Internal Medicine

Sustained viral response (SVR) without resistance or safety issues was reported among chronic hepatitis B (HBV) patients taking tenofovir disopoxil fumarate (TDF) therapy over a 7-year period.

High medication adherence and sustained viral response (SVR) has been reported in hepatitis C (HCV) patients taking an interferon-free, short-duration, oral regimen of ribavirin (RBV) combined with 3 direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) that are currently in phase 2b/3 clinical trials.

Oxytocin has great potential to become a next-generation peptidyl drug target for obesity and diabetes.

The REDUCE randomized clinical trial determined that 40 mg prednisone administered daily for 5 days wasn't inferior to 14 days of treatment in a placebo-controlled, double-blind setting.

Results of a randomized controlled trial demonstrate that a long-term, supervised, moderate-intensity exercise training program for chronic heart failure patients can produce improvements in hospital readmission and survival rates.

Conversations about healthful eating between parents and students are associated with a lower prevalence of disordered eating behaviors in adolescents, while conversations about weight result in a higher prevalence of those behaviors.

The intensive lifestyle intervention used in type 2 diabetes patients in the Look AHEAD trial was deemed futile over time.

A 2-month-old baby is healthy and growing well, but when you begin to discuss immunizations, the parents stop you and state that they've decided not to immunize the child. How should you respond?

Will the approval of Zohydro benefit patients and physicians by providing another option for pain relief for patients with legitimate chronic pain needs, or will it spark a new wave of abuse, misuse, and diversion?

One of the most important tasks for physicians treating a patient who has experienced a first unprovoked pulmonary embolism is determining how long the patient must remain on oral anticoagulants.

Guidelines to be released later this year by the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and the European Respiratory Society (ERS) suggest that bronchial thermoplasty may be an effective treatment for moderate to severe asthma patients, for whom inhaled corticosteroids have provided unsatisfactory results.

Although change in knee joint space narrowing depicted on radiographs is considered the gold standard for monitoring osteoarthritis progression and knee cartilage volume loss, the method doesn't account for extrusion of the medial meniscus, which new research suggests can better predict radiographic osteoarthritis change over time.

Providers should perform mediastinal biopsy in order to properly stage lung cancer, after diagnosis, and before surgery.

During their "Great Debate" keynote session of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) 2013 Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA, two leading rheumatologists took direct aim at each other's significant clinical trial data to provide rationale for choosing biologics over triple therapy - or vice versa - as the treatment of choice for rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Though rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients have a significantly higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) compared to the general population, results from a pair of studies show that the biologic disease modifier Actemra (tocilizumab) may actually improve the cardiovascular (CV) profiles of RA patients.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is continuing to investigate a potential link between Novartis's multiple sclerosis (MS) drug Gilenya (fingolimod) and a single case of a rare and serious brain infection in a European patient.

As a follow-up to the initial establishment of Simponi (golimumab)'s safety and efficacy in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), researchers presented final 5-year data evaluating the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blocker's effects in RA patients taking methotrexate and those naïve to the biologic agent.

Doctors treating patients for COPD exacerbations may have recourse to a variety of treatments, including some off-label applications of existing drugs, and smoking cessation may result in a reduction of repeat occurrences.

Presentation at CHEST 2013 reviewed key considerations surrounding the treatment of pulmonary embolism and other venous thromboembolic events with the newer class of oral anticoagulant agents.

Providers who don't use social media are missing valuable opportunities to learn from and educate their peers, recruit patients, and repudiate misinformation.

Though previous reports have described a link between vitamin D deficiency and an increased risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) development, a trio of studies has now offered clinical support to the contrary belief.

Although methotrexate with or without glucocorticoids (GCs) is commonly used as a first-line treatment in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), study results show that combining the medication with two other traditional disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) produces better outcomes in newly-diagnosed RA patients.

Noting that it takes an average of 5 years before a fibromyalgia patient receives a diagnosis, researchers conducted a retrospective data analysis to identify significant variables that may enable earlier detection and diagnosis of fibromyalgia.

Presenters at CHEST 2013 reported that preliminary study results suggest that an accurate exhaled breath biomarker could be developed for use as a clinical test to detect lung cancer.

Study results presented at CHEST 2013 show that patients given beta-blockers may actually be at increased risk of having an adverse cardiac event during a noncardiac surgical procedure.

Study results presented at CHEST 2013 show that the use of ultrasound testing rather than x-rays or CT scans in the ICU reduces patient radiation exposure and lowers costs of care.

Although screening for cognitive impairment can successfully identify patients with early-stage dementia, the benefits of such screening remain unproven.

Early treatment of rosacea is crucial for the prevention of irreversible damage.

While the use of acute, high-dose systemic corticosteroids probably has no clinically significant effect on wound healing, chronic systemic corticosteroids may impair postoperative healing in susceptible patients.

With 10% of Americans contracting ulcers, pharmacists can be a valuable source of education for patients regarding the causes of peptic ulcer and the pros and cons of available treatments.