Current medical research and opinion
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Peripheral Neuropathy (PN) can significantly impair quality of life, but often remains undiagnosed due to limited clinic time, lack of specialist expertise and lack of patient awareness. There are several validated questionnaires for diagnosing PN, but the time taken to administer them in busy primary care clinics limits their utilization. A new, simpler questionnaire was developed following an advisory board meeting in Southeast Asia and was further refined and translated to Portuguese and Spanish following a second advisory board meeting in Latin America. We consider current hurdles and propose a quick and reliable questionnaire that can be widely adopted to enable earlier diagnosis and improved management of PN in resource-limited settings in Latin America.
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Chronic cough (CC) symptoms can persist as refractory or unexplained CC (RCC). We sought to characterize the clinical and economic burden of RCC. ⋯ After adjusting for baseline differences, persistent symptoms of CC were associated with significantly higher comorbidity, healthcare resource use, and healthcare costs compared to CC that resolved. Effective treatments for RCC would thus be expected to result in improved health as well as substantial healthcare cost offsets.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Effects of brexpiprazole on patient life engagement in schizophrenia: post hoc analysis of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale data.
Patients with schizophrenia value improved life engagement, a term that describes positive health aspects across emotional, physical, social, and cognitive domains. This post hoc analysis of clinical trial data aimed to investigate the effect of brexpiprazole on patient life engagement in schizophrenia over the short and long term. ⋯ Beyond its efficacy on psychotic symptoms, brexpiprazole has the potential to improve patient life engagement - an important patient-centered outcome in schizophrenia.