Healthy Results: Wegovy can relieve knee pain in patients with arthritis and obesity

Happy Thursday! It looks like latest research emerges every week that shows additional health advantages of the burden loss drug Wegovy.

This time, Novo NordiskAccording to them, the blockbuster treatment has helped relieve knee pain in patients with a kind of arthritis and obesity Study published on Wednesday within the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study was funded by Novo Nordisk, which is conducting several studies on the opposite possible treatment uses of semaglutide, the lively ingredient in Wegovy.

The results of the 68-week study might be an enormous deal for the Danish drugmaker: They could pave the best way for regulatory approval of semaglutide to treat osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease that causes the cartilage and bone in your joints to interrupt down with the be dismantled over time.

It can be an extra expansion of the accepted uses for the blockbuster drug.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s probably the most common kind of arthritis, affecting about 33 million people within the United States. The condition will not be a traditional a part of aging, but is common in adults ages 45 and older.

So how is the disease related to obesity? The risk of developing the disease is 4 times higher in individuals with obesity, said the study's lead creator, Dr. Henning Bliddal, director and research professor on the Parker Institute in Denmark, in a single opinion.

Losing weight may also help relieve symptoms of knee osteoarthritis, but maintaining these lifestyle changes could be difficult, Bliddal said. There are also not very many other effective treatments for the condition.

“There is a significant need for non-surgical and sustainable treatment options for people with obesity-related osteoarthritis,” Bliddal added.

Let's take a more in-depth have a look at the trial.

These included around 400 patients with knee osteoarthritis. Participants were on average 56 years old and roughly 80% of the cohort were women, who usually tend to suffer from osteoarthritis than men.

Patients received either a weekly injection of semaglutide or a placebo for 68 weeks. Everyone also received instructions on tips on how to stick with a low-calorie food plan and integrate exercise into their on a regular basis lives.

Patients with osteoarthritis who dieted, exercised and took semaglutide lost more weight and reported greater reductions in knee pain than those that lost weight through food plan and exercise alone. At the tip of the study, participants who took semaglutide lost a mean of nearly 14% of their body weight, or about 33 kilos, in comparison with just 3% for participants who received a placebo.

Changes in body weight were also related to a discount in pain, measured using a particular index that rates it on a scale of 0 to 100. On average, patients within the study began with a mean pain rating of 70.9.

Those who took semaglutide reported a big reduction in pain – a mean decrease of about 42 points – while those within the placebo group saw a mean decrease of 27.5 points.

However, it’s unclear whether semaglutide may have this profit for all patients, resembling those that are mildly obese or obese. Most of the people participating within the study had a high BMI, so researchers have to extrapolate the outcomes to other populations.

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Private Medicare Advantage plans have change into a significant source of conflict between major insurers – and it's now playing out on two fronts.

For one thing, they're fighting with the federal government over stricter quality rankings, making a headwind for profits, while health insurers are seeing higher medical costs for his or her older members.

This creates a second problem: a battle royale between the main MA players and the hospitals where much of the increased spending occurs.

UnitedHealth is fighting on each fronts, suing the federal government over downgrading its plans' star quality rankings while raising a red flag against hospitals it says are “aggressively” upgrading their patients and thereby driving up medical costs.

Hospital operators Community Health, HCA and Tenet Health addressed what they called “more aggressive” pushbacks from some payers of their respective earnings calls.

Collective bargaining has change into so acrimonious that more hospitals are threatening not to just accept some providers' Medicare Advantage plans.

With greater than half of seniors now having private Medicare Advantage plans, this combative trend may lead to increasing disruptions to their coverage.

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UnitedHealth Group's Change Healthcare broke a grim record last week: It officially became the biggest healthcare data breach ever reported to federal regulators.

According to a study, at the least 100 million Americans were affected by the Change Healthcare cyberattack updated illustration posted on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights Injury Portal. The previous record was set by Anthem in 2015, when hackers compromised data on 78.8 million patients.

The number is roughly consistent with the estimate UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty told lawmakers in May, when he estimated that a few third of Americans were affected. The company began shipping by mail written communications to those affected at the tip of July.

Change Healthcare offers payment and revenue cycle management tools for medical providers and payers, in addition to other solutions resembling electronic prescription software. In February, UnitedHealth announced that a cyber threat actor had breached a part of the corporate's IT network.

UnitedHealth shut down the affected systems when the threat was detected, and the disruption triggered widespread fallout across the U.S. healthcare sector. Many doctors were temporarily unable to fill prescriptions or receives a commission for his or her services, and a few providers withdrew hundreds of dollars from their savings to maintain their doors open.

In the months following the breach, UnitedHealth paid a $22 million ransom to the hackers, struggled to bring systems back online and confirmed that files containing personal information were compromised within the attack.

The exact kind of data exposed within the breach varies from individual to individual, in line with UnitedHealth's website. This means a combination of patient contact information, medical insurance information, medical records, and billing and payment information might be accessed.

UnitedHealth is offering two years of free credit monitoring to guard against identity theft to individuals who consider they could be affected. Patients can contact a dedicated call center to inquire about these offerings or speak with a health care provider who can offer them emotional support, the corporate said.

Patients also needs to look ahead to suspicious activity on their tax returns and profit statements, in addition to bank and bank card statements, in line with UnitedHealth's website.

Feel free to send suggestions, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at ashley.caroot@nbcuni.com.