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A recently approved rheumatoid arthritis medication appears to be an effective second-line therapy when biologic treatments start to fail, a new clinical trial reports. Arthritis sufferers treated with upadacitinib had a significantly greater reduction in their symptoms and disease activity than people treated with a standard disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD), said co-researcher Dr. Aileen Pangan. She is executive medical director of immunology clinical development for the pharmaceutical company AbbVie in North Chicago, Ill. The drug, marketed under the brand name Rinvoq, also helped twice as many patients enter remission from their rheumatoid arthritis, according to a report in the Oct. 15 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. “Upadacitinib has shown superiority to one of the current standard-of-care treatment options in the clinic for these difficult-to-treat patients,” Pangan said. “It is important for physicians to have multiple treatment options available, including medications with different mechanisms of action, to help provide patients with the treatment that is right for them.” Rinvoq received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in August 2019 for treatment of moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. This 24-week clinical trial aimed to assess Rinvoq’s effectiveness in helping rheumatoid arthritis patients for whom DMARD treatment had failed. More than 600 patients were recruited for the trial. All were suffering swollen or tender joints even though they were being treated with at least one… read on >

Limiting TV ads for sugary, salty and high-fat foods and drinks might help reduce childhood obesity, British researchers suggest. They looked at advertising of these products between 5:30 a.m. and 9 p.m. If all such ads were withdrawn during those hours, the number of obese kids in the U.K. between the ages of 5 and 17 would drop by 5% and the number of overweight kids would fall 4%, the study found. That’s equivalent to 40,000 fewer kids in the U.K. who would be obese and 120,000 fewer who would be overweight, the researchers said. The findings were published online Oct. 13 in the journal PLOS Medicine. Oliver Mytton, an academic clinical lecturer at the Center for Diet and Activity Research at the University of Cambridge, led the study. “Measures which have the potential to reduce exposure to less-healthy food advertising on television could make a meaningful contribution to reducing childhood obesity,” the authors said in a journal news release. But they also pointed out that they could not fully account for all factors that would affect the impact of the policy, if implemented. They added: “Children now consume media from a range of sources, and increasingly from online and on-demand services, so in order to give all children the opportunity to grow up healthy it is important to ensure that this advertising doesn’t just… read on >

To mark World Hypertension Day this Saturday, the American Heart Association offers advice on how to lower and control your blood pressure. High blood pressure affects nearly half of American adults, and three-quarters of those with high blood pressure don’t have it under control, the heart association says. High blood pressure is the leading cause of heart attack and stroke, and the most significant controllable risk factor for these conditions. It also contributes to poor outcomes in COVID-19 patients. “Now, more than ever, it is important for you to pay attention to your blood pressure, know your numbers, work with your health care provider to control your levels and manage your risks. Lowering your blood pressure is one of the most important things you can do to reduce your risk of having a heart attack or stroke,” Dr. Mitchell Elkind, president of the American Heart Association (AHA), said in an AHA news release. Small changes can make a big difference in managing your blood pressure. Here are some tips: Check your blood pressure often. 120/80 or below is considered normal. If your blood pressure is 130/80 or above, that is high blood pressure and it means you have an increased risk of heart disease and stroke. Take blood pressure pills as prescribed. Prescription medication can be one of the most effective ways to manage your… read on >

The type of heating coil used in an e-cigarette and the amount of voltage sent through it could be contributing to vaping-related lung injuries, a new animal study contends. Laboratory rats suffered lung injuries when exposed to vapor from devices using high-powered heating coils made of nickel-chromium alloy, something that did not occur in earlier experiments using stainless steel heating coils, researchers report. “When we looked at their lungs, we saw they had very severe damage to the lung structure,” said lead researcher Michael Kleinman, a professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of California, Irvine. “We found we got the worst effects in coils that contained nickel and chromium, which is a typical kind of coil.” E-cigarettes turn liquid into vapor using a heating coil similar to those found in toasters, Kleinman said. The coil is surrounded by the liquid, and when voltage is sent through the coil, it rapidly heats up. Kleinman and his colleagues were doing vaping research on lab rats using devices equipped with stainless steel coils when they made their discovery. The manufacturer stopped making the specific device they were using, so they had to switch to a compatible model that used nickel-chromium coils, Kleinman recalled. “When we got the new coils and we ran them at the high power settings, we immediately noticed after the first set… read on >

For at least two decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been approving new formulations of prescription opioids without requiring drug manufacturers to gather important information on safety and effectiveness, a new study claims. The FDA approved dozens of these highly addictive medications for treatment of chronic pain between 1997 and 2018 based on clinical trials that: Lasted no longer than 12 weeks, Failed to systematically gather data on adverse events or safety concerns, Actually weeded out of the final results from people who didn’t initially respond well to the drug. “No trial was longer than 84 days, whereas people take these medicines for years and they’re labeled for chronic use,” said senior researcher Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, co-director of the Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. The FDA continued to approve opioid drugs based on limited and flawed information even as the opioid epidemic swept across the United States, Alexander and his colleagues argue. “The primary harms that have driven the opioid epidemic have been because of the oversupply of opioids, especially for chronic use,” Alexander said. “The FDA has missed important opportunities to require manufacturers to produce more meaningful and clinically useful information about the safety and effectiveness of these products.” PhRMA, the leading trade group for pharmaceutical manufacturers, responded to… read on >

