Gale Scott

U.S. physicians may not be following the latest guidelines on HIV care, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report concludes.

Patients with irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea (IBS-D) suffer not only the pain and discomfort of frequent loose stools, but fear of incontinence. For many patients, that results in panic and anxiety.

Modifying diet is one way to try to help patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). In a study reported in Gastroenterology, an Australian research team looked at the effects of lowering fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols (FODMAP) vs. consuming a typical Australian diet.

More than 23 million Americans who should be screened for colon cancer have not yet been screened. To the extent that lapse is due to patients' reluctance to submit to a colonoscopy, a non-invasive stool test could help – if it is effective. A research team looked at such a test, one made by Exact Sciences Corp. and approved in November, 2014 for Medicare reimbursement.

In the first test of an Ebola virus vaccine in the US, the University of Maryland announced it will soon start human trial.

Amid the ongoing debate about whether patients are getting the best end-of-life care, a University of Pennsylvania team today presented survey results on a potential ethics question: How would patients feel if doctors turned off their defibrillators against the wishes of patient or family?

The United Kingdom has a medical mystery on its hands: what is causing a recent increase in infective endocarditis? One theory is that the uptick is due to a change in dental care. The UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence amended the rules on dental procedures, so patients no longer routinely get prophylactic antibiotics before invasive oral procedures.

The most common cause of sudden cardiac death in young people is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, an inherited condition that can lead to heart failure, angina, arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death. There is no medical treatment shown to halt or reverse the progression of the disease-just palliative care or surgery.

Cardiologists treating pediatric patients with Marfan syndrome were hopeful that positive results from animal studies using losartan would be replicated in humans. But in a comparison of losartan with atenolol, researchers found no difference in the drugs' performance.

In the Hollywood version of the heart attack, patients clutch their chests, gasp for air, and often keel over. Real life isn't usually like that. But the problem for cardiologists and other physicians whose patients have cardiac events, is that the patient may not realize he or she has had one.

Undetected neonatal heart defects can cause a variety of serious problems, including an increased risk of death. A recently enacted New Jersey law mandating screening for congenital heart defects has uncovered cases of congenital heart problems and likely saved lives.

Can cholesterol get too low? Results from a multicenter international study called IMPROVE-IT show that adding ezetimibe to a statin regimen lowered cholesterol without harmful side effects in patients with acute coronary syndrome.

Former VP Dick Cheney spoke at AHA 2014 about his experiences as a model heart patient. Speaking with his cardiologist, Jonathan Reiner, MD, of George Washington University, Cheney recounted his 5 heart attacks, a CABG procedure, defibrillator implantation, getting a left-ventricular assistive device, and at age 71, a heart from an anonymous donor.

High-caffeine energy drinks can cause serious cardiac and neurological symptoms in children. At the 2014 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Chicago, IL, Steven Lipshultz, MD, called for new labeling on the drinks that would spell out risks, particularly for the adolescent consumers manufacturers target for marketing.

Could hospitals be a bad place to have heart attacks? That's the finding of a North Carolina research team that looked at data from 303 California hospitals. Patients who had heart attacks while hospitalized for a non-cardiac ailment had a more than 3-fold greater in-hospital mortality than patients taken to a hospital.

Dual antiplatelet blood-thinning therapy (DAPT) immediately after stenting with a drug-eluting device has been shown to prevent major cardiac events and stent thrombosis in most patients. Current American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association guidelines recommend 12 months of therapy post-stenting. But out of concern over potential risks of continuing the drugs longer, or even indefinitely, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked device manufacturers to study the longer-term consequences of the therapy.

Nebraska Medical Center's biocontainment unit is preparing for a new patient. Martin Salia, 44, a surgeon who is completing a residency in Freetown, Sierra Leone, but resides in New Carrollton, MD, is apparently the sixth doctor in Sierra Leone to be infected with the Ebola virus. He was doing the residency at Kissy United Methodist Hospital, a general hospital, not an Ebola center. Meanwhile, new Ebola vaccines are headed for trials.

Taking beta blockers-a common drug regimen for patients with clinically stable coronary heart disease (SCHD)-likely does not have a benefit or outweigh these drugs' risk for most patients, a University of Florida team report.

It is well known that patients who get primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) after an ST segment elevation myocardial infarction usually survive. But a new study from Denmark looked at a large population of such patients over several years to track just how many deaths there were each year and from what cause.

The family of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died at Texas Presbyterian Health Hospital, announced today it has settled its wrongful death claim against the facility. There will not be a lawsuit. Monetary terms were not disclosed.

In a joyful and emotional public appearance this morning, New York City officials, staff at city-run Bellevue Hospital System, and Craig Spencer, MD celebrated his release. http://www.hcplive.com/articles/US-Ebola-Free But throughout the event at the hospital this morning speakers stressed that Ebola stigmatization is an ongoing problem.

The US is Ebola-free, at least for now. Craig Spencer, MD, the New York City physician who contracted Ebola as a volunteer for Doctors Without Borders in Guinea will be released from city-run Bellevue Hospital Center tomorrow. He has been a patient there since Oct. 23 sparking a city-wide alarm about whether he might have spread the virus in the days before he was diagnosed.

Moderate alcohol consumption can protect against coronary heart disease. But according to a study of 618 Swedes with coronary artery disease, that is true only for those who have a particular genetic makeup, a mere 15% of the general population.

Canada-based Tekmira Pharmaceuticals will supply US troops in West Africa with 500 doses of its promising experimental Ebola treatment, the company announced today. The company specializes in RNA interference delivery technology. The new product interrupts the Ebola virus's life cycle. The US Army announced that on Saturday it will open an Ebola treatment unit for medical workers infected with the virus in Monrovia, Liberia. (The unit is seen in photo.)

President Barack Obama is asking Congress for $6.2 billion in emergency funding to help eradicate Ebola in West Africa. According to the Associated Press, Obama said $2 billion would be funneled through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), $2.4 billion would go to the US Department of Health and Human Services (the parent agency of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and $1.5 billion would go into a contingency fund. The Pentagon would get $112 million. The US military is currently committing about 4,000 troops to Ebola-containment efforts in West Africa.

Republican opponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have more clout with their new ascendance to Senate majority status. They've also done well in gubernatorial races. Will that mean the GOP can undo the ACA?

State and federal funding for early intervention can help children with autism, but researchers have grappled with which Early Social Interaction (ESI) programs are effective and efficient. Training parents to offer the therapy is clearly more cost effective than having clinicians do it, according to researchers at Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL and at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. The team found that parents can be trained to be effective, particularly if the instruction they get is individual, rather than in a group setting.

In what he says is the first objective evidence that migraine headaches are caused by defects in the trigeminal nerve's myelination process, a Cleveland, Ohio plastic surgeon shows why migraine surgery works.

In older adults, mild control of systolic pressure is good enough, an Oregon research team has found. Writing in Drugs & Aging, Leah Goeres and colleagues at the College of Pharmacy at Oregon State University and Oregon Health & Science University said that for adults age 60 and over, said a reading of 150 for systolic blood pressure (SPB) is adequate-upsetting the conventional wisdom that these patients should get enough medications or other treatments to bring SPB down to 140.

The American Academy of Family Physicians is launching a 3-year public relations and lobbying campaign to "tackle issues ranging from payment reform to workforce development," the organization announced. Discussing the plan at his inaugural address to the AAFM Assembly Oct. 22, Robert Wergin, MD, the group's new president, said the slogan for the effort will be "Health Is Primary."