Endocrinology

Insulin resistance may affect long-term cardiovascular outcomes in type 1 diabetes and results indicate that insulin resistance is directly related to decreased heart and vessel function and appears to impair capacity to exercise.

Glucose intolerance during pregnancy predicts an increased likelihood of postpartum metabolic syndrome. In turn, cardiovascular risk factors at three months postpartum indicates that risk factors may be longstanding and contribute to long-term risk of cardiovascular disease.

Some pundits have written that health insurance mandates are well beyond the constitutional authority of the federal government to tax, spend, and regulate interstate commerce. Others have picked up on these arguments and applied them to the EHR-implementation incentives under the HITECH Act as well. The bottom line is that these arguments fail, for four reasons.

There has been much discussion about the HITECH Act and the effects it will have on healthcare in this country. The health IT industry and the federal government claim that EHR use will lead to a decrease in costs and an overall improvement in patient care. Skeptics like me disagree with these claims and feel that the push to adopt complex EHRs will be a bad deal for physicians.

Lately, I've been thinking about how fast everything moves these days. This is true in technology, medicine, business, and other important areas of our lives. Keeping up with changes in healthcare is a real challenge; just reading monthly print medical journals won't cut it anymore in the digital age. Now, practically every day I find myself looking something up on Wikipedia.

According to results from the National Institutes of Health Bypass Angioplasty Revascularization Investigation in Type 2 Diabetes (BARI 2D) study, many patients with diabetes and heart disease may achieve better results with drug therapy instead of angioplasty.

New research indicates that the number of Americans living with diabetes will top 44 million by 2034, more than three times the number predicted in a 1991 study.

As I wrote in a previous blog post, the approaching fire storm over the patient-centered medical home model reminds me of the destructive powers seen before in HMOs.

Minimally invasive technique allows doctors to remove diseased tissue through a two-inch incision below the armpit.

A New York Health Department report recognizes that citywide, the diabetes rate significantly exceeds the national rate and estimates that 200,000 New Yorkers have undiagnosed diabetes.

Collaboration is important in healthcare, as evidenced by the growing number of "learning communities" and grassroots efforts that are bringing people and organizations together to work on the issue of eliminating disparities in health and healthcare.

The Diabetes Surgery Summit position statement promotes the legitimacy of gastrointestinal surgery as a dedicated treatment for type 2 diabetes in carefully selected patients.

Taking a systems biology approach, UC San Diego researchers uncovered previously unknown effects of TZDs and insights that could lead to improved drug therapies for insulin resistance.

Joslin Diabetes Center research implicates the glucokinase/BAD complex in the death of beta cells when the insulin signaling pathway breaks down, and demonstrates that this mechanism is triggered in humans with type 2 diabetes.

More than half (62.4%) of US adults with type 2 diabetes were found to be obese, and 20.7% are morbidly obese. Among African-Americans with type 2 diabetes, one out of three are morbidly obese.

A national health information technology infrastructure (NHITI) is not only necessary, but it is cardinal to improving delivery and reducing costs of healthcare in the United States.

The powerful vendor-lobbying group, HIMSS, has been extremely successful over the last 8 years lobbying our elected political leaders about HIT.

On-demand aerosol spray increased ejaculatory latency and improved patient and partner reported outcomes of sexual satisfaction over three months.

I have been following with interest all the discussions about the new Medical Home (aka, the Patient Centered Medical Home) concept. This is our silver bullet that will improve patient access, raise quality levels, increase overall satisfaction and save billions of healthcare dollars - all at the same time!

Women with high testosterone levels are at an elevated risk--as much as three times those with lower levels--of coronary heart disease and the metabolic syndrome.

Researchers are finding that interactive game systems like Nintendo's Wii are especially helpful for people with chronic health conditions. Playing the games increases physical activity and can even improve the ability to care for oneself.

The Highmark Foundation released a report detailing the impact of more than $1.6 million in grants that it issued on diabetes care and services for Pennsylvanians.

Participants in a recent study who took the full 30 minutes to finish a test meal had higher concentrations of gut hormones that induce satiety and meal termination.

The pundits are going to have their field day with this one. "The danger [with this Bill] is that as costs continue to rise and coverage becomes less comprehensive, people will conclude that we've tried health reform and it didn't work. But the real problem will be that we didn't really try it.

The AMA adopted a resolution calling on the federal government to enact new policies to decrease the public’s exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals through a single regulatory overseer to ensure coordination among agencies.

Though researchers observed improvement among patients as early as four weeks following their first infusion, they caution that the results came from a small case series. However, given the substantial benefits for patients treated with rituximab, they see good reason to proceed with a large-scale clinical trial.

A $1.8 million grant will help the University of Michigan investigate the use of herpes simplex virus-based vectors to deliver genes to sensory nerves from application in the skin, which researchers believe hold promise not only for the treatment of pain but also ultimately for the treatment of peripheral neuropathy itself.

The Institute of Medicine released its "To Err is Human" report in 2000. Now that we're nearing the end of 2009, safety experts are examining the extent to which the IOM's recommendations have been implemented.