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Biologics target inflammation at its source to control the disease process, which in turn helps ease psoriatic arthritis symptoms, prevent joint damage, and improve quality of life. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) to help alleviate pain and swellingTraditional DMARDs to slow disease progression and improve symptomsImmunosuppressants to dampen an overactive immune responseSteroids to reduce inflammation and ease symptoms, especially during a flareEnzyme inhibitors to slow down the inflammatory response Biologics tend to be prescribed for moderate-to-severe psoriatic arthritis, where the potential for joint damage is greater than in milder forms of the condition....

Should she go? A big wedding is the ultimate celebration, but unfortunately, all the hallmarks of the event — the talking, laughing, hugging, dancing — give the novel coronavirus the chance to spread. Still, many couples would never consider a pared-down wedding, much less a virtual celebration. Across the country, people are pushing on with big parties even in places that have banned large gatherings as a way to halt the spread of COVID-19....

Your Teen’s Initial Questionnaire During this intake, teens will be asked a series of questions, including what issues they are currently struggling with, whether they go to school, and if they’ve contemplated suicide. Once your teen registers and verifies their account, they can input their therapist preferences. Teens can request a therapist with experience in a variety of specialties, including teen depression, teen anxiety, LGBTQ+ issues, family conflicts, and eating disorders....

Which cancer patients are at highest risk for infection or complications? Those most vulnerable are people with blood cancers, such as leukemia or lymphoma, and those receiving heavy-duty chemotherapy or undergoing bone marrow or stem cell transplants, according to Brandon Hayes-Lattin, MD, medical director of the division of hematology and medical oncology at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. “There is a bit of clinical judgment in figuring out which patients are in the highest risk category,” Dr....

Briana “Bri” Allessi is one of them. “We are waiting on conceiving this year because of COVID,” says Allessi, 34, of Dekalb, Illinois. “I am immune compromised and have had rough pregnancies anyway, so we don’t want or need any extra problems.” Allessi, along with her husband, Daniel Allessi, have three children (Ashlynn, 6; Caiden, 4; and Everleigh, 8 months), and had wanted a fourth. Allessi, who lives with type 1 diabetes, arthritis, hypothyroidism, and hidradenitis suppurativa, a skin disorder, said her prior pregnancies were already challenging before the coronavirus pandemic arrived....

One of the more persistent rumors is that the COVID-19 vaccines that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized for emergency use, from Pfizer and Moderna, cause infertility. This allegation is leading many women to think twice about getting immunized. Is there any scientific evidence behind the claim that COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility? The answer is no, according to Kristina M. Adams Waldorf, MD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and an expert in pregnancy infections at UW Medicine in Seattle....

Kiara Horwitz, 34, a publicist in New York City, knows this firsthand. She’s never taken immunosuppressant drugs to treat her Crohn’s, but she still caught the flu in summer 2019, which triggered a flare-up. “I landed up in the ER,” she says. “My doctor put me on centralized steroids until [I recovered].” Horwitz says that even the common cold sends her to bed for days and causes her symptoms to flare....

Women with Crohn’s choose not to have children for a variety of reasons, such as being concerned about how pregnancy will affect their symptoms or how their disease will affect their baby’s health. But sometimes misinformation contributes to these decisions, too, says Sonia Friedman, MD, associate professor of gastroenterology, hepatology, and endoscopy at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “A lot of women are worried about their medications during pregnancy and their Crohn’s disease during pregnancy,” says Dr....

The analysis, published in November 2019 in JAMA Network Open, followed 48,026 people who took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1999 and 2016. Participants reported their current and prior weight, whether they thought they were at a healthy weight, any attempts to lose weight in the previous year, and any methods they used to try to slim down. RELATED: 14 Diet and Weight Loss Mistakes — and How to Avoid Them From 1999 to 2016, the proportion of people who reported they’d tried to lose weight in the previous year climbed from 34....

