News

A trio of phase 3 trials will evaluate the safety and efficacy of certolizumab pegol evaluated for the treatment of adults with moderate-to-severe chronic plaque psoriasis.

Aterica Digital Health, based in Waterloo, Canada, has designed an EpiPen case that's difficult to lose or leave behind.The "Veta smart case" uses sensors, Bluetooth radios and other technology to broadcast its location and perform several other tricks that could help users survive anaphylaxis. The case itself works with an app that runs on either Apple iOS or Google Android. Whenever a user's smartphone and case get too far apart to communicate, an alert appears on the phone. If a user misplaces a case, the app can reveal its exact location by tracking the signal it emits.

The Obama administration's former health policy guru Ezekiel "Zeke" Emanuel, MD, PhD, wants to bring back asylums. Deinstitutionalizing the mentally ill has been underway since the 1950s. But Emanuel, MD, and colleagues at University of Pennsylvania want the US to reopen these inpatient psychiatric facilities to provide long-term care for some patients. "Few high-quality accessible long-term care options are available for a significant segment of the approximately 10 million US residents with serious mental illness," he and colleagues write in a JAMA opinion piece.

According to a recent study, melanoma cells may become resistant to BRAF and MEK inhibitors after an initial tumor regression.

The incidence and mortality of pancreatic adenocarcinoma, the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States, are both on the rise. Globally, the disease is responsible for 227,000 deaths annually. Researchers from the National Taiwan University College of Medicine recently published a meta-analysis that demonstrated a dose-response relationship between fasting blood glucose levels and pancreatic cancer risk. They also examined the link between prediabetes and pancreatic cancer risk.

Researchers at the University of Missouri and the National Research Council in Padova, Italy, recently investigated the role that timing of resistance exercise plays in lowering cardiovascular risk. They wondered if the time of day when diabetics exercise could explain the lower-than-expected exercise-derived benefits seen in some diabetics.

There is no difference in bone mineral density loss among pre- and postmenopausal women with rheumatoid arthritis, according to research from the Babol University of Medical Sciences in Iran.

Prolonged sitting is a health hazard even when people exercise regularly, a new Canadian study has found. Writing in Annals of Internal Medicine, David Alter, MD, PhD, and colleagues quantified the association between sedentary time and negative health outcomes. Those included hospitalizations, mortality, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer in adults.

Chronic lower back pain patients did not experience reduced time to first moderate pain in a treadmill test using pregabalin, according to a report published in Neurology.

Older people can safely eat just as much salt daily (2300 mg) as younger adults, according to a community-based study reported in JAMAInternal Medicine The current recommendation is 1,500 mg for adults over 50, or a little more than a teaspoon.

Television ads for alcohol-with their portrayals of good times and cool people -- are reaching adolescents and likely having a negative effect on their behavior, a Dartmouth research team has found. Adolescents were tested on their ability to identify brand names when viewing ads for beer and liquor that had been stripped of logos. Those who were best at doing that were later found to be more likely to engage in underage drinking and binge-drinking, the team found.

The 2014-2015 US seasonal flu tallies as of Jan. 10, 2015 show the epidemic has started to wane. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the current estimated rate of doctor visits due to flu-like illness is 4.4%, down from a peak of 6.1%, but still higher than the national annual baseline of 2.0%.

Researchers discovered defects in the Sox10 protein, a factor regulating gene expression, which evidently plays a role in developing post-operative gastrointestinal (GI) function in patients afflicted with Hirschsprung's disease.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to spend $2.7 billion in emergency funds to counter the spread of Ebola. On Jan. 13 the agency detailed its spending plans. Spending categories range from over a half billion dollars for international projects to a half million dollars for regulatory work that includes monitoring for fraudulent Ebola products.Separately, on the international front, J&J Pharmaceuticals announced it has formed an Ebola vaccine development group with international funding of 100 million euros.

The head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will leave her post at the end of February, just days before the law she helped implement faces its biggest legal test to date.

Though the flu vaccine for the 2014-2015 season is only 23% effective, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to recommend flu shots for those who do not have the illness, and antivirals for those who do. The effectiveness estimate is based on data from 2,321 children and adults with acute respiratory illness tested from Nov. 10, 2014 to Jan. 2, 2015 at 5 study sites with outpatient facilities. The cases were all laboratory confirmed.

When NYU Langone Medical Center gastroenterologist Lee Ann Chen, MD needs frozen stool pills, she puts in an order with OpenBiome, a two-year-old Massachusetts non-profit whose sole mission is to provide them.

Brain inflammation, researchers from Johns Hopkins believe, may be an identifiable trademark of autism spectrum disorder.

Gift giving and receiving provides insight into receivers' spending habits and relationships, according to a symposium that will be offered in February from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

If all goes as planned, Merck will soon take a major step forward in the hot pursuit among pharmaceutical companies to produce a newer, better, faster-working drug to treat the millions of people who have chronic hepatitis C infection.

Sean Parker, the entrepreneur who founded Napster and secured Facebook some of its first venture capital money, recently donated $24 million to fund an allergy research center at Stanford University.

AstraZeneca announced that its study of ticagrelor (Brilinta) has met its primary efficacy endpoint. In the trial known as Pegasus-TIMI 54, some 21,000 patients taking the tablets twice a day at a dose of either 60 mg or 90 mg plus low-dose aspirin for secondary prevention experienced no unexpected safety issues.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced the approval of a device to help treat patients with obesity.

A predictive calculator known as the nomogram has been shown to accurately determine the risk of disease recurrence in liver cancer patients following transplantation.

Researchers in Scotland have shown that while diabetes is a growing problem for that country's population, patients diagnosed with the condition are living considerably longer than they would have in the past. This is particularly true for patients diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

What are the risks and benefits of aspirin for high risk patients and those patients across the globe? Jeffrey Berger, MD, from NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, discusses these and other topics.

Jeffrey Berger, MD, from NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, discusses the implications of patients with atrial fibrillation taking anticoagulant and antiplatelet drugs.

Emphasizing the benefits to healthcare at large, an article published in the European Respiratory Journal pressed for more attention be given to breathlessness-specifically in middle-aged patients.

An effective, yet toxic tuberculosis (TB) drug can be decreased and combined with a well-known heart medication for the same results, researchers from John Hopkins University School of Medicine reported.

Lifestyles and emotions of rheumatoid arthritis patients are positively impacted after participation in educational and support groups, according to research from the Hospital for Special Surgery.