Parents of kids with food allergies probably won’t be surprised to hear that Halloween is an especially risky time for their youngsters. A new study found that serious allergic reactions (anaphylaxis) triggered by peanuts jumped 85% when kids were trick or treating. Serious reactions triggered by an unknown tree nut or peanut exposure rose by 70% on Halloween compared to the rest of the year. And the risk is similar on Easter — when kids are hopping around collecting chocolate eggs and other candy. Compared to other times, anaphylaxis from unknown nut exposure spiked 70% at Easter and there was a 60% increase in peanut-triggered anaphylaxis. Fortunately, other holidays — including Christmas, Chinese New Year, Diwali and Eid al-Adha — didn’t seem to lead to an increase in serious reactions in kids with food allergies. “The most common cause of anaphylaxis is food. When I was working in the emergency department, I was told [anaphylaxis] was higher on Halloween,” said study co-author Dr. Moshe Ben-Shoshan, an associate professor of allergy and immunology at Montreal Children’s Hospital and McGill University in Canada. “With this study, we wanted to establish whether there actually was an increased risk of anaphylaxis on holidays compared to the rest of the year.” Anaphylaxis is a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. It’s treated with… read on >

Reacting to an upsurge in abuse of benzodiazepine sedatives such as Valium, Xanax and Ativan, U.S. officials on Wednesday added a “Boxed Warning” to the drugs’ labels, cautioning about the danger. Benzodiazepines are tranquilizers commonly prescribed to help ease issues such as anxiety, seizures, insomnia and panic disorders. But “while benzodiazepines are important therapies for many Americans, they are also commonly abused and misused, often together with opioid pain relievers and other medicines, alcohol and illicit drugs,” U.S. Food and Drug Agency Commissioner Dr Stephen Hahn said in an agency news release. So he said the FDA is now “taking measures and requiring new labeling information to help health care professionals and patients better understand that while benzodiazepines have many treatment benefits, they also carry with them an increased risk of abuse, misuse, addiction and dependence.” Illicit use of “benzos” has been on the rise, and the drugs are often taken along with opioid drugs — sometimes to deadly effect. In fact, in a report released last year by the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, benzos were found to be involved in a full third of all fatal opioid overdoses. The drugs were also involved in nearly two-thirds of overdoses tied to the lethal synthetic opioid fentanyl. The report looked at 2017-2018 data from 25 states. According to the FDA, in 2019 alone,… read on >

Drinking lots of sugary beverages can wreak havoc on your health, but new research finds more Americans are turning away from those high-calorie drinks. And that includes many people who used to drink large quantities of sweetened beverages — the equivalent of 3.5 cans of soda daily. “Our study found the percentage of children and adults who are heavy [sugar-sweetened beverage] drinkers has declined significantly over time,” said study author Kelsey Vercammen. She’s a doctoral degree candidate in the department of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston. For the study, the researchers reviewed data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2003 to 2016, studying responses from more than 21,000 children (aged 2 through 19 years) and 32,000 adults. The investigators found that the percentage of heavy consumers of sugar-sweetened beverages — 500 calories or more daily — among children declined from 11% to 3%. The percentage of heavy sugar-sweetened beverage consumers among adults dropped from 13% to 9%. “Our research team was particularly interested in looking at the heavy sugar-sweetened beverage consumers because these individuals are the ones who are obviously drinking the most sugar-sweetened beverages, so we think that they likely face the biggest health risks,” Vercammen said. Potential explanations for the recent steep decline in intake include the impact of beverage taxes imposed… read on >

Children who need to take oral steroids for chronic or life-threatening conditions can experience serious side effects, according to new research. Children with autoimmune disorders such as juvenile arthritis, psoriasis or inflammatory bowel disease are often prescribed a steroid to keep the illness under control. But the odds that a child might develop diabetes was nearly six times higher in children taking steroids than in those who don’t. The odds of high blood pressure was 19 times higher in those on steroids, and the likelihood of a blood clot was 16 times higher, the study found. The good news, however, is that these complications are all exceedingly rare. “These complications are serious but rare. They affect a very tiny proportion of children with steroids,” said study author Dr. Daniel Horton, an assistant professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the Rutgers Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science in New Brunswick, N.J. Horton pointed out that doctors are aware of the many side effects related to steroids, but they also know how much good the drugs can do in certain situations, such as asthma or autoimmune conditions. “When I prescribe this medication, the benefits must outweigh the risks or I wouldn’t prescribe it. This study shows the kinds of complications that doctors need to look out for, particularly if a child receives high doses of an oral… read on >

Want to fend off high blood pressure? New research adds to the pile of evidence showing that living healthy can help you avoid hypertension. The study included nearly 3,000 Black and white U.S. adults, aged 45 and older, who didn’t have high blood pressure at the start of the study. The participants’ heart health was assessed with the American Heart Association’s Life’s Simple 7 tool, which measures seven risk factors: body mass index, diet, smoking, physical activity, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels. A score of 10 to 14 is ideal; 5 to 9 is average, and 0 to 4 is poor. The median score among the participants was 9. Over about nine years of follow-up, 42% of participants developed high blood pressure. The rates among Black adults were 52% in women and 50% in men. Among white adults the rates were 37% in women and 42% in men. Each 1-point higher score was associated with a 6% lower risk of high blood pressure, without significant difference by race or sex, according to the study published Sept. 15 in the Journal of the American Heart Association. “High blood pressure is among the most common conditions in the U.S., and it contributes to the greatest burden of disability and largest reduction in healthy life expectancy among any disease,” said lead author Dr. Timothy Plante, an… read on >