News

We trusted the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to contain Ebola. But then three health care workers got it. Wouldn't we be better off with a moratorium on flights from the Ebola hot zone?

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.

Phthalates may be replacing lead as the leading environmental exposure concern. Some studies indicate that there may be a link between phthalates, obesity, endocrine disruption, and metabolic interference.

Homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HoFH) is a rare and severe hereditary lipid disorder. Patients with HoFH generally have very high serum levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) that is treatment-resistant. HoFH puts affected patients at extremely high risk of premature onset coronary heart disease, and many patients die before they reach their mid-30s.

As the number of bariatric surgeries increase, clinicians require more and better data about its long-term outcomes. As we know, as more people take a medication or undergo a surgical procedure, the better the quality of the collective data. It's the strength in numbers concept. In the case of bariatric surgery, many clinicians have questions about treatment failure rates and they suspect that reports of sustained weight loss may be overly optimistic.

A light-emitting diode (LED) device that uses 40 high-intensity blue LEDs, which can be configured to an individual patient's needs, and is free of ultraviolet (UV) light, may offer a new treatment option for patients with psoriasis.

According to a recent study published in Radiology, computed tomographic (CT) findings may be able to predict the efficacy of nonsurgical treatment in patients afflicted with adhesive small-bowl obstruction.

New research indicates that children who receive epinephrine injections before they go to the emergency room for food-related anaphylaxis are less than half as likely to require hospitalization as those who first receive such treatment at the hospital.

In an 18-year study, researchers tracked cognitive decline in patients with multiple sclerosis.

Parents were able to successfully complete a low-intensity intervention for their infants who displayed autism spectrum disorder symptoms.

The authors reviews several challenging cases illustrating the utility of the anion gap in the evaluation of an acidotic patient.

Other parts of the world scrutinize public sewage to look for disease markers. But not the US. In Israel, public health authorities recently found some lethal pathogens. With concern about Ebola so high, isn't this a good time to think about using this simple, non-invasive way to monitor threats from infectious organisms?

The compound AIN457 (secukinumab) has been granted a unanimous vote of support for approval from the Dermatologic and Ophthalmic Drugs Advisory Committee to the Food and Drug Administration.

Amgen has released positive top-line results from the first of two Phase III studies of ABP 501, its candidate for the treatment of moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis that is being developed as a biosimilar to adalimumab.

Prenatal exposure to sodium valproate is associated with a reduction in offspring IQ, according to a review published online Oct. 30 in The Cochrane Library.

AstraZeneca today announced that the US Food and Drug Administration has approved once-daily Xigduo XR (dapagliflozin and metformin hydrochloride extended-release) for the treatment of adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

A British company claims it has developed a fast and simple diagnostic test solution specific to the 2014 Ebola outbreak.

A new technique makes it possible to quickly detect the presence of drugs or to monitor certain medical conditions using only a single drop of blood or urine, representing a potential tool for clinicians and law enforcement.

Researchers have found that a simple blood test might help diagnose pancreatic cancer, one of the most deadly forms of the disease.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced the approval of Trumenba, the first vaccine licensed in the US to prevent invasive meningococcal disease caused by Neisseria meningitidis serogroup B.

Carpal tunnel syndrome pain is effectively reduced using topical menthol gel, according to a study from Denmark.

Pain and depression, but not disability, stem from sleep disturbances in patients with osteoarthritis, suggests a study published in Arthritis Care & Research.

Laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (LRYGB) is frequently the go-to procedure for patients with complex or morbid obesity who need or want to reduce their weights. Laparoscopic procedures are attractive to surgeons, insurers and patients because in addition to being as effective as other procedures, they shorten hospital stay and allow patients to heal more quickly compared to other bariatric surgeries.

Laparoscopic interventions for rectal cancer are controversial. Oncologists have concerns about high conversion rates and long operating times associated with laparoscopic total mesorectal excision (TME), and they worry that laparoscopic TME violates the principle of sharp mesorectal dissection.

Currently studies are underway to refine a surgical approach for migraine headaches, determine the best way to triage patients, identify additional trigger points, and expand knowledge of migraine's anatomy.

Governors in four states have enacted quarantines on health care workers returning from treating Ebola patients in West Africa. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that is not necessary. In interviews with HCPLive's Gale Scott, two physicians offered sharply different opinions on the states' quarantine policy.

PET scans can determine if psychodynamic therapy will be an effective treatment for depression patients, according to a study published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

Vaccines do not contribute to multiple sclerosis or other central nervous system demyelinating syndrome onset, according to a study published in JAMA Neurology.