Search results for: liver

Genetic Screening May Prevent Adverse Gout Treatment Reaction

Lara C. Pullen, PhD | October 26, 2015

Screening gout patients for the HLA-B*58:01 allele may help rheumatologists determine more effective treatments and a patient’s risk of allopurinol-induced severe cutaneous adverse reactions…

Hospital-Owned Physician Practices Linked to Higher Prices

Lisa Rapaport | October 21, 2015

(Reuters Health)—Outpatient care may cost more when hospitals own the medical practices or employ the physicians, a U.S. study suggests. Hospital employment of doctors and ownership of physician practices has grown over the past decade as healthcare providers seek to curb expenses with economies of scale and deliver better coordinated treatment to patients. Research reported…

Legalities of Telemedicine

Kathy Holliman, MEd | October 15, 2015

A brief has been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court that, if the court decides to hear the case, could have wide-ranging implications for online medical care and the limits of a physician’s First Amendment right to free speech. Medical Advice Via e-Mail Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Jeff Rowes filed the brief at the…

Opinion: Insurance Companies Use Medically and Fiscally Irresponsible Formularies

Bruce Rothschild, MD | October 14, 2015

Receipt of an unsolicited communication that a sweepstakes award has been won may con some people (especially, but not limited to, those underprivileged or undereducated as to legalities), but can’t fool all of the people all of the time. The names of the organizations and products involved are often marketing tool inventions, which imply special…

Interdisciplinary Collaboration at Wash U Advances Understanding of Immunology, Rheumatology

Gretchen Henkel | October 14, 2015

In June 2014, 10 members of a church group returned to St. Louis from Haiti, where they had contracted chikungunya virus (CHIKV), a mosquito-transmitted alphavirus previously unknown in the Western hemisphere that produces inflammatory arthritis symptoms. Because CHIKV-related arthritis mimics seronegative RA, a group of clinicians, immunologists, virologists and geneticists at the Washington University in…

FDA Issues Stronger Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) Warning

Michele B. Kaufman, PharmD, CGP, RPh | October 14, 2015

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has toughened the existing warnings for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) due to their stroke and myocardial infarction (MI) risk increase.1 Due to a continual review of these products, FDA is requiring label updates for all prescription NSAIDs. Over-the-counter (OTC) NSAIDs already list the increased risk of MI and…

Rheumatologists Share Research, Successes at Annual Investigators’ Meeting

From the College | October 14, 2015

“Each project adds new knowledge that brings us a little closer to the cure,” Joan Bathon, MD, of Columbia University Medical Center, says of the Rheumatology Research Foundation’s 8th Annual Investigators’ Meeting in San Diego. Dr. Bathon was one of more than 30 investigators who presented the latest progress on research funded by the Foundation’s…

FOCIS 2015: Key Protein Found to Control Trafficking of Toll-like Receptors

Catherine Kolonko | October 13, 2015

Gregory Barton, PhD, professor of immunology and pathogenesis, University of California, Berkeley, talked about research on the innate immune system and a key protein involved in the trafficking of a subset of toll-like receptors (TLRs) during FOCIS 2015 in San Diego. To keep the body healthy, the immune system responds constantly to foreign cellular invaders…

ARHP Celebrates Milestones on 50th Anniversary

Erin Latimer Meadows | October 13, 2015

How do you tell a story 50 years in the making? How do you capture 50 years of achievements, moments, personal and professional relationships, and careers shaped? How do you define the exact moment collaborative and integrated care teams became the rule—not the exception—in rheumatology? To journey through the milestones that have led to the…

Racial Disparities Result in Unprecedented Differences in Outcomes for SLE Patients

Eric L. Wise, MD, & W. Joseph McCune, MD | October 13, 2015

The differences between Caucasian and minority patients with lupus are striking: In almost all aspects of the disease, black, Hispanic and many Asian lupus patients do poorly compared with their white counterparts. Although racial disparities in outcomes in the practice of medicine are widespread, the scope and degree of the differences in lupus is, with…