Month: November 2020

About 11 percent of the US population has diabetes; 20 percent have acid reflux. And, lots of people with diabetes have acid reflux.  Because so many people have these conditions, we offer this head’s up about medicines you might be taking, and the problems linked to them.  The US Food and Drug Administration is investigating to determine if

In early January of 2011, Georgetown University freshman Michelle Konkoly returned to campus from a training trip to Puerto Rico with the school’s NCCA Division I women’s swimming & diving team. She was pumped for a postseason run and for her second semester as a biology major. The future looked bright. “I had a pretty

Parents’ fears regarding the impact of school closures on their children’s education are proving true. Several researchers have found that because students missed classes on a regular basis during the first wave of the pandemic, their academic performance slipped. Education disrupted is a global phenomenon. At various levels of schooling, 94% of students’ education was interrupted worldwide. According to the United

Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. The U.S. began another dark chapter in its COVID-19 epidemic, cresting 10 million cases and approaching nearly a quarter of a million deaths from the virus. Many Asian countries that were hit hard early on have now controlled their outbreaks with

In a “Clinical Challenges” series on rare lung diseases, MedPage Today reviewed the current thinking and latest treatments for three such conditions: idiopathic lung disease, pulmonary arterial hypertension, and lung complications of alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. The following quiz is designed to test your knowledge about one aspect of each of these clinical challenge topics. Correct

So now that we have a new president-elect, what can we expect from Joe Biden and his team with regard to health care?    Candidate Joe Biden made clear his first priority as president would be addressing the health and economic crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic.    But as president, Biden will almost certainly turn his

Patients who take the vitamin K antagonist warfarin to prevent thromboembolic events are significantly more likely to require knee or hip replacement surgery — a surrogate endpoint for end-stage osteoarthritis — than are patients who take direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs), results of a UK-based study showed. In a nested case-control study, warfarin use was associated

Sharks are in the news, but not for their normal shenanigans. They, and their squalene, an oil found in their livers, apparently have a role in the COVID-19 vaccine story.  Squalene is used as an adjuvant in vaccines and chemotherapeutics. An adjuvant revs up the immune system, resulting in a bigger immune response, which means better resistance to

People taking even low-dose methotrexate need tuberculosis screening and ongoing clinical care if they live in areas where TB is common, results of a study presented at ACR Convergence 2020 suggests. Coauthor Carol Hitchon, MD, MSc, a rheumatologist with the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, who presented the findings on Friday, also warned

COVID-19 hit nursing homes with a situation that they “were not equipped to handle,” according to David Coppins, CEO and co-founder of IntelyCare, a workforce management company specializing in post-acute care. In the following Q&A, Coppins discusses the battle that nursing homes have had to confront during the pandemic, and Pennsylvania CNA Christine Pepple offers

A diagnosis of high blood pressure is often not made by itself; the odds are good that other health problems exist. In fact, hypertension is often combined with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease, making it a triple health threat. “Diabetes can affect small blood vessels. And that can result in hypertension. And that can