Elderly patients with undiagnosed or untreated obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) face a particularly heavy economic burden due to comorbidities, according to MD Magazine. A research team at the University of Maryland studied the impact of untreated OSA on the use and cost of health care in a nationally representative sample of Medicare recipients.

Using fully adjusted models, the researchers determined that the OSA diagnosis compared to control patients during the previous year, and found that beneficiaries with OSA were characterized by increased use of medical care and higher average annual costs.

According to Contagion Live, sepsis is associated with 1 in 5 deaths worldwide, which is twice as much as indicated in some previous estimates. Researchers used cause-of-death data from an estimated 109 million deaths to estimate deaths associated with sepsis. The results show that the total number of cases of sepsis decreased from about 60.2 million cases in 1990 to 48.9 million cases in 2017; however, from 48.9 million cases, there were 11 million deaths. Despite the decline, this figure represents 19.7% of all deaths worldwide in 2017.

According to the American journal of Managed Care, patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) who received mitoxantrone (MTX), an anthracycline drug used to treat chronic refractory MS, may have an increased risk of developing early and late left ventricular dysfunction. The researchers sought to assess the long-term adverse effect of MTX on heart function by examining 49 MS patients on MTX therapy. The study showed that MTX is a suitable drug for patients with multiple sclerosis who have a worsening remitting form of multiple sclerosis, despite previous therapy.