The Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act (MMA) provides the largest benefit expansion in Medicare's history while enacting major changes to the program's structure. Offering $410 billion in new drug benefits will certainly help many beneficiaries now struggling with the costs of prescriptions, particularly those with low incomes. It is difficult to determine, however, whether beneficiaries will be better off in the long run. The drug benefits will not grow with the needs of beneficiaries, and other changes that prove to be unworkable or that place some beneficiaries at risk will create added costs. In the meantime, favorable treatment of private plans will create new inequities. Additional legislation and carefully crafted regulations could mitigate a number of these issues; in the meantime, they will require close scrutiny.
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Int J Methods Psychiatr Res
March 2025
Department of Mental Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Objectives: Heterogeneity of treatment effect (HTE) is a concern in substance use disorder (SUD) treatments but has not been rigorously examined. This exploratory study applied a causal forest approach to examine HTE in psychosocial SUD treatments, considering multiple covariates simultaneously.
Methods: Data from 12 randomized controlled trials of nine psychosocial treatments were obtained from the National Institute on Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network.
PLoS One
December 2024
The Third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
Background: Exposure of critically ill patients to antibiotics lead to intestinal dysbiosis, which often manifests as antibiotic-associated diarrhoea. Faecal microbiota transplantation restores gut microbiota and may lead to faster resolution of diarrhoea.
Methods: Into this prospective, multi-centre, randomized controlled trial we will enrol 36 critically ill patients with antibiotic-associated diarrhoea.
Osteoporos Int
December 2024
Department of Cardiology, Chi-Mei Medical Center, Tainan, Taiwan.
Unlabelled: This study examined the impact of thiazide and RAAS antihypertensive medications vs DHP-RAAS medications on fracture risk. The close alignment of such settings with clinical use, combined with the potential bone benefits of ACEis and ARBs, provides enhanced accuracy in bone health evidence.
Purpose: To determine whether thiazides, combined with either angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEi) or angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB), offer bone-protective benefits compared with dihydropyridine (DHP) drugs combined with ACEi or ARB.
J Med Chem
December 2024
Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Goethe University, Max-von-Laue-Str. 9, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Members of the casein kinase 1 (CK1) family have emerged as key regulators of cellular signaling and as potential drug targets. Functional annotation of the 7 human isoforms would benefit from isoform-selective inhibitors, allowing studies on the role of these enzymes in normal physiology and disease pathogenesis. However, due to significant sequence homology within the catalytic domain, isoform selectivity is difficult to achieve with conventional small molecules.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPharmacy (Basel)
December 2024
Department of Pharmacy, Prisma Health Richland, 5 Medical Park Drive, Columbia, SC 29203, USA.
Cephalosporins have traditionally been administered as an intermittent infusion. With the knowledge that cephalosporins demonstrate a time-dependent pharmacodynamic profile, administration via continuous infusion may provide more effective antibiotic exposure for successful therapy. Proposed benefits of administration via continuous infusion include less IV manipulation, decreased potential for antibiotic resistance, and potential cost savings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!