By Ellie Hammer, MD

Faculty Peer Reviewed

This week NBA basketball player Jason Collins came out as the first openly gay athlete playing on a major American sports team. Fighting continued in Syria and law enforcement officers continued to investigate the Boston Marathon bombers and their motivations. Finally, the cannibalized remains of a young settler at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, were discovered. This finding furthers our understanding of the harsh reality our forefathers endured to establish a permanent presence…

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By Anish Parikh, MD

Faculty Peer Reviewed

This week, the nation continues to heal in the aftermath of the tragic bombings that took place during the Boston Marathon on April 15. While one of the two brothers behind the attacks was killed in a dramatic shootout with Boston police last week, the other escaped and was not found until a day-long search that effectively shut down the entire city was completed. As interrogations have begun, new developments in the case are already emerging. It has…

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By Benjamin P. Geisler, MD, MPH

On March 24th, World Tuberculosis (TB) Day was commemorated, exactly 131 years after Robert Koch identified the mycobacterium in a talk at the Physiological Society of Berlin. In other news this week, the return of the VA primary care clinic to Manhattan was announced for April 8th, and spring began on March 20th. To mark these occasions, Primecuts brings you the freshest studies published online during the past week.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and…

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By Elizabeth Hammer, MD

Faculty Peer Reviewed

This week we saw some winners and some losers. The 2013 Academy Award Nominations were announced. Nobody was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. A flu outbreak in Boston led the city’s mayor to declare a public health emergency, while Pertussis is working on a comeback. And the NIH released an extensive report on health in the US that found that not only do Americans have poorer health and lower life expectancies, but they also are less…

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By Cassia Wells, MD

Faculty Peer Reviewed

This week as the world said goodbye to 2012 and welcomed the new year, the economic “fiscal cliff” dominated the US news cycles. A deal was eventually reached that, among other things, prevented a 27% decrease in Medicare reimbursements for doctors for another year. Overall 2012 was a big year for healthcare reform as it featured prominently in the presidential election in November and the US Supreme Court deemed the Affordable Care Act constitutional in June. Healthcare reform…

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Iulia Giuroiu, MD

These past few weeks and surely for some time to come, the tragedy in Newtown, CT will weigh heavily on our hearts and minds, and our thoughts, prayers and support go out to all who were affected by this terrible event. The diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illness, in addition to gun control, have again moved to the forefront of political and public health debates.  While the journals are likely to join these discussions in the coming weeks, a broad range of…

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By Shyam Amin, MD

Faculty Peer Reviewed

 Welcome back to Clinical Correlations! These last couple months have been largely dominated by Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath. Just as New York City has landed back on its feet, we here at the NYU Department of Medicine and Clinical Correlations are determined to continue our mission to practice medicine with the best evidence available.

While our beloved Manhattan VA remains closed, our colleagues at the Minneapolis VA released an observational study in the Archives of Internal Medicine…

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By Benjamin P. Geisler, MD, MPH

Faculty peer-reviewed

July 28th was World Hepatitis Day. Just three days prior, a group of researchers from Johns Hopkins published a paper in JAMA on HCV/HIV co-infected patients. This study demonstrated an independent correlation between hepatic fibrosis stage and a composite endpoint of end-stage liver disease, hepatocellular carcinoma, or death. As the authors note, these results support starting highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) for HIV in “most coinfected” patients.

Also last week, the 19th International AIDS Conference took place…

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Jennifer Lee Dong, MD

Faculty Peer Reviewed

As we approach the Opening Ceremonies in London this weekend, there has been a great focus on wellness in recent health news. The New York Times reported that the FDA approved a new weight loss drug Qsymia, a combined pill of an appetite suppressant and topiramate . Read on for more breaking news about weight loss and physical activity.

First, though, a theme in medical journals this week surrounds the previously controversial recommendations for prostate cancer screening. In…

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By Mark Adelman, MD

Faculty Peer Reviewed

The U.S House of Representatives voted for the 33rd time last Wednesday to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a largely symbolic move as the prior 32 companion bills were never passed by the Senate. With the realities of roughly 50 million uninsured Americans and healthcare spending accounting for nearly 18% of the US GDP in mind, let us review some recent publications that may improve both clinical care and runaway healthcare spending.

In an online-first publication by the…

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Alexander Volodarskiy, MD

With every new summer come hotter days, shorter nights, and the inevitable medical metamorphosis on July 1st: senior residents finally graduating and nervous, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed new interns, hearts in hand, arriving to save lives. With them in mind, we jump into this week’s section of Prime Cuts.

In this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, Kang et al. looked at whether patients with left-sided infective endocarditis could benefit from early surgery. The study excluded patients with small vegetations (≤10 mm), right-sided vegetations,…

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