The largest study of its kind has found menopause is not associated with an increased risk of disability in women with multiple sclerosis (MS). Until now, the impact of reduced sex hormones on women with MS had only been the subject of small studies, some with conflicting results.

 

Patients weighing 450 pounds or more face barriers and discrimination when scheduling or attending doctor visits at subspecialty practices, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. Of the 300 clinics surveyed in the study, 52% lacked basic standards of care and 41% declined to schedule an appointment. Otolaryngologists were the least likely to schedule a visit with the patient (only 48.3% scheduled visits, compared to 59% overall). 

Only 117 practices (39%) were fully accessible, the study found, with endocrinology practices being the most willing to schedule and most likely to meet basic standards of care.

An additional 16% of practices in the study that were willing to schedule the patient had a sub-standard plan of care that involved workarounds for accessibility limitations, such as telling the patient they could come to the clinic but would need to stand during the exam, or they would have to drape themselves with a sheet because they did not have gowns to fit them.

Adiposity—or the accumulation of excess fat in the body—is a known driver of cardiometabolic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease. But getting the full picture of a person’s risk is harder than it may seem. Traditional measures such as body mass index (BMI) are imperfect, conflating fat and muscle mass and not capturing where in the body fat is located. A new study from researchers at Mass General Brigham and their colleagues found that an AI tool designed to measure body composition could accurately capture details in just three minutes from a body scan. Their results, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, show that not all fat is equally harmful and highlight the potential of using AI to repurpose data from routine scans.

The first randomized trial to compare photon- and proton-based radiation therapy for breast cancer finds that patients report equally strong health-related quality of life with either treatment. Patients who received proton therapy were more likely to say they would recommend or choose it again, but overall patient-reported outcomes were similar. First results of the phase III Radiotherapy Comparative Effectiveness (RadComp) trial will be presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting.

Medicaid covers about 40% of treatment for Americans with opioid use disorder. A new study shows that Medicaid unwinding was associated with a rise in the number of people ending medication treatment for opioid use disorder, as well as a decrease in the number of people beginning such treatment.

New Haven, Conn. — In a new study, Yale School of Medicine (YSM) researchers unveiled a novel diagnostic method for detecting leptospiral virulence-modifying (VM) proteins in the blood and urine of hamsters, an advance that could pave the way for early diagnosis of the tropical disease leptospirosis in humans and improved treatment options. The findings were published in the journal Microbiology Spectrum.

The research, led by Yale’s Dr. Joseph M. Vinetz and his team, in collaboration with Luna Bioscience, a company founded by Vinetz to develop vaccines for emerging global infectious diseases, has led to the development of a monoclonal antibody (mAb)-based capture immunoassay. This assay detects VM proteins, a recently identified family of leptospiral proteins crucial for disease pathogenesis.