Medicaid Expansion and Utilization of Antihyperglycemic Therapies.

OBJECTIVE: Certain antihyperglycemic therapies modify cardiovascular and kidney outcomes among patients with type 2 diabetes, but early uptake in practice appears restricted to particular demographics. We examine the association of Medicaid expansion with use of and expenditures related to antihyperglycemic therapies among Medicaid beneficiaries. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: We employed a difference-in-difference design to analyze the association of Medicaid expansion on prescription of noninsulin antihyperglycemic therapies. We used 2012-2017 national and state Medicaid data to compare prescription claims and costs between states that did (n = 25) and did not expand (n = 26) Medicaid by January 2014. RESULTS: Following Medicaid expansion in 2014, average noninsulin antihyperglycemic therapies per state/1,000 enrollees increased by 4.2%/quarter in expansion states and 1.6%/quarter in nonexpansion states. For sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) and glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RA), quarterly growth rates per 1,000 enrollees were 125.3% and 20.7% for expansion states and 87.6% and 16.0% for nonexpansion states, respectively. Expansion states had faster utilization of SGLT2i and GLP-1RA than nonexpansion states. Difference-in-difference estimates for change in volume of prescriptions after Medicaid expansion between expansion versus nonexpansion states was 1.68 (95% CI 1.09-2.26; P < 0.001) for all noninsulin therapies, 0.125 (-0.003 to 0.25; P = 0.056) for SGLT2i, and 0.12 (0.055-0.18; P < 0.001) for GLP-1RA. CONCLUSIONS: Use of noninsulin antihyperglycemic therapies, including SGLT2i and GLP-1RA, increased among low-income adults in both Medicaid expansion and nonexpansion states, with a significantly greater increase in overall use and in GLP-1RA use in expansion states. Future evaluation of the population-level health impact of expanded access to these therapies is needed.

Multivariate time-series analysis of biomarkers from a dengue cohort offers new approaches for diagnosis and prognosis.

Dengue is a major public health problem worldwide with distinct clinical manifestations: an acute presentation (dengue fever, DF) similar to other febrile illnesses (OFI) and a more severe, life-threatening form (severe dengue, SD). Due to nonspecific clinical presentation during the early phase of dengue infection, differentiating DF from OFI has remained a challenge, and current methods to determine severity of dengue remain poor early predictors. We present a prospective clinical cohort study conducted in Caracas, Venezuela from 2001-2005, designed to determine whether clinical and hematological parameters could distinguish DF from OFI, and identify early prognostic biomarkers of SD. From 204 enrolled suspected dengue patients, there were 111 confirmed dengue cases. Piecewise mixed effects regression and nonparametric statistics were used to analyze longitudinal records. Decreased serum albumin and fibrinogen along with increased D-dimer, thrombin-antithrombin complex, activated partial thromboplastin time and thrombin time were prognostic of SD on the day of defervescence. In the febrile phase, the day-to-day rates of change in serum albumin and fibrinogen concentration, along with platelet counts, were significantly decreased in dengue patients compared to OFI, while the day-to-day rates of change of lymphocytes (%) and thrombin time were increased. In dengue patients, the absolute lymphocytes to neutrophils ratio showed specific temporal increase, enabling classification of dengue patients entering the critical phase with an area under the ROC curve of 0.79. Secondary dengue patients had elongation of Thrombin time compared to primary cases while the D-dimer formation (fibrinolysis marker) remained always lower for secondary compared to primary cases. Based on partial analysis of 31 viral complete genomes, a high frequency of C-to-T transitions located at the third codon position was observed, suggesting deamination events with five major hot spots of amino acid polymorphic sites outside in non-structural proteins. No association of severe outcome was statistically significant for any of the five major polymorphic sites found. This study offers an improved understanding of dengue hemostasis and a novel way of approaching dengue diagnosis and disease prognosis using piecewise mixed effect regression modeling. It also suggests that a better discrimination of the day of disease can improve the diagnostic and prognostic classification power of clinical variables using ROC curve analysis. The piecewise mixed effect regression model corroborated key early clinical determinants of disease, and offers a time-series approach for future vaccine and pathogenesis clinical studies.

Informe sobre el control del tabaquismo en los países ibero-latino-americanos / Report on the control of smoking in ibero-latin-american countries

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Money for nothing? The net costs of medical training.

One of the stages of medical training is the residency programme. Hosting institutions often claim compensation for the training provided. How much should this compensation be? According to our results, given the benefits arising from having residents among the house staff, no transfer (either tuition fee or subsidy) should be set to compensate the hosting institution for providing medical training. This paper quantifies the net costs of medical training, defined as the training costs over and above the wage paid. We jointly consider two effects. On the one hand, residents take extra time and resources from both the hosting institution and the supervisor. On the other hand, residents can be regarded as a less expensive substitute to nurses and/or graduate physicians, in the production of health care, both in primary care centres and hospitals. The net effect can be either positive or negative. We use the fact that residents, in Portugal, are centrally allocated to National Health Service hospitals to treat them as a fixed exogenous production factor. The data used comes from Portuguese hospitals and primary care centres. Cost function estimates point to a small negative marginal impact of residents on hospitals' (-0.02%) and primary care centres' (-0.9%) costs. Nonetheless, there is a positive relation between size and cost to the very large hospitals and primary care centres. Our approach to estimation of residents' costs controls for other teaching activities hospitals might have (namely undergraduate Medical Schools). Overall, the net costs of medical training appear to be quite small.