Consuming sugar-sweetened beverages may significantly increase the risk for specific types of liver cancer.
A pooled analysis including more than a million individuals found those who drank one sugar-sweetened beverage per day had a 10% greater risk for hepatocellular carcinoma and 15% greater risk for intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC).
Artificially sweetened beverages did not significantly increase the risk for any form of liver cancer.
“The overall evidence for an association in humans between artificially sweetened beverages and liver cancer, and more specifically aspartame and HCC, is

Early hydroxychloroquine initiation among people with discoid lupus erythematosus — the most common subtype of cutaneous lupus — was associated with lower 5-year risk for cardiometabolic and atherosclerotic outcomes, data show.
These complications included hyperlipidemia, peripheral artery disease, angina, coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes and stroke, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
“Using hydroxychloroquine, which is a very commonly used systemic medication in lupus, has a positive impact on patients with isolated discoid

HELSINKI — In a study carried out at a single center in Canada, no significant start time-related difference in intraoperative complication rates was found in a large number of cataract surgeries.
“Within standard operating hours, surgical start time does not significantly affect intraoperative complication rates in cataract surgery,” Kevin Yang Wu, MD, an ophthalmology resident at Université de Sherbrooke, Quebec, said at the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons winter meeting.
Wu said that fatigue is often cited as a contributing factor for complications. However, in

The heat-attributable burden of CVD in the U.S. is projected to increase through 2050, primarily in years of life lost and is anticipated to disproportionately impact older adults and those in lower-income counties, researchers reported.
In the model with the highest levels of greenhouse gas emission through 2050, it was estimated that up to 70,000 excess CV deaths would be attributable to rising temperatures, according to data published in JAMA Cardiology.
“At the policy level, there clearly needs to be heat adaptation and resilience measures. Each city now is developing heat management

ORLANDO — Clinicians should pursue leadership roles that enable them to reshape health care systems, influence careers and improve themselves, according to a presentation at the American Thoracic Society International Conference.
“You can be whatever it is that you want to be,” Tisha Wang, MD, said during her presentation.
But first, she added, clinicians need to land an interview — and ace it.
Wang — the former senior executive vice chair of the University of California at Los Angeles department of medicine and current chair of the department of medicine at the

NEW ORLEANS — In patients with gestational diabetes who took insulin after a standardized breakfast meal, inhaled technosphere insulin was comparable to rapid-acting analog insulin, researchers reported.
Amy M. Valent, DO, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University, and colleagues conducted a study presented as a poster at the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions of glucose excursions of 23 patients with gestational diabetes. All patients (mean age, 34 years; 39% Hispanic or Latine; mean prepregnancy BMI, 36 kg/m2; mean gestational age

When comparing associations with mortality, combined creatinine-cystatin C assessment was more comparable to measured GFR than creatinine or cystatin C individually.
Study data were simultaneously presented at the European Renal Association Congress and published in JAMA.
Measured GFR provides a more accurate measurement of kidney function compared with eGFR, but it is not the most practical form of testing for chronic kidney disease, according to Edouard L. Fu, PhD, FERA, assistant professor in the department of clinical epidemiology at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and

ORLANDO — Adults with vs. without COPD lost more years of life, and the number of lost years from COPD was similar across never, current and former smokers, according to findings presented here.
These data were also published simultaneously in JAMA Internal Medicine.
“[COPD is] now the fifth leading cause of death in the United States, the age-registered mortality has roughly doubled in the past 5 decades or so, and the prevalence with an aging population is only expected to increase,” Surya P. Bhatt, MD, MSPH, Endowed Professor of Airways Disease at University of Alabama at Birmingham, said

Virtual second opinion programs have the potential to help patients with cancer get more accurate diagnoses, less toxic treatments and have improved short- and long-term outcomes.
In a cohort of more than 200 individuals who received virtual second opinions from cancer subspecialists at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, approximately a third received feedback that oncologists perceived as meaningfully improving the expected prognosis, survival, morbidity and/or quality of life.
“These second opinions could be a powerful way to expand subspecialty expertise into the community,” Allison

When Jerry Rosenberg boarded a cruise to Bermuda in April 2017, he was not expecting to return to the U.S. in an air ambulance a few days later.
He spent the rest of the month in an induced coma before receiving a liver transplant.
Unaware he had metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, an acute episode of hepatitis A — brought about by eating contaminated food — left Rosenberg in critical condition.
“When I was very young, I’d had the [HAV] vaccine, but it was an old vaccine that should have been redone,” Rosenberg told Healio.
Rosenberg is not alone. An estimated 1.3 billion