AHA: Women at Equal Risk for Peripheral Artery Disease. Women with peripheral artery disease (PAD) are two to three times more likely to have a stroke or heart attack than women without PAD—yet the condition remains often unrecognized and untreated.

Curbing the Rise in U.S. Medical Expenditures. Healthcare costs in the United States have skyrocketed over the past 30 years—from $253 billion in 1980 to more than $2.6 trillion a year in 2010.

FDA: Proton Pump Inhibitors Linked to C. Difficile-Associated Diarrhea. The Food and Drug Administration has notified healthcare providers that the use of proton pump inhibitors may be associated with an increased risk of Clostridium difficile–associated diarrhea.

New ACP Guidelines for Treating Type 2 Diabetes. According to new guidelines just published, metformin should be the first drug of choice in oral therapy for people with type 2 diabetes who don't respond to diet and lifestyle changes.

PSA Testing and Mortality. There continues to be much controversy as to whether prostate cancer screening for all men older than 50 years is a clinically useful—or harmful—tool.

FDA Approves Expanded Use of Prevnar 13 Vaccine in Patients Aged 50 and Older. With winter and flu season encroaching on much of the United States, we thought you’d be interested in the latest FDA approval to prevent pneumonia in older adults.

New AAP Report: Don't Rely on Blood Tests to Determine Pediatric Allergies. Allergies are the most frequently reported chronic condition in children, limiting activities for more than 40% of them and are the third most common chronic disease for children younger than 18 years old. However, a new clinical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) urges clinicians

Panel Endorses Active Monitoring and Delay of Treatment for Low-Risk Prostate Cancer. An independent panel convened by the National Institutes of Health has concluded that many men with localized, low-risk prostate cancer should be closely monitored, permitting treatment to be delayed until warranted by disease progression.

New CDC Guidelines for Treating Latent Tuberculosis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has just published a new and less onerous regimen to treat latent tuberculosis (TB) infection. The new recommendations provide guidance about how to administer a new 12-dose regimen of TB preventive therapy that will significantly simplify the course of treatment from about nine months to 12 weeks.

FDA Evaluating Reports of Serious Bleeding With Pradaxa. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is evaluating postmarketing reports of serious bleeding events in patients taking Pradaxa®. Pradaxa is an anticoagulant used to reduce the risk of stroke in patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common type of heart rhythm abnormality.

You Can Now Receive Medicare Reimbursement for Nutrition Counseling. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has issued a decision memorandum that will allow you to be reimbursed for providing Medicare beneficiaries with intensive behavioral therapy for obesity, defined as a body mass index ≥30.

Are Your Older Patients at Risk for an Adverse Drug Event? Each year, nearly 100,000 U.S. seniors 65 years and older are hospitalized for adverse drug events according to a study supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and published in a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

FDA Finalizes New Restrictions on Rosiglitazone. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration just announced new restrictions to the prescribing and use of rosiglitazone-containing medicines to treat type 2 diabetes.

Shaking Out the Salt Conundrum. Your patients are likely to ask you about a recent study published in JAMA that calls into question the conventional wisdom of limiting the population's salt intake and the health effects of salt. The study’s take-home message?

NIH Launches New Clinician Website for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Americans annually spend nearly $34 billion out-of-pocket on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) products and practices. Surveys show that nearly 40% of American adults and 12% of American children use some form of CAM. Other surveys show that patients do not regularly discuss these practices with you; in fact, a recent study of Americans aged 50 and older found that, overall, two-thirds of respondents had not discussed CAM with their healthcare provider.