Brain Structure, Widespread Connectivity Changes Seen With Long COVID
Gray matter atrophy and severe disruption of brain functional connectivity were seen in long COVID patients with anxiety and depression about 3 months after acute mild SARS-CoV-2 infection. Compared with people who were asymptomatic after SARS-CoV-2 infection, long COVID patients with both anxiety and depression showed limbic atrophy and a widespread pattern of hyperconnectivity, reported […]
Women With Hypertension During Pregnancy Face Higher CVD Risks
Women with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) were at a significant risk for developing new cardiovascular disease (CVD) within a couple of years of giving birth, a researcher reported. Within 2 years postpartum, patients with HDP had almost two times the risk for cerebrovascular disease, nearly three times the risk for cardiomyopathy and heart failure […]
One Paid Medical Malpractice Claim May Signal More to Come
Physicians who had a prior paid medical malpractice claim were three to four times more likely to have future claims, according to a retrospective case-control study, challenging the commonly held notion among physicians that medical malpractice claims are simply bad luck or random events. Among every physician licensed to practice in the U.S. at the […]
Medicare Advantage Plans Fielded 35 Million Prior Auth Requests in 2021
Over 35 million prior authorization requests were submitted to Medicare Advantage insurers in 2021, according to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). Two million of these requests, or 6%, were fully or partly denied, according to Jeannie Fuglesten Biniek, PhD, associate director of the Program on Medicare Policy, and Nolan Sroczynski, MSPH, […]
Opinion | Winners & Losers of the Mass Exodus From U.S. News’ Med School Rankings
It wasn’t long ago that the U.S. News & World Report rankings were the agreed-upon arbiter of prestige and quality in medical schools. Sure, you might quibble with their results or their methodology, but at the end of the day we all begrudgingly conceded that only U.S. News could decide which schools were better than […]
Is Pain Treated Effectively With Antidepressants?
While some antidepressant drugs were effective for certain pain conditions, most were either ineffective or evidence was inconclusive, a review found. Evidence of efficacy of antidepressants for pain emerged in 11 of 42 comparisons included in an overview of systematic reviews, reported Giovanni Ferreira, PhD, of the University of Sydney, and colleagues. In four of […]
COVID Risk Up to 50% Higher for Nursing Home Residents Behind on Vaccination
Nursing home residents who were not up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines had a 30% to 50% higher risk of getting infected compared with those who were up to date, CDC researchers said. From Oct. 10, 2022 to Jan. 8, 2023, weekly COVID incidence rates ranged from 7.2 to 15.6 per 1,000 nursing home […]
XBB Variant Up to 21 Times More Evasive to Vaccine Antibodies Than BA.5
Omicron subvariants BQ.1.1 and XBB.1 were more effective at escaping neutralizing antibodies compared with the BA.5 variant following both monovalent and bivalent mRNA boosters, new data suggested. In 15 participants who had received a monovalent mRNA booster in 2022, neutralizing antibody titers against BA.5 were seven times higher than those for BQ.1.1, and 17 times […]
Alzheimer’s Disease Detected in Blood a Decade Before Clinical Symptoms
Blood concentrations of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), a marker of astrogliosis, were higher about 10 years before symptom onset in an inherited form of Alzheimer’s disease. Three plasma biomarkers — phosphorylated tau (p-tau181), neurofilament light chain (NfL), and GFAP — were higher in mutation carriers than non-carriers in a Swedish cohort of autosomal dominant […]
IBD Risk Higher After Antibiotics
Antibiotics were linked with increased risk for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), especially among individuals 40 or older, in a population-based study conducted in Denmark. Of more than 6 million individuals followed for approximately 19 years, antibiotic use was associated with nearly 50% increased incidence of IBD in people ages 40 to 60 (IRR 1.48, 95% […]