Most oral medications prescribed for type 2 diabetes are similarly effective for reducing blood glucose, but the drug metformin is less likely to cause weight gain and may be more likely than other treatments to decrease so-called bad cholesterol, according to a report funded by the Department of Health & Human Services’s (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) shows that patients who go to hospitals ranked higher according to specific quality measures have a lower chance of dying than patients treated at lower-ranked hospitals.
Although a number of studies have suggested that regular exercise reduces inflammation ? a condition that is predictive of cardiovascular and other diseases, such as diabetes ? it is still not clear whether there is a definitive link. And if such a link exists, the nature of the relationship is by no means fully understood.
Autophagy, a normal process by which cells eat their own proteins to provide needed resources to the body in times of stress, may paradoxically cause harm to hearts already weakened by disease, researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.
A review of previous studies indicates that an increase in prescription drug cost sharing is associated with a decrease in drug spending and use of pharmacies; and for some chronic conditions, higher cost sharing is associated with greater use of expensive medical services, according to an article in the July 4 issue of JAMA.
Researchers at the University of Alberta have identified a “central command system” for pulmonary hypertension, a disease that currently has no cure and kills thousands each year.
Kevin Campell and fellow University of Iowa researchers have shown that a protein known as dysferlin plays a critical role in repairing the plasma membranes of cardiac muscle cells that are torn as a result of strain-induced injury.
Mayo Clinic in Arizona has received Medicare certification for heart transplantation, the highest quality indicator for a transplant program. Since the program opened in October 2005, Mayo surgeons have completed 24 heart transplants – exceeding the Medicare requirement that a transplant center perform 12 or more heart transplants over a 12-month period and have one-year survival rates of at least 73 percent.
More than 300,000 patients receive mechanical ventilation during intensive care per year in the United States, even though the hospital mortality rate for ventilated patients can approach 50 percent. New findings indicate that medical patients with an alcohol-use disorder (AUD) are more likely to require mechanical ventilation, and/or need it for a longer period of time.
The use of drugs to prevent heart complications during surgery is called into question in this week?s BMJ.