Aside from getting the proper treatment and medication from a doctor, many people with ITP may wonder if there are any lifestyle measures they can take to help get their platelet count up. “I think we all wish there was one food you could eat or one thing you could do” to help ITP, says Ginger Hultin, RDN, owner of ChampagneNutrition and author of Anti-Inflammatory Diet Meal Prep and How to Eat to Beat Disease Cookbook....

In the study, RA onset was defined by the criteria of the 1987 ACR-EULAR classificaton system, a score-based algorithm for RA. “Using the 2010 criteria for RA may result in earlier recognition of RA cases but this requires a separate study,” says Elena Myasoedova, MD, PhD, the study’s primary author and a rheumatologist with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The study is the first to quantify the overall trends of functional disability (FD) in people living with RA, taking into consideration the patients’ ages and genders, the length of time that disabilities were reported, and the level of disease after diagnosis....

So it’s a relief to learn that Americans are finally consuming less of the sweet fizzy stuff. The number of adults considered “heavy consumers” of soda — defined as those who guzzle more than 500 calories of soda a day — shrank by 4 percent between 2003 and 2016, while the percentage among children fell by twice that much, according to research published in September 2020 in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics....

Until we moved here, I had only an anecdotal understanding of what that meant. After attending scores of wakes, funerals, and a few requiem masses over this past decade, however, I have come to know what that sentiment really means. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been a number of years since we attended any such events in person. With restrictions on the number of attendees and strict adherence to health recommendations, the best we have been able to do is line the roadways between church and graveyard as the funerary cortege accompanied the deceased to their final resting place....

“One way they work is through our sense of smell,” says Michelle Davila, ND, a naturopathic doctor with the integrative medicine department of Beaumont Health in Grosse Pointe and Royal Oak, Michigan. When you breathe in an essential oil, the scent molecules travel from the olfactory nerves directly to the brain. Here, they interact with a region known as the limbic system, which regulates emotions, memories, and sensations, Dr. Davila says....

As you begin to emotionally adjust to your situation, it’s important to get the facts about being with a partner who has HIV. Certain fears about having an HIV-positive partner may be outdated, but there may also be precautions you weren’t aware of that you could take to avoid HIV Here are some questions you may have if your partner has HIV, and answers from leading experts on the virus....

The authorization was based on “thorough and transparent evaluation of the data that included input from independent advisory committee experts who overwhelmingly voted in favor of making the vaccine available to children in this age group,” according to the FDA. The agency gave its go-ahead as research results from 4,500 children ages 5 to 11 showed that the vaccine had an efficacy rate of nearly 91 percent in preventing COVID-19 infection in children who had not previously been infected with COVID-19....

More than 25 million men and women in the United States are affected by gallbladder disease, an umbrella term that includes: Gallstones Hardened deposits of digestive fluid that can form in your gallbladder. They can range in size from as small as a grain of sand to as large as a golf ball. Gallstones can be painful and cause nausea and vomiting, but often they are asymptomatic and don’t require surgery....

According to a new study presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions in Philadelphia and published online in November in the New England Journal of Medicine, heart attack survivors who took a 0.5 milligram (mg) daily pill of colchicine cut total risk of adverse heart events, including heart attack, stroke, cardiac arrest, urgent hospitalization to treat a blockage, and death from cardiovascular causes, by as much as 23 percent compared with patients who took a placebo....

About half of Americans would support laws against weight-based discrimination, with those who have personally experienced weight bias being about twice as likely to support the policy as people who have not, according to the findings, which were presented June 7 at the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Annual Meeting (ASMBS) in Dallas. Can a Person Be Denied a Job or Fired Because of How Much They Weigh?...

In reviewing data on more than 2,000 heart attack survivors age 50 and younger, scientists observed that the proportion of adults under 40 having heart attacks rose 2 percent every year between 2006 and 2016. “We found that approximately 20 percent of the heart attacks under the age of 50 are actually occurring in folks who are under the age of 40,” says the senior author, Ron Blankstein, MD, a preventive cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston....