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State caps on insulin costs lowered privately insured patients' out-of-pocket spending, but they didn't appear to increase insulin use, according to a new Annals of Internal Medicine study. The research suggests increasingly popular insulin caps alone aren't enough to improve insulin uptake among patients with diabetes in commercial insurance. (Reed, 3/26)

Chemicals found in common household items could be damaging our brains, scientists have warned, with potential links to a range of neurological conditions including multiple sclerosis and autism. ... "We were indeed surprised by our research findings, which revealed that certain common household chemicals can be harmful to brain cells," principal investigator Paul Tesar told Newsweek. He is a professor of genetics and genome sciences and director of the Institute for Glial Sciences at Case Western Reserve's School of Medicine. (Dewan, 3/25)

When a patient is going through end-stage heart failure, the best treatment is to get a heart transplant. The basic steps are familiar: First a patient gets on the waiting list, and then the wait begins for the offers. In recent years, access to donor hearts has gone up thanks to a change in heart allocation policy, but there are still gender- and race-based disparities in the acceptance rate of a donor heart offer by transplant teams, according to new research published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. (Balthazar, 3/25)

A study of hospitals in Michigan found that one in eight patients treated for pneumonia were inappropriately diagnosed, researchers reported today in JAMA Internal Medicine. The cohort study of more than 17,000 hospitalized adults treated for pneumonia at 48 Michigan hospitals found that 12% were inappropriately diagnosed. Older patients, those with dementia, and patients presenting with altered mental status were the most likely to be improperly diagnosed. (Dall, 3/25)

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: Overdosing On Chemo: A Common Gene Test Could Save Hundreds Of Lives Each Year

One January morning in 2021, Carol Rosen took a standard treatment for metastatic breast cancer. Three gruesome weeks later, she died in excruciating pain from the very drug meant to prolong her life. Rosen, a 70-year-old retired schoolteacher, passed her final days in anguish, enduring severe diarrhea and nausea and terrible sores in her mouth that kept her from eating, drinking, and, eventually, speaking. (Allen, 3/36)

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center have unveiled a new type of blood test used to detect colorectal cancer, with high hopes not only in its ability to reduce barriers to testing for this particular disease, but also potentially pave the way for many other types of cancer screenings. (Takahama, 3/25)

New national data in France reveals that, by the World Health Organization (WHO) definition, the prevalence of long COVID is 4.0% in the French population overall and 8.0% among people who had COVID-19. Among the 8.0%, the prevalence varied from 5.3% in men who had COVID-19, to 14.9% among the unemployed, and 18.6% of those with a history of hospitalization for COVID-19. The study is published in Clinical Microbiology and Infection. (Soucheray, 3/25)

A new cross-sectional study of Medicare-enrollees shows that Black and Hispanic Americans, after controlling for geography and demographic factors, were less likely to receive telemedicine care than White individuals during the first full year of the pandemic. The study, published in JAMA Health Forum, showed that while racial minorities disproportionately live in geographic regions with higher telemedicine use, they used the services less than their White peers. (Soucheray, 3/25)