“This class of drugs [GLP-1 agonists], though, often causes severe nausea in early weeks and doesn’t lead to significant weight loss in everyone. There’s growing concern that in addition to fat loss, the drugs lead to muscle loss that could prove detrimental for older patients. And for most people, the costly drugs may need to be taken forever to sustain the effects. [..] Versanis’ bimagrumab, which increases muscle while cutting fat, stands out because all currently available obesity drugs lead to muscle loss. In a trial for Wegovy, for example, about 40% of the weight that people lost was lean mass. Some … Read More
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“A new study from researchers at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) showed a single dose of human papillomavirus virus (HPV) vaccine was highly efficacious in preventing HPV, the virus that causes cervical cancer, in girls and women ages 15 to 20. The study results were announced at the 35th International Papillomavirus Conference in Washington, DC, this week. Researchers described the findings from their randomized, multicenter, double-blind, controlled trial, which included 2,275 participants in Kenya between the ages of 15 and 20. The women were randomly assigned to receive either a single dose of the bivalent … Read More
“we examine real-world data from a cohort based in a UK primary care clinic offering a low-carbohydrate approach to people with T2D [type 2 diabetes] from 2013 to 2021. The physiological mechanisms behind remission induced by dietary weight loss were first demonstrated in 2011. Since then the idea of drug-free T2D remission has gained international momentum. [..] Advice on lowering dietary carbohydrate was offered routinely by our team of nine specially trained GPs and three practice nurses to patients with T2D (defined as HbA1c >48 mmol/mol on two occasions) starting in March 2013. Our protocol includes important information around the deprescribing of … Read More
“In the observational study [published in the European Heart Journal on 2022.8.7], researchers analyzed health data from 3,680 people with chronic kidney disease for nearly 10 years. Those with elevated levels of aldosterone, a crucial, salt-conserving hormone made by the adrenal glands, which sit atop the kidneys, had a higher risk of serious kidney disease progression during the study period: they are more likely to lose half their kidney function, start dialysis, or develop end-stage kidney disease. [Excerpts of an interview with Ashish Verma, kidney specialist and assistant professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine:] [Verma:] We found … Read More
“[Nir] Barzilai, the head of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and scientific director for AFAR — the American Federation for Aging Research — has for more than a decade been leading the charge to test the idea of using drugs to extend human healthspan. In 2013, he and two other researchers got a grant from the National Institutes of Aging to develop a roadmap to conduct, for the first time in history, a clinical trial that targets aging. They planned to test metformin, a drug that had been approved in the ’90s for … Read More
Excerpt – In the early 2000s, advances in the ability to detect the activity of genes in various tissues revealed that the cell clocks are organized into separate organ-level clocks representing every physiological system: There’s a skin clock and a liver clock and an immune-system clock; there’s a clock for the kidney, heart, lungs, muscles and reproductive system. Each of those clocks syncs itself to the central clock in the brain like an orchestra section following its conductor. But those sections also adjust how and when they perform based on guidance they receive both from the environment and from one … Read More
“Explanatory trials evaluating the efficacy and safety of adding a new drug or device to current clinical care (A vs A-plus) are traditionally powered to detect the smallest difference in clinical outcomes that would justify incorporating the new treatment into care, considering its added risks, costs, and burdens. For example, the median minimal clinically important difference in mortality targeted by acute care trials has been approximately 8%, implying that smaller differences in mortality might not justify incorporation of the new treatments into care. These types of trials ask, “is this new treatment better than current care by enough to offset … Read More
“The insurance companies [Cigna and Kaiser Permanente] provided Ginger with access to millions of potential users. After its financial investments in Ginger, Cigna began offering no-cost access to Ginger’s behavioral health services in order to improve customers’ overall health and well-being, according to leadership from both organizations. Yes, it is possible that those customers will benefit from the platform. But given that Ginger’s valuation grew in multiples around the same time—at least in part because of the massive influx of customers from Cigna and Kaiser—it’s reasonable to suggest that the insurance company was double dipping. By sending its customers to … Read More
“Hypertension affects 46% of the adult population in the United States and is a leading risk factor for disability, cardiovascular morbidity, and mortality. Although treatment reduces morbidity and mortality, approximately 17% to 20% of patients using antihypertensive medications have apparent treatment-resistant hypertension, defined as inadequately controlled blood pressure (BP) with 3 antihypertensive medications, including a diuretic, or a requirement for at least 4 antihypertensive medications to achieve adequate control. Compared with patients who require fewer antihypertensive agents, those with apparent treatment-resistant hypertension are at increased risk for cardiovascular and all-cause mortality, independent of BP control. High-quality evidence supports the use … 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