Nearly 72% of Black patients with gynecologic cancer and COVID-19 were hospitalized for the virus compared with 46 percent of non-Blacks

Among patients in New York City with gynecologic cancer and COVID-19, Black patients younger than 65 years of age were five times more likely to require hospitalization than non-Blacks in the same age group. Even though Black patients with gynecologic cancer represented only one-third of patients in this study, they accounted for 41 percent of…

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Life expectancy and healthcare costs for patients with rheumatoid arthritis

A new study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology suggests that recent advances in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis have prolonged patients’ lives but also increased healthcare costs. For the study, investigators examined medical claims data from the National Health Insurance of Taiwan, identifying 29,352 new cases of rheumatoid arthritis from 2003-2016. The life expectancy after…

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Several U.S. populations and regions exposed to high arsenic concentrations in drinking water

A new national study of public water systems found that arsenic levels were not uniform across the U.S., even after implementation of the latest national regulatory standard. In the first study to assess differences in public drinking water arsenic exposures by geographic subgroups, researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health confirmed there are…

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The ethics of human challenge trials

The first human challenge trial to test COVID-19 treatments and vaccines is set to begin in January in the United Kingdom. These trials, in which healthy volunteers are infected with the virus after being given different vaccines under development, have sparked ethical debates around the benefits of developing a vaccine quickly and the risks of…

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