Black patients with serious illness receive inferior pain management and poor communication from providers compared with their white counterparts, according to data released by Center to Advance Palliative Care.
Findings from the CAPC’s “Health Care for Black Patients with Serious Illness: A Literature Review” also showed a disproportionate burden on family caregivers of Black patients vs. white patients. Read more in Healio.
Prenatal environmental exposure to mixtures of endocrine-disrupting chemicals was associated with a higher risk for liver injury in children, a prospective cohort study found.
In the study of over 1,000 European mother-child pairs, the likelihood of liver injury was 44-121% higher among children with prenatal exposure to organochlorine pesticides, perfluoroalkyl substances, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and metals, reported Damaskini Valvi, MD, MPH, PhD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and colleagues. Read more in MedPage Today.
A pragmatic health system-level intervention improved quality of life for patients discharged after COPD exacerbation but failed to reduce 180-day readmission or mortality, researchers reported.
“Despite national policy efforts to drive improvement, most patients discharged after COPD do not receive care known to improve health outcomes for COPD, and there is scant evidence that overall quality of care has improved,”David H. Au, MD, MS, professor in the department of medicine at the Center of Innovation for Veteran-Centered and Value-Driven Care, Seattle, and colleagues wrote in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Read more in Healio.
If you need a healthy and kidney-friendly dish for any occasion, you can’t go wrong with this recipe for Roasted Beet Salad with Goat Cheese, Candied Pecans, and Honey Balsamic Vinaigrette. Get the recipe here.
Compared with patients without chronic kidney disease, patients with CKD are more likely to consume a limited number of fruits and vegetables, according to data published in the Journal of Renal Nutrition.
Investigators questioned if the low intake was a result or cause of CKD among these patients. Read more in Healio.
The link between periodontal disease and heart failure (HF) was reinforced by long-term data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) cohort.
Among study participants with full-mouth periodontal exams in 1996-1998, those with a finding of periodontal disease were significantly more likely to experience incident HF over approximately 13 years of follow-up — namely HF with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF; adjusted HR 1.69, 95% CI 1.18-2.43), with a nonsignificant trend of excess HF with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF; adjusted HR 1.35, 95% CI 0.98-1.86) as well.
Read more in MedPage Today.
The optimal treatment for kidney failure is kidney transplantation. The shortage of kidneys available for transplantation is intensifying, creating interest in the high proportion of deceased donor kidneys discarded after procurement. The discard rate for deceased donor kidneys recovered for transplant in the United States is approximately one in five, despite evidence that transplantation with even marginal deceased donor kidneys can improve survival, quality of life, and cost, compared with dialysis. Read the full story in Nephrology Times.
The prevalence of optimal cardiometabolic health among U.S. adults declined in the past 2 decades, with disparity gaps widening based on age, sex, education and race, researchers reported.
Optimal cardiometabolic health was defined as optimal levels of adiposity, blood glucose, blood lipids and BP, as well as no history of clinical CVD, according to data published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Read more in Healio.
Prevalence of clinically significant anxiety and depression among adults in the United States increased during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic compared with prior years, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.
“Concerns about adverse mental health effects of COVID-19 have been raised since the beginning of the pandemic,” Ronald C. Kessler, PhD, of the department of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues wrote. “Many empirical papers subsequently investigated the association of the pandemic with mental health, and most concluded that the pandemic cause dramatic increases in anxiety and depression.”
Read more in Healio.
COVID-19 patients with sickle cell trait (SCT) were prone to poor outcomes that appeared to be driven in part by kidney dysfunction, a genetic association study suggested.
Among U.S. veterans of African ancestry, SCT was tied to a higher chance of COVID-related mortality versus those without the trait (OR 1.77, 95% CI 1.13-2.77). The presence of either sickle cell anemia or another SCT-related condition was linked with more than 93-times higher odds of severe COVID-19 illness (OR 93.17, 95% CI 78.60-110.44), according to Shiuh-Wen Luoh, MD, PhD, of the VA Portland Health Care System in Oregon, and colleagues. Read more in MedPage Today.