WEDNESDAY, March 3, 2021 (American Heart Association News) — Stuck in traffic, with a nasty storm making a stressful commute even worse, Joanne Loewy reached for the car radio. “I felt my heartbeat rise,” said Loewy, director of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York City.… read on > read on >
Doctors are testing a decades-old surgical technique as a new way to treat certain stroke patients. And the preliminary results look promising, they say. At issue are strokes caused by intracranial atherosclerosis, where blood vessels within the brain become hardened and narrowed. Strokes occur when the blood supply to the brain is disrupted, depriving tissue… read on > read on >
A clinical trial evaluating the use of convalescent plasma in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 symptoms has been halted because the treatment didn’t benefit them, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Convalescent plasma (also called “survivor’s plasma”) is derived from the blood of patients who have already recovered from COVID-19. It’s thought… read on > read on >
Wider use of prescription generic drugs could save Medicare nearly $2 billion a year, researchers say. The new analysis of Medicare Part D prescription drug claims for 2017 used a random 20% of beneficiaries, 224 drugs with one or more generic substitutes and at least 1,000 claims. Medicare Part D accounts for roughly one-third of… read on > read on >
Two new studies suggest that the jury is still out on whether the arthritis drug tocilizumab helps those with severe COVID-19. Both reports were published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine. The first, from scientists at the University of California, San Diego, found tocilizumab didn’t improve outcomes or reduce the risk of death… read on > read on >
People with kidney failure related to sickle cell disease are less likely to receive a transplant than those without sickle cell disease, but it could be life-saving for them, a new study finds. Sickle cell disease is a risk factor for kidney failure, and adults with sickle cell-related kidney failure who are on long-term dialysis… read on > read on >
Researchers have identified 44 new genetic variants associated with glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness. They say their findings could provide new targets to treat the common eye disease. In their study, the international team compared the genes of more than 34,000 people with glaucoma and more than 349,000 people without the incurable eye condition.… read on > read on >
When temperatures rise, people with multiple sclerosis need to keep cool. Heat sensitivity is a hallmark of the central nervous system disorder. So, what happens when warm weather spikes become more frequent because of climate change? More MS patients end up in the emergency room. A new study found that during periods of unusually warm… read on > read on >
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the emergency use of Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot coronavirus vaccine, adding a third weapon to the arsenal the United States is building to battle the pandemic. The overall effectiveness of the J&J vaccine in protecting recipients against any case of COVID-19 (66%) is not as high as… read on > read on >
Don’t skip your breast cancer screening mammogram. This is the overarching message of an extended study of more than a half-million Swedish women. Those who missed even one recommended screening mammogram were more likely to die from breast cancer, the study found. The new findings — which appear March 2 in the journal Radiology —… read on > read on >
