Here are the top stories covered by DocWire News this week in the Homepage section. In this week’s edition of the round-up: children who are predisposed to celiac disease should be monitored on the amount of gluten they eat, women and the elderly are most affected by adverse drug interactions, diabetes care in the US has failed to improve since the mid-2000s, and patients with end-stage renal disease are susceptible to dying due to extreme heat.
Children who are genetically predisposed to celiac disease are more susceptible to autoimmunity if they consume a high amount of gluten during the first five years of life, according to a new study published in JAMA. Researchers in this study evaluated 6,605 child participants of The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study, a prospective observational birth cohort aimed at identifying environmental triggers of type 1 diabetes and celiac disease. According to the results of the study, daily gluten intake was linked with an augmented risk of developing celiac disease for every 1-g/d increase in gluten consumption (HR=1.50; 95% CI, 1.35 to 1.66].
Women and elderly people are negatively affected by the occurrence of drug-drug interactions (DDI) that lead to adverse drug reactions (ADR), according to a study published in NPJ Digital Medicine. In this large-scale longitudinal study, researchers assessed the electronic health records (EHRs) of individuals living in the city of Blumenau, Brazil (pop. 338,876) over the course of 18 months using a city-wide Health Information System (HIS) with prescription and dispensation information for its entire population. The findings uncovered 181 distinct drug pairs known to interact, and these pairs were dispensed concomitantly to 12% of the patients in the city’s HIS. Moreover, the study found that 4% of the patients were dispensed drug pairs that are likely to result in major ADRs, with the cost implications of these reactions estimated to be much larger than previously reported.
Diabetes care in the US has failed to improve since 2005, according to the results of a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine. In this national cross-sectional study, researchers examined patients from the 2005-2016 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. They aggregated data on 1,742 nonpregnant US adults diagnosed with diabetes and 746 patients undiagnosed with diabetes aged 18 years and older with diabetes who had reported fasting for at least nine months. According to the study results, between 2013-2016, 94% (95% CI, 92%-96%) of patients were linked to diabetes care, and 64% (95% CI, 58%-69%) met hemoglobin A1c level, 70% (95% CI, 64%-75%) met blood pressure level, and 57% (95% CI, 51%-62%) met cholesterol level targets. “It appears that the diabetes care cascade in the United States has not significantly improved between 2005 and 2016,” the researchers wrote.
Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) are susceptible to being admitted to the hospital and dying during extreme heat events (EHEs), according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. In this study, researchers assessed 7,445 patients with ESRD (57% men, mean age 61) utilizing a combination of hospital admission and mortality records of patients with ESRD who underwent hemodialysis treatment at Fresenius Kidney Care clinics in Boston, Philadelphia, or New York City, respectively, between 2001 and 2012. According to the study results, among 2,953 patients ESRD who died (39.7%) and 44,941 hospital admissions, extreme heat events were linked to an augmented risk of same-day hospital admission.