Medical Journal December 2024 Digital Edition
December 23, 20241 min
Post Views: 1,840
Smart real estate moves: How to combine two IRS provisions for huge tax savings
December 23, 20248 min
BY Catherine Lightfoot, CPA, CHBC, Director of Healthcare at EEPB Does this sound like you? While real estate housing markets have cooled off in some areas, many homeowners have values on their principal residences that are worth far more than what they originally cost. When selling these homes, the gains could be well in excess of the principal residence gain exclusion allowed by the IRS ($250,000 for single filers, or $500,000 for joint filers)....
PBMs push back: Drug middlemen take aim at the FTC
December 23, 202410 min
BY Blinn E Combs, Esq. and Michael Alexander, Esq., Brown & Fortunato, P.C. As we reported here in August, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) recently released a draft report broadly accusing Pharmacy Benefit Managers or “PBMs”—the middlemen who negotiate prescription drug prices—of engaging in an array of tactics to drive up prescription drug costs. The FTC’s long-expected suit was filed on September 20. The complaint accuses PBMs of “manipulation of drug price competition for...
What are some integrative therapies for cardiac health?
December 23, 20249 min
BY Samuel Mathis MD, MBA Studies have found that the holiday time and winter season are the most likely times for heart attacks. This can be due to many reasons. The cold weather causing vasoconstriction, the stress of the holiday, late nights, and increased physical activity from normal sedentary lifestyles all increase the risk of a myocardial infarction. Our diets also don’t help with this risk. With the holiday season upon us, many Americans...
Congress must protect our health care safety net
December 23, 20247 min
BY John Hawkins, President and CEO, THA Figuratively, we in the health care world call it the “safety net”: the hospitals that care for vulnerable patient populations and the mechanisms that allow them to provide that care. But like any literal safety net, it has to be checked and reinforced in order to make sure it will still do the job it’s intended to do: serving Medicaid patients and those who are uninsured. ...
UTMB pathologists use AI-enabled tool to help diagnose prostate cancer
December 23, 20245 min
UTMB pathologists recently began using an AI-based tool from Ibex to create digital overlays of every prostate biopsy that comes through the lab. Pathologists can examine these biopsy images on a computer screen, along with Ibex-generated colored overlays. This process allows pathologists to make more accurate diagnoses of prostate cancer, according to Dr. Harsh Thaker, vice chair for digital and integrative pathology. In fact, Thaker said he has already seen the new tool...
Monoclonal antibody therapy improves survival in cancer-associated hyper-inflammatory disorder
December 23, 20245 min
Adult patients with newly diagnosed malignancy-associated hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (mHLH) – a rare, aggressive hyperinflammatory condition – who were treated with the first-in-class monoclonal antibody, ELA026, experienced a 100% response rate and an improved survival rate at two months, according to researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Findings suggest that early intervention with ELA026 may provide meaningful clinical benefits for patients with few options. “It is common for patients with mHLH...
Rice study reveals vital link for dementia spousal caregivers
December 23, 20245 min
A new Rice University study sheds light on the critical role marital relationships play in the mental and physical health of caregivers for spouses living with dementia, revealing that caregiver mental health dramatically improves when carers feel supported, understood and appreciated by their loved ones requiring care. The research was led by Vincent Lai, a graduate student in psychological sciences at Rice. The study involved 161 spousal caregivers and explored the unique challenges they face....
Definitive radiotherapy demonstrates effectiveness in metastatic thyroid cancers
December 23, 20242 min
Definitive radiotherapy (dRT), intended for long-term disease control, is an effective option for several solid tumors that are oligometastatic, meaning they have limited metastatic lesions, or oligoprogressive, meaning few metastases are progressing. However, the benefit of dRT for metastatic thyroid cancers is largely unknown. Researchers led by Matthew Ning, M.D., examined the use of targeted dRT using stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) in 119 patients with oligometastatic/oligoprogressive thyroid cancer. Treatment with dRT showed a 91% local control rate for treated sites at...
Targeting signaling pathway may overcome treatment resistance in pancreatic cancer
December 23, 20242 min
Many patients with late-stage pancreatic cancer develop resistance to various treatments including first-line chemotherapy, highlighting a need to identify and understand the mechanisms of resistance. To provide insights, researchers led by Yohei Saito, Ph.D., Yi Xiao, Ph.D., and Dihua Yu, M.D., Ph.D., examined single-cell transcriptomic data from models of pancreatic cancer and clinical pathological information from patients with pancreatic cancer. They discovered a novel signaling circuit – Yap1 in cancer cells and Cox2 in fibroblasts of tumor microenvironment...