Culture

Berlin, Germany, June 6 2012: Data from a study presented today at EULAR 2012, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, demonstrates the vast inequalities in access to biologics for the treatments of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) across 46 European countries, with 22% (n=10) of countries having no biologic reimbursed at all.

Berlin, Germany, June 6 2012: A new study presented today at EULAR 2012, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, has identified five biomarkers that may predict the progression of structural damage in the spine of patients with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) who are already at high risk of disease progression.

Berlin, Germany, June 6 2012: Data presented today at EULAR 2012, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, demonstrates that tocilizumab monotherapy is more effective than adalimumab monotherapy in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) based on change from baseline in DAS28* (-3.3 vs. -1.8, p<0.0001) at week 24. The ADACTA trial, conducted in 325 patients with RA showed that tocilizumab was more effective than adalimumab for DAS28 remission (39.9% vs 10.5%, p<0.0001), low disease activity (51.5% vs.

PISCATAWAY, NJ – Despite some concerns to the contrary, neighborhoods with medical marijuana dispensaries may not have higher crime rates than other neighborhoods—at least in one California city.

That's the conclusion of a new study in the July issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. Researchers found that, across Sacramento neighborhoods, there was no evidence that having a higher density of medical marijuana dispensaries was related to higher rates of violent crime or property crime.

The factors predicting the eventual impact of scientific research (i.e. high citation rates) were successfully identified in abstracts selected for presentation at the annual ESC Congress. Interestingly, predictors of publication in peer reviewed scientific journals differed markedly from those predicting later scientific impact, finds a recent study published online today in the European Heart Journal (EHJ).

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Special echocardiograms show promise for early detection of a potentially deadly complication in rheumatoid arthritis: heart disease, Mayo Clinic research shows. The findings were being presented at The European League Against Rheumatism annual meeting in Berlin. Rheumatoid arthritis patients are at higher risk of cardiovascular disease and it is important to take steps to intervene, but the risk assessment tools physicians commonly use often underestimate the danger.

A collaborative re-analysis of data from the InterAct case-control study conducted by Claudia Langenberg and colleagues has established that waist circumference is associated with risk of type 2 diabetes, independently of body mass index (BMI).

CHICAGO --- Phoning it in is more effective than the therapist's couch when it comes to keeping patients in psychotherapy. New Northwestern Medicine research shows patients who had therapy sessions provided over the phone were more likely to complete 18 weeks of treatment than those who had face-to-face sessions.

CHICAGO – Patients with major depression who received telephone-administered cognitive behavioral therapy (T-CBT) had lower rates of discontinuing treatment compared to patients who received face-to-face CBT, and telephone administered treatment was not inferior to face-to-face treatment in terms of improvement in symptoms by the end of treatment; however, at 6-month follow-up, patients receiving face-to-face CBT were less depressed than those receiving telephone administered CBT, according to a study in the June 6 issue of JAMA.

Among nearly 200,000 individuals, daily use of low-dose aspirin was associated with an increased risk of major gastrointestinal or cerebral bleeding, according to a study in the June 6 issue of JAMA. The authors also found that patients with diabetes had a high rate of major bleeding, irrespective of aspirin use.

A researcher in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry and his colleagues in the Centre for Lung Health are on a mission to keep patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder out of hospital. No easy task, seeing as COPD is one of the top causes of hospitalization in the country and a major burden on the health-care system.

Mathematicians from the University of Delaware have created a new model of the fluid dynamics and heat flow in human tears. When people blink their eyes, a thin liquid film is spread across the surface of the eye.

Experiments show that the surface of the tear film cools slightly after each blink, and for dry eye patients the rate of cooling can be even higher. The Delaware researchers set out to create a heat transfer model with enough detail to capture this experimentally observed cooling.

Preliminary results from research at Rice University show more than a dozen Gulf Coast bridges on or near Galveston Island would likely suffer severe damage if subjected to a hurricane with a similar landfall as Hurricane Ike but with 30 percent stronger winds.

An awareness of which bridges are most at risk of damage in a strong hurricane helps public safety officials, said Jamie Padgett, a Rice assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Air pollution, a serious danger to the environment, is also a major health risk, associated with respiratory infections, lung cancer and heart disease. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher has concluded that not only does air pollution impact cardiac events such as heart attack and stroke, but it also causes repeated episodes over the long term.

Pirfenidone inhibits the development of inflammation and scarring (fibrosis) in pulmonary tissue and has been approved for the treatment of mild to moderate idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) since the beginning of 2011. In an early benefit assessment in accordance with the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has examined the extent of added benefit of pirfenidone.