risk of mortality compared to the general population or people without mental disorders. This translates to a median of 10 years of life lost. In total, 67.3% of people with mental disorders died from natural causes, 17.5% from unnatural causes, and the remainder from unknown causes.
11 Feb Study Examines Malpractice Risk Of Mohs Surgery For Skin Cancer
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Omar A. Ibrahimi, M.D., Ph.D
Connecticut Skin Institute
Founding Medical Director
Stamford, CT 06905
www.ctskindoc.com
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Ibrahimi: The delivery of healthcare in a efficient and cost effective fashion is one of the largest themes in medicine today. Malpractice lawsuits have steadily increased with the cost of healthcare delivery. Mohs surgery involves the surgical removal, the tissue analysis and the reconstruction of a skin cancer all in a single visit that bundles multiple procedures in a cost effective manner that is proposed to be the gold standard for treating certain skin cancers.
Information regarding malpractice involving Mohs surgery is lacking. The only previous study that has been done was a survey of Mohs surgeons looking at how many had been involved in lawsuits and the reasons for being involved. Our study examined a legal database to identify all the lawsuits involving Mohs surgery and skin cancer. We were surprised to find that the majority of lawsuits involved non-Mohs surgeons as the primary defendant, mostly due to a delay of or failure in diagnosis, cosmetic outcome issues, lack of informed consent, and a delay of or failure in referral to a Mohs surgeon.