Patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) may experience beneficial effects from music therapy (MT), according to the results of a new study published in the Journal of Pain Research. Patients who received MT learned new self-management skills and also improved their ability to cope with pain. The study found that MT significantly improved scores in…
Self-reported scores on the Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) from patients with neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) and multiple sclerosis (MS) were correlated with physicians’ scores on the Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS) (r =.934; P <.001), as published in Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. “Patients’ self-reported NRS score had a good correlation with clinician-evaluated MAS score…
The presence of anti-Sjögren’s syndrome A/Ro (anti-SSA/Ro) antibodies may be associated with disease activity and more severe disability in patients with neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD), according to results of a study published in Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. The researchers showed that patients with anti-SSA/Ro antibodies were more likely to be positive (89.2% vs…
A patient was diagnosed with cold agglutinin syndrome (CAS) after the discovery of cold-antibody autoimmune hemolytic anemia (cAIHA) and splenic marginal zone lymphoma (MZL), as published in Hematology, Transfusion and Cell Therapy. CAS was recently described as a separate but similar entity to cold agglutinin disease (CAD). “In [CAD], patients may have a B-cell clonal…
Patients with hemophilia A who switched to BAY 81-8973 (octocog alfa; Kovaltry®) from other standard half-life (SHL) factor VIII (FVIII) products maintained already favorable outcome rates with a possible improvement in half-life, as published in Haemophilia. The patients enrolled in the study had a median annualized bleeding rate (ABR) and annualized joint bleeding rate (AJBR)…
The use of corticosteroids in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) after their loss of ambulation (LOA) may delay the onset of abnormal percent predicted forced vital capacity (ppFVC), according to an article published in Muscle & Nerve. Boys with DMD who continued corticosteroid use for at least 1 year after LOA had a statistically…
Researchers showed the most common form of collision tumors in the thyroid included medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) and papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), as published in Archive of Clinical Cases. PTC can often be found in the background thyroid of patients receiving surgery for MTC, and incidental findings from autopsies report as high as 35% of…
Infusion ports were associated with low rates of complications in pediatric patients with sickle cell disease (SCD), according to a new study published in Pediatric Blood & Cancer. A total of 32 patients received 63 infusion ports with a median catheter lifespan of 1340 days. During this time, rates of adverse events were low including…
Inhibition of transient receptor potential channel 6 (TRPC6) may be a novel therapeutic approach for treating pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), according to a new study published in the American Journal of Physiology – Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology. The results showed that the administration of BI-749327, a selective blocker of TRCP6, resulted in roughly 50%…
COVID-19 disease course may be benign in some patients with late-onset Pompe disease (LOPD), according to a new case series published in Muscle & Nerve. The results showed that 4 patients with LOPD who had pre-existing pulmonary involvement had mild to moderate illnesses from COVID-19 did not require hospitalization. Respiratory Pompe symptoms remained stable in…
