Articles related to Internal Medicine

In practice, “standard” duration of antibiotic therapy is often based on archaic studies. Newer evidence shows that shorter durations are often a better choice and that antibiotic resistance is more likely to develop with longer durations of therapy. Here are the recommendations applied to four commonly treated infections.

Bone marrow failure in children and young adults is often suspected to be inherited; however, in many cases, diagnosis remains uncertain. A new study involving 179 patients (from 173 families) found that implementing precision medicine at diagnosis can improve patient management, along with the use of family counseling. This study published in Blood expands the “portrait” of IBMF syndromes and explores some newly recognized disease entities.

Curious about the long-term impacts of COVID-19? A new study that involved 2,433 hospitalized patients found that the most common symptoms after one year were fatigue, sweating, chest tightness, anxiety, and myalgia. The study, conducted in Wuhan, China, one of the global epicenters of the pandemic, also found that patients with severe disease had more serious long-term issues, including a high incidence of COPD.

Evidence is mounting that much of the concern about waning immunity to COVID-19 is overstated and that vaccines provide high levels of protection against the respiratory disease and its variants over the long-term. Immunologically, plasmablast and B-cell response after mRNA vaccination is long-lived and memory B cells increase over at least six months. And in the field, the evidence is that vaccination is doing what it is intended to do: reduce the severity and spread of the infection.

Our understanding of lipid pathology is shifting from what might be called the “LDL hypothesis” to the “atherogenic lipoprotein hypothesis.” LDL is just a surrogate of the actual process of lipoprotein interaction with the arterial wall. This shift in understanding is driving a host of budding therapies with novel approaches to targeting key atherogenesis players like lipoprotein(a) and triglycerides.

In this series from Blood that tackles four cases studies, the outcomes of AML pediatric patients compared to children with ALL is explored, focusing on the emerging new treatments venetoclax (Venclexta; AbbVie/Genentech), CD33- and CD123-directed CAR T-cell therapy, CD123-directed antibody therapy, and menin inhibitors.