Sharon Worcester is an award-winning medical journalist for MDedge News. She has been with the company since 1996, first as the Southeast Bureau Chief (1996-2009) when the company was known as International Medical News Group, then as a freelance writer (2010-2015) before returning as a reporter in 2015. She previously worked as a daily newspaper reporter covering health and local government. Sharon currently reports primarily on oncology and hematology. She has a BA from Eckerd College and an MA in Mass Communication/Print Journalism from the University of Florida. Connect with her via LinkedIn and follow her on twitter @SW_MedReporter.
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Facial emotion recognition impaired early in schizophrenia, stable across disease course
Major Finding: Patients in the ultra-high-risk group did worse than did healthy controls in recognizing sadness and disgust (P < .001), and...
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Deficits in empathic abilities appear to be disorder specific
Major Finding: Schizophrenia patients have the strongest impairment in empathic performance, followed by bipolar patients.
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Late stop to antirheumatics may risk postsurgical infection
Major Finding: An increased infection rate was seen in patients who used more than one cDMARD (odds ratio, 2.425) and more than one TNF inhibitor...
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Chronic constipation may increase colorectal cancer risk
Major Finding: The risk of developing colorectal cancer was 1.78 times higher in 28,854 adults with chronic constipation than in 86,562 controls...
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No short-term benefit of hydroxychloroquine found for primary Sjögren’s
Major Finding: The favorable overall response rate after 6 months was 19.6% for treatment with hydroxychloroquine and 19.2% with placebo.Data...
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Recess Is In: Daily Play Cuts Childhood Obesity
Major Finding: Changes in body fat were -1.4% for children randomized to 40 minutes per day of exercise and -0.8% for children randomized to 20...
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Ischemic Stroke Rates Same for Anti-TNFs vs. nbDMARDs in RA
Major Finding: Of 130 verified incident ischemic cerebrovascular accidents, 109 occurred in 11,642 patients treated with anti–tumor necrosis...
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Indacaterol Proves Safe, Effective Across COPD Patients
Major Finding: Indacaterol at 75 mcg improved lung function and health status in patients with COPD, regardless of age, sex, smoking status, or...
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Osteoporosis, Vertebral Fractures May Flag Heart Risk in RA
Major Finding: Of 603 patients from a convenience sample of adults who met 1987 ACR criteria for RA classification, 230 had at least one...
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COPD Guidelines Found Underutilized
Major Finding: Patients comanaged by a primary care physician and a pulmonologist were 4.6 times more likely to receive an appropriate level of...