An Experimental Study of the Effects of Patient Race,Sexual Orientation,and Injection Drug Use on Providers’ PrEP-Related Clinical Judgments

AIDS and Behavior - Social biases may influence providers’ judgments related to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and patients’ consequent PrEP access. US primary and HIV care providers...     

Economic vulnerability,violence, and sexual risk factors for HIV among female sex workers in Tijuana,Mexico

AIDS and Behavior - Economic vulnerability is often reported to underlie involvement in sex work among female sex workers (FSW), but may also create urgency in women’s work, limiting...     

Magnetic field interactions between current consumer electronics and cardiac implantable electronic devices

Journal of Interventional Cardiac Electrophysiology - Ablation index (AI) is a radiofrequency lesion quality marker. The AI value that allows effective and safe pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) is...     

Cardiovascular disease associated with methamphetamine use: a review

Heart Failure Reviews - Methamphetamine abuse is a global epidemic associated with a wide-ranging array of adverse effects on the cardiovascular system including dilated cardiomyopathy, malignant...     

Characteristics and outcomes of recurrent atrial fibrillation after prior failed pulmonary vein isolation

Journal of Interventional Cardiac Electrophysiology - The mechanisms for atrial fibrillation (AF) recurrence after pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) catheter ablation are unclear. Non-PV organized...     

Impact of the sleep apnea management group clinic on positive airway pressure adherence

Sleep and Breathing - Positive airway pressure (PAP) adherence is critical for managing obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). We postulate that group-based Sleep Apnea Management (SAM) clinic,...     

Type 2 diabetes pharmacotherapy trends in high-risk subgroups

Medication use trends among patients with type 2 diabetes from 2015 to 2019 were investigated in relation to the clinical group-specific recommendations from the 2018 American Diabetes Association (ADA)/European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) consensus report. Data were drawn from a large health insurance claims database representing Commercial (total patient-year count: 2,379,704) and Medicare (total patient-year count: 845,823) insurance programmes (IBM® MarketScan®). The utilization of sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 inhibitors or glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists increased over time but was lower in the Medicare cohort in every year evaluated. Patients diagnosed with obesity received recommended therapies at higher rates than those without obesity. Differences were more modest between those with versus without atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) or chronic kidney disease, with greater treatment adoption in those without ASCVD in the Medicare cohort. Utilization of recommended treatments was paradoxically lower in those with versus without heart failure, and worse in the Medicare than in the Commercial cohort. Utilization of sulphonylureas was not different in those with versus without severe hypoglycaemia history. In conclusion, utilization of therapies recommended in the guidelines is increasing overall, which is not preferentially guided by ADA/EASD-defined clinical groups, and there exists a persistent gap in utilization between Commercial and Medicare populations.