by Society for the Study of Addiction Credit: CC0 Public DomainA new study published in Addiction has found that cytisine, a low-cost, generic stop-smoking aid that has been used in Eastern Europe since the 1960s, increases the chances of successful smoking cessation by more than two-fold compared with placebo and may be more effective than...
by Lori Solomon Most women with osteoporosis want to know their fracture risk, but only half have received this information from health care providers, according to a study published online Nov. 13 in Osteoporosis International. Charlotte Beaudart, Ph.D., from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, and colleagues used data from the Risk Communication in Osteoporosis study...
by Lori Solomon There is a significant lack of awareness about the effects of gym lifestyles on male infertility in young adults, according to a study published in the January issue of Reproductive BioMedicine Online. Alice Newman-Sanders, from the University of Birmingham and Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust in the United Kingdom, and...
by Lori Solomon Elevated levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) are associated with an increased risk for all-cause dementia, according to a study published online Nov. 29 in The Lancet Regional Health: Western Pacific. Sultana Monira Hussain, M.B.B.S., M.P.H., Ph.D., from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues conducted a post-hoc analysis of the Aspirin...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
