Culture

A new study presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2014) highlights the increased health care costs associated with musculoskeletal conditions compared to other diseases. Health care costs were almost 50% higher for people with a musculoskeletal condition compared to any other singly occurring condition.1

A new study presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2014) showed a significantly increased risk of heart attack in patients with Sjögren's syndrome (SjS), particularly in the first year following diagnosis. There was also a trend towards an increased risk for stroke.

Data presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2014) demonstrate the possibility of using biomarkers (developed from whole blood gene expression profiles) in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) to predict the status of their disease at 12 months. The long-term disease status at 12 months was accurately predicted only after treatment had been initiated, in newly diagnosed patients.1

The use of cement in partial hip replacement surgery may be linked to a risk of death - often occurring within minutes - finds research published in the online journal BMJ Open.

The risk is relatively rare. But the alarm was first sounded in 2009, and most of the cases that have come to light have occurred since that date, say the authors, who include the former chief medical officer for England.

This suggests that measures to reduce the risks are not being acted on widely enough, they say.

Washington, DC (June 12, 2014) — Among young adult dialysis patients living in poor neighborhoods, blacks have a significantly higher risk of dying while young compared with whites. The findings, which come from a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN), suggest that more work is needed to understand social factors that could worsen outcomes among young black adults with kidney failure.

Lincoln, Neb. — Younger generations are closing the social class gap between evangelical Protestants and mainline denominations, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologist of religion has found.

And in what appears to be an important shift in the U.S. religious landscape, a growing number of younger-generation working-class Americans are not affiliated with any particular religious denomination.

Bethesda, MD (June 12, 2014) — The gluten-specific enzyme ALV003 reduces a patient's exposure to gluten and its potential harm, according to a new phase 2 study appearing in Gastroenterology1, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. This study is the first to find that a non-dietary intervention can potentially benefit celiac disease patients.

In early 2014, the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) assessed the added benefit of ipilimumab in non-pretreated patients with advanced melanoma. The drug manufacturer claimed a noticeable increase in survival time and thus an added benefit versus dacarbazine, the appropriate comparator therapy specified by the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA). However, the indirect comparison conducted by the company was too uncertain, and the postulated effect was biased in favour of ipilimumab. Hence an added benefit was not proven.

A new study presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2014) showed that erectile dysfunction (ED) is present in most men with gout and is frequently severe.1

In a survey of 201 men, 83 had gout, of whom a significantly greater proportion had ED (76%) compared with those patients without gout (52%) (p= 0.0007). Also, a significantly greater proportion of gout patients (43%) had severe ED compared with patients without gout (30%) (p=0.007).1

Bottom Line: Measuring frailty using the Frailty Index (FI) can be a predictor of in-hospital complications, need for discharge to a skilled nursing facility or in-hospital death in older patients following physical trauma.

Author: Bellal Joseph, M.D., of the University of Arizona Medical Center, Tucson, and colleagues

BOSTON -- Using a zebrafish model, investigators have identified a drug compound that appears to reverse arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM), a hereditary disease and leading cause of sudden death in young people. The findings, led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Brigham and Women's Hospital, provide a key first step in developing new therapies for this dangerous condition, for which there is currently no preventive treatment.

The study appears in the June 11 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

HOUSTON – (June 11, 2014) – Almost all adult Texans were aware of the Affordable Care Act's Health Insurance Marketplace before the open-enrollment period ended March 31, according to a report released today by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – June 11, 2014 – Hospital readmission, an important measure of quality care, costs the United States an estimated $17 billion each year. And according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), about half of those readmissions could be avoided.

The war on drugs could get a boost with a new method that analyzes sewage to track levels of illicit drug use in local communities in real time. The new study, a first-of-its-kind in the U.S., was published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology and could help law enforcement identify new drug hot spots and monitor whether anti-drug measures are working.

Your memory for that last bite of a steak or chocolate cake may be more influential than memory for the first bite in determining when you want to eat it again, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Our memories for foods are often vivid, especially when we experience foods that are terrifyingly bad or delightfully good. The findings from this research shed light on how memories for food are formed and how they guide our decisions about how soon we're willing to eat a food again.