Wegovy may reduce knee pain in patients with osteoarthritis, obesity

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Completely satisfied Thursday! New analysis exhibiting extra well being advantages of the load loss drug Wegovy appears to crop up each week. 

This time round, Novo Nordisk‘s blockbuster therapy helped scale back knee ache in sufferers with a kind of arthritis and weight problems, in line with research published Wednesday within the New England Journal of Medication.

The research was funded by Novo Nordisk, which is conducting a number of research on the opposite potential therapy makes use of of semaglutide, the energetic ingredient in Wegovy.

The outcomes of the 68-week trial could possibly be a giant deal for the Danish drugmaker: It may pave the way in which for regulatory approval of semaglutide for osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint illness that causes the cartilage and bone in your joints to interrupt down over time. 

It might be yet one more growth of the accepted makes use of for the blockbuster drug. 

It is the commonest kind of arthritis and impacts round 33 million folks within the U.S., in line with the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention. The situation isn’t an everyday a part of getting older, however it is not uncommon amongst adults 45 and above. 

So, how is the situation associated to weight problems? The chance of creating the situation is 4 occasions larger in folks with weight problems, the trial’s lead research writer Dr. Henning Bliddal, director and analysis professor at The Parker Institute in Denmark, stated in a statement. 

Shedding pounds will help scale back knee osteoarthritis signs, however adherence to these life-style modifications will be difficult, Bliddal stated. There additionally aren’t very many different efficient therapies for the situation. 

“There’s a important want for non-surgical and sustainable therapy choices for these dwelling with obesity-related osteoarthritis,” Bliddal added.

Let’s dive into extra particulars on the trial.

It included roughly 400 sufferers with knee osteoarthritis. Individuals had a mean age of 56, and roughly 80% of the cohort had been girls, who expertise osteoarthritis at larger charges than males do. 

Folks both took a weekly injection of semaglutide or a placebo for 68 weeks. Everybody additionally obtained steerage on methods to preserve reduced-calorie diets and incorporate train into their day by day lives. 

Sufferers with osteoarthritis who dieted, exercised and took semaglutide misplaced extra weight and reported a higher discount in knee ache than those that misplaced weight with food regimen and train alone. By the tip of the trial, individuals who took semaglutide misplaced a mean of practically 14% of their physique weight, or round 33 kilos, in comparison with simply 3% amongst those that acquired a placebo. 

Modifications in physique weight had been additionally accompanied by reductions in ache, which was measured utilizing a selected index that scores it on a scale 0 to 100. On common, sufferers within the trial began with a mean ache rating of 70.9. 

Those that took semaglutide reported a big discount in ache – a mean drop of about 42 factors — whereas these within the placebo group had a mean drop of 27.5 factors.

But it surely’s unclear if semaglutide may have that profit for all sufferers, reminiscent of those that are mildly overweight or chubby. Most people enrolled within the trial had a excessive BMI, so researchers must replicate the findings in different populations. 

Be happy to ship any suggestions, ideas, story concepts and knowledge to Annika at annikakim.constantino@nbcuni.com.

Non-public Medicare Benefit plans have grow to be a giant supply of battle between the foremost insurers — and it is now taking part in out on two fronts.

For one, they’re battling the federal government over stricter high quality scores which can be creating revenue headwinds at a time when plans are experiencing larger medical prices from their senior members. 

That is making a second headache: A battle royale between the large MA gamers and hospitals, which is the place a lot of the upper spending is being incurred.

UnitedHealth is combating on each fronts, suing the federal government over the star high quality scores downgrade on its plans, whereas on the identical time elevating a pink flag about hospitals it says are “aggressively” upcoding sufferers and in flip elevating medical prices.

Throughout their respective earnings calls, hospital operators Group Well being, HCA and Tenet Well being all touched on what they referred to as extra “aggressive” denials from some payers.  

The speed negotiations are actually getting so bitter that extra hospitals are threatening to not settle for Medicare Benefit plans from some carriers.

With greater than half of seniors on personal Medicare Benefit plans now, this combative development may create growing disruption to their protection.

Be happy to ship any suggestions, ideas, story concepts and knowledge to Bertha at bertha.coombs@nbcuni.com.

UnitedHealth Group’s Change Healthcare broke a grim file final week: It has formally suffered the most important health-care knowledge breach that is ever been reported to federal regulators. 

At the very least 100 million People had been affected by the Change Healthcare cyberattack, in line with an updated figure printed to the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Companies Workplace for Civil Rights’ breach portal. The earlier file was set by Anthem in 2015 when hackers compromised knowledge from 78.8 million sufferers. 

The determine is roughly in step with the estimate that UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty shared with lawmakers in Might, when he guessed that round one-third of Americans had been impacted. The corporate started mailing written notices to affected people in late July. 

Change Healthcare affords fee and income cycle administration instruments for medical suppliers and payers, in addition to different options reminiscent of digital prescription software program. In February, UnitedHealth disclosed {that a} cyber risk actor breached a part of the corporate’s data know-how community. 

UnitedHealth disconnected the affected techniques when the risk was detected, and the disruption brought on a ripple of fallout throughout the U.S. health-care sector. Many medical doctors had been briefly left with out a solution to fill prescriptions or receives a commission for his or her companies, and a few suppliers took thousands of dollars out of financial savings to maintain their doorways open. 

Within the months following the breach, UnitedHealth paid a $22 million ransom to the hackers, labored to convey techniques again on-line and confirmed that recordsdata containing private data had been compromised within the assault. 

The precise kind of knowledge that was uncovered within the breach varies from individual to individual, in line with UnitedHealth’s web site. Meaning a mixture of sufferers’ contact data, medical insurance data, medical information, billing and fee data may have been accessed. 

UnitedHealth is providing two years of free identification theft protections credit score monitoring for people who assume they had been impacted. Sufferers can contact a devoted name heart to inquire about these choices or communicate with a clinician who can present emotional help companies, the corporate stated.

Sufferers also needs to look ahead to suspicious exercise throughout their tax returns and clarification of advantages, financial institution and bank card statements, in line with UnitedHealth’s web site.  

Be happy to ship any suggestions, ideas, story concepts and knowledge to Ashley at ashley.capoot@nbcuni.com.