Here is this week’s refresh of the excess mortality count from the CDC (last updated December 2). The federal agency identified over 335,000 excess deaths across the country since the start of this year (about three thousand more than last week’s estimate). The overall excess mortality rate dropped slightly from 11.6% last week to 11.5% this week. Data from CDC’s National Center of Health Statistics, updated December 2, 2020
All posts by Anupam
“the what-I-wish-I-knew list about caring for my aging parents, medically and otherwise. [..] If you have the feeling that something may be an issue for your aging parents, it is almost definitely an issue. Do not put off something because it is likely to resolve itself; it will likely get worse, not better. As a pediatrician, I find myself frequently recommending to many of my patients and their parents to monitor their current condition and let me know if things change or get worse. This is in general the wrong approach for aging parents. It is better to deal with … Read More
“The standard curative treatment for sickle cell disease is allogeneic hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation. Matched sibling donor transplantation is curative in more than 90% of patients, but limitations include a higher risk of complications in older patients, a risk of severe graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), and lack of an available matched sibling in approximately 80% of cases. [..] In utero and during infancy, the abnormal HbS protein is produced at very low levels because the erythrocytes have not yet shifted from expression of the γ-globin gene (HBG), which encodes the developmentally regulated component of HbF, to expression of the HBB gene, a … Read More
“UPMC Health Plan and Sempre Health’s medication adherence collaboration has expanded its chronic disease management benefits to include diabetes medicines for members of UPMC’s employer-sponsored health plans. Since the program’s launch in 2017, members have collectively saved over $500,000 on cardiovascular medications, with the average member saving $33 per prescription refill through SMS message discounts. [..] In the first year of the partnership, the program successfully enrolled more than one-third of eligible members. Improvements in cardiovascular medication adherence for these members was significant when compared to a control group. Now, UPMC is expanding the program to diabetic members in order … Read More
“Recent legislative proposals, including US Senate Bill S.2543, US House of Representatives Bill HR 3, and various Trump Administration proposals and plans, have advanced some form of international reference pricing (IRP) to lower drug prices. As its name suggests, IRP seeks to benchmark US drug prices to prices of similar or comparable drugs in other counties. Some proposals would have the federal government develop a reference price index based on prices paid by a select group of high-income countries, and then restrict prices to a narrow range of the index. [..] American drug pricing policy rewards large capital investments and … Read More
“While the aducanumab clinical trial data are complicated and the path to approval far from clear, approval is certainly possible, and other promising antibodies (such as Biogen’s BAN-2401 and Genentech’s gantenerumab) are just steps behind. Thus, the long-awaited advent of disease-modifying therapy for AD [Alzheimer disease] may be soon upon us, representing a major advance in the battle against AD and a beacon of much-needed hope for patients. [..] The approval of aducanumab or any disease-modifying therapy for AD likely will result in a considerable immediate demand for capacity to provide formal diagnoses of AD dementia, including cognitive and AD … Read More
“Since many conspiracy theories arise from feelings of uncertainty and fear, an angry debate will only cement the ideas, and open ridicule is even less constructive. Instead, the research shows that you should try to focus on the rhetorical devices and tricks of persuasion that have been used to spread the ideas in the first instance. “People seem receptive to you exposing the ways in which they may have been manipulated,” explains Dr Sander van der Linden at Cambridge University, who has pioneered research into the spread of misinformation and the ways to stop it. [..] five most common fallacies … Read More
[Introduction] “Rehabilitation might be needed by anyone with a health condition who experiences difficulties in, for example, mobility, vision, or cognition. Therefore, its scope is very broad and people with diverse underlying health conditions or impairments might require rehabilitation at some stage of the course of their disease. There is evidence showing that many rehabilitative interventions are cost-effective. Low-cost rehabilitation interventions requiring minimal resources have been effective in improving functional outcomes in different health conditions in low-income and lower-middle-income countries and can be used in these settings as successful models of care. Rehabilitation can improve functioning outcomes in adults and … Read More
“In the USA, virtual care in its current form, like conventional outpatient care, is still episodic and transactional via a fee-for-service model. This transactional nature occurs despite the knowledge that disease, or even wellness, is a continuous state and flare ups do not coincide with periodic, predetermined follow up clinic visits. In the peri-pandemic period, medical professionals must develop an economic model that would encourage the delivery of continuous care. Maybe there is something to learn here from the role of remote monitoring with pacemakers, loop recorders, and defibrillators. In the not-so-distant past, patients with implanted devices were evaluated in-person … Read More
“The adoption of clinical exome and whole-genome sequencing based on next-generation sequencing technologies has increased rapidly over the last decade; this has been accelerated by increasing coverage of these services by private and public insurers. Examples of use include tumor and germline sequencing in patients with cancer, rapid turn-around sequencing of the genomes of critically ill neonates to diagnose mendelian conditions, and noninvasive prenatal testing for reproductive decision-making. The accuracy of sequencing results is of paramount importance to patients, clinicians, and those paying for testing services; inaccuracy can affect not only the tested individual, but their extended biological family. Understanding … Read More