Angela Speth, MD In our Western diet, dairy and beef are ubiquitous: Milk goes with coffee, melted cheese with pizza, and chili with rice. But what if dairy products and beef contained a new kind of pathogen that could infect you as a child and trigger cancer or multiple sclerosis (MS) 40-70 years later? Researchers...
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mRNA Vaccine Cuts COVID-Related Guillain-Barré Risk
Kelli Whitlock Burton TOPLINE:The risk for Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is six times higher in people with COVID-19 in the 6 weeks following infection, according to a new study that also showed receipt of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine reduced GSB risk by 59%. METHODOLOGY:The nested-case control study analyzed data from the largest healthcare provider in Israel...
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Study Links Specific Drugs to Delusions of Parasitosis Risk
Delusions of parasitosis is linked to female gender, older age, polypharmacy with more than five drugs, and certain types of drugs (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder drugs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, gabapentin, and opioids), reported researchers in a small retrospective case-control study. Delusions of parasitosis (DOP) affects mostly middle-aged women and has associations with renal failure and some...
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Death Risk Takes Decades to Revert to Normal in Ex-Smokers
For smokers, deaths with a cardiovascular or cancer-related cause, or ones that can be attributed to a respiratory disease such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, are significantly more common than for nonsmokers. It is widely recognized that stopping smoking leads to a reduction in mortality risk. To make reliable statements on the timeline of this...
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How to Deal With the Hidden Problem of Insurer Underpayments
When insurers pay less than the rate specified in a practice’s contract, it can drain revenue without physicians even realizing it. As much as 3% of a typical practice’s expected revenue is lost to underpayments, according to one estimate. photo of medical expensesTo win back underpayments, billing staff must first root them out and then...
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The 2024 Adult Vaccine Schedule Changes Are Here
Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, MD DISCLOSURES This segment of Medicine Matters by Sandra Fryhofer, MD, highlights updates in the 2024 Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) Adult Immunization Schedule. The biggest change for 2024 is that you don’t need to wait till January 1, 2024, for these schedules go into effect. Both schedules were published and...