Articles: disease.
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This review looks to overview advances in endometriosis-associated pain, both in understanding the pain mechanisms involved and increasing treatment options with well designed clinical trials and meta-analyses. ⋯ Following growth in other areas of chronic pain, there have been significant advances in our understanding of endometriosis-associated pain. However, there remains lots to explore and we are currently a long way from our goal of timely personalized holistic multidisciplinary treatment for all sufferers of endometriosis-associated pain.
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Mayo Clinic proceedings · Oct 2023
ReviewAn Environmental Scan of Consumer-Initiated Germline Genetic Testing for Health Risks.
As patient access to laboratory testing outside the clinic grows, health care providers can expect to confront increasing questions about the utility and interpretation of consumer-initiated genetic testing for health risks. We sought to characterize the marketplace diversity of consumer-initiated germline genetic testing options. ⋯ We characterized variability in the content and processes used by 21 companies offering 74 distinct test products that met our inclusion and exclusion criteria. A minority (8 of 21 companies) offered tests that assessed the presence of at least 1 US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tier 1 condition for which detection can impact an individual's clinical care and for which evidence-based guidelines for detection and management exist.
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The COVID-19 disease wreaked havoc all over the world causing more than 6 million deaths out of over 519 million confirmed cases. It not only disturbed the human race health-wise but also caused huge economic losses and social disturbances. The utmost urgency to counter pandemic was to develop effective vaccines as well as treatments that could reduce the incidences of infection, hospitalization and deaths. ⋯ The SARS-CoV-2 emerging variants have emphasized the need of booster vaccine doses to enhance protective immunity in vaccinated individuals. Additionally, therapeutic effectiveness of Molnupiravir, Paxlovid and Evusheld are also providing resistance against the spread of COVID-19 disease as well as may be effective against emerging variants. This review highlights the progress in developing COVID-19 vaccines, their protective efficacies, advances being made to design more efficacious vaccines, and presents an overview on advancements in developing potent drugs and monoclonal antibodies for countering COVID-19 and emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 including the most recently emerged and highly mutated Omicron variant.
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Bronchiectasis in adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with greater mortality. However, whether suspected bronchiectasis-defined as incidental bronchiectasis on computed tomography (CT) images plus clinical manifestation-is associated with increased mortality in adults with a history of smoking with normal spirometry and preserved ratio impaired spirometry (PRISm) is unknown. ⋯ National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
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Dry eye disease (DED) is a common condition in which tear film abnormalities result in a damaging cycle of tear hyperosmolarity, desiccating stress, inflammation, and ocular surface injury. In a healthy tear film, meibum produced by the meibomian glands forms a lipid layer that stabilizes the tear film and protects against aqueous tear evaporation. Excessive tear evaporation due to a deficient lipid layer is believed to be the most common cause of DED, and most evaporative DED is associated with meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD); this highlights the pathophysiologic importance of the dysfunctional tear lipid layer. ⋯ Perfluorohexyloctane (PFHO) ophthalmic solution (MIEBO™; Bausch + Lomb) is a preservative-free eye drop that has demonstrated the ability to form a long-lasting barrier that inhibits evaporation in preclinical studies. FDA approval of PFHO was based on results from 2 pivotal clinical trials (GOBI [NCT04139798] and MOJAVE [NCT04567329]) in patients with DED and clinical signs of MGD which demonstrated consistent improvements in both signs and symptoms of disease, with a safety profile similar to that of saline eye drops. PFHO is the first and only FDA-approved eye drop that directly targets tear evaporation in patients with DED, thereby promoting ocular surface healing and providing symptomatic relief.