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A month after Symtuza's approval, Janssen announced new switch data on the treatment and a second study supporting its use in a rapid initiation scenario.

A new, post-hoc study has reported that adalimumab, used as monotherapy, led to positive clinical, functional, and radiographic outcomes in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) for up to 3 years in more than half of patients who reached low disease activity (LDA) following combination therapy.

Public health advocates are alarmed by a possible shift in long-standing policy about penalizing legal immigrants for accepting healthcare services, food stamps, heating assistance, and other noncash assistance as their applications to become permanent residents are pending.

Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, has claimed his Medicare-for-all plan will cut healthcare spending by $2 trillion, but fact checking shows that's unlikely; CVS' CEO defends its pharmacy benefit manager against claims rebates are driving up drug prices; researchers have found that immigrants have healthcare costs that are half to two-thirds of the costs of people born in the United States.

Missed referrals and other appointments, often due to a lack of coordination and follow-up, have far-reaching impacts beyond lost revenue. Avoiding such consequences requires a strong referral network management plan.

The FDA has approved several strengths of potassium chloride oral solutions as the first generic drugs to receive a Competitive Generic Therapy designation.

The lawsuit alleges that the pharmaceutical companies have conspired to fix, increase, stabilize, and/or maintain the price of a range of generic drugs, including antidepressants and beta-blockers.

Soy protein improved the tibia bones in female rats with poor levels of physical fitness, regardless of ovarian hormone status, according to a recent study, and researchers said the findings could have dietary implications for menopausal women.

Researchers investigating the factors associated with hospital mortality in patients requiring intensive care unit admission for acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease found that patient age, requirement for invasive mechanical ventilation, and illness severity were associated with poor patient outcomes.

The Trump administration will allow Medicare Advantage plans to negotiate prices for Part B drugs by providing them the opportunity to create plans that utilize step therapy. However, some in the healthcare industry view step therapy, also known as "fail first," as dangerous to patients with life-threatening diseases, such as cancer.

As states seek to implement waivers that will allow them to require some Medicaid beneficiaries to work in order to remain eligible for their benefits, a key and so far unanswered question is whether work itself promotes better health.

Researchers from the CDC have found that 1 in 7 children born to women who had the Zika virus while pregnant, including children who initially seemed healthy at birth, now have serious health issues; more jails and prisons are offering inmates addiction medications; Carl Icahn recommends Cigna's shareholders vote against Express Scripts purchase, in part because of the "highly flawed" rebate system that pharmacy benefit managers utilize.

A phase IV noninferiority trial evaluating the difference between video-based and face-to-face inhaler education for patients with asthma did not find a difference in the endpoints that were analyzed. The results were published in PLoS One.

In July 2018, the FDA approved iobenguane I 131 (Azedra), the first treatment for patients with unresectable pheochromocytoma or paraganglioma, which are rare tumors of the adrenal gland, that require systemic anticancer therapy. These tumors, which typically appear at an early age and are associated with premature death, can increase the production of epinephrines and norepinephrines, leading to a host of symptoms, including hypertension, vomiting, weakness, and chest pain.

Advances in Hodgkin lymphoma treatment has led to high survival rates, but adolescents and young adults, who represent the largest age group affected by the disease, face lifelong morbidities from clinical trials. New analytic methods could help inform future protocol changes.

LifeScan, the diabetes division that Johnson & Johnson shed after ending US sales of its Animas insulin pump, will be the sole preferred provider of meters and testing strips for Express Scripts members in 2019.

Despite the presumption that larger practices that have more resources and are therefore better at providing care and improving outcomes, new research shows that they spend more on and have higher readmission rates for Medicare beneficiaries than smaller practices.

A blood-based test to assess tumor mutational burden (TMB) was recently discovered as being able to accurately identify patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who could benefit from checkpoint inhibitor treatment. The study, conducted by researchers at UC Davis, Genentech, and Foundation Medicine, was published in Nature Medicine.

General Motors (GM) announced its partnership with the Henry Ford Health System to ensure wellness services and healthcare management for salaried employees; Democratic and Republican representatives in the House and the Senate have sent separate letters to HHS Secretary Alex Azar on eliminating direct and indirect remuneration fees; despite using infected kidneys in transplant patients, outcomes improved.

Instead of assessing a treatment’s impact solely on reductions in opioid use, the agency will take into account the effect of the treatment on things like emergency room admissions and infectious disease transmissions.

If patients want to be empowered to control their healthcare and if the United States wants healthcare to be economically efficient, then interoperability is critical, said Don Rucker, MD, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (IT), during the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s 2nd Interoperability Forum. He was followed by CMS Administrator Seema Verma, who disparaged the current technological situation and painted a future where health data followed the patient and can be shared at the press of a button.

States that ranked poorly are those with high rates of diabetes and obesity; those with high rankings have long-term commitments to getting people insured.

One of the reasons why hospital readmissions for the elderly are remaining high may be posthospital syndrome; priority review vouchers, which can be awarded by the FDA to 1 company and sold for a hefty price to another, are commanding a lower price than in past years; almost 8 months after Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, and Berkshire Hathaway announced their joint healthcare venture, there is little public information about it.

A recent study found that markers of platelet activity are increased in plasma of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and these are then normalized with antimycobacterial treatment. The researchers said their findings could have implications for new types of drug therapies.

In 2017, generics accounted for 90% of prescriptions in the United States, and while brand name drugs accounted for just 10% of prescriptions, they were responsible for 77% of prescription spending.

A new study found hospital participation in 5 common medical bundles under the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement initiative was not associated with significant changes in Medicare payments, clinical complexity, length of stay, emergency department use, hospital readmission, or mortality.

Payment reforms efforts are still facing barriers, but buy-in and increased demand from self-insured employers can help spur widespread adoption of new payment models that will lead to health delivery system reforms, according to a commentary published in New England Journal of Medicine.

Notably, in contrast to previous reports on palliative care in children, in which most children died at home, most of the children who died during the study period died in the hospital or in the intensive care unit. In fact, some of the children died while receiving interventions, such as the placement of a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube.

Celyad, a biopharmaceutical company that focuses on the development of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies, recently announced that the FDA has accepted its Investigational New Drug (IND) application for CYAD-101, the first non–gene-edited allogeneic clinical program.

Complementary medicine and alternative medicine (CAM) is estimated to be a multibillion business in the United States, but people who use it instead of conventional cancer treatment have a 2-fold risk of death, a recent study in JAMA Oncology reported. Patients using or considering CAM are unlikely to discuss it with their doctors, who should proactively inform patients of the risk, the study said.