News by Subject Medicine & Health

University of Guelph researchers found residues of the insecticides in the livers of wild turkeys, providing evidence that this common agrochemical is being ingested by free-ranging animals.

BIDMC researchers led a retrospective analysis of four randomized clinical trials focused on the effects of DAA therapies in patients with HCV-associated liver failure, and developed a new means of predicting improvement in liver function in response to DAA treatment.

Researchers from Charité -- Universitätsmedizin Berlin have successfully tested a new technology for use in the assessment of overweight adolescents with liver disease. Known as 'time-harmonic elastography' (THE), the technology enables physicians to determine the disease's severity without having to resort to invasive liver biopsies. The results of this research have been published in Radiology.

Highly effective drugs that can cure chronic hepatitis C infection in approximately 95 percent of patients first became available in the US in 2014. But both public and private insurers continue to deny coverage for these costly drugs at high rates nationwide, despite efforts to remove treatment restrictions, according to a new study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

The number of insurance denials for life-saving hepatitis C drugs among patients with both private and public insurers remains high across the United States. Private insurers had the highest denial rates, with 52.4 percent of patients denied coverage, while Medicaid denied 34.5 percent of patients and Medicare denied 14.7 percent.

University of Houston chemist Joydip Das is reporting a cure for alcoholism could be found in a protein inside the brain that plays a big role in developing tolerance to drinking.

Researchers have gained new insights into the virus that causes hepatitis B -- a life-threatening and incurable infection that afflicts more than 250 million people worldwide. The discovery reveals previously unknown details about the protein shell that encloses the virus' genetic blueprint and could lead to new drugs to treat the infection.