Maggie is an editor for The American Journal of Managed Care® (AJMC®) and produces written, video, and podcast content covering several disease states. She joined AJMC® in 2019, and has been with AJMC®’s parent company, MJH Life Sciences®, since 2014, when she started as a copy editor.
She has a BA in English from Penn State University. You can connect with Maggie on LinkedIn.
Study Results Show Pembrolizumab Plus Chemotherapy May Be Effective in Patients With TNBC
April 9th 2020The standard therapy for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) remains chemotherapy, despite a dismal prognosis due to lack of estrogen and progesterone hormone receptors, as well as HER2 receptors. Targeted therapies for this difficult-to-treat, often aggressive, subtype of breast cancer remain elusive.
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Heart Failure Plus Pollution Appears to Increase Dementia Risk, Study Indicates
April 8th 2020Almost 70% of the world’s population could be living in urban areas, being continuously exposed to air pollution, by 2050, while cases of dementia are expected to triple. Recent study results highlight the link between cardiovascular disease and dementia, as mediated by long-term exposure to air pollution.
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Depression Symptoms Show Improvement Following Innovative Magnetic Brain Stimulation Treatment
April 7th 2020Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation of the brain has been shown to reduce the effects of treatment-resistant depression, but study results show that intermittent theta-burst stimulation may be more efficient and effective.
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FDA's Revised Blood Donation Guidance for Gay Men Still Courts Controversy
April 4th 2020The FDA has announced a relaxing of its restrictions on gay men being allowed to donate blood, in light of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Instead of 1 year, if a male has had sex with another male, he need only wait 3 months to donate blood.
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White Blood Cell Profile Linked to Greater Breast Cancer Risk
April 4th 2020What can be done to further delineate the risk factors associated with breast cancer to increase prevention efforts across the board? The key may lie in the white blood cells that circulate in the blood, particularly leukocytes and monocytes.
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Is There a New CAR T-Cell Treatment for Mantle Cell Lymphoma?
April 3rd 2020Mantle cell lymphoma is a type of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma with a typically poor prognosis. Even with an allogeneic stem cell transplant, patients can become resistant to chemotherapy. Most do not survive 4 or 5 years after diagnosis, and the 10-year survival rate hovers between 5% and 10%.
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Genetic Testing May Benefit Older Women With Breast Cancer
April 2nd 2020The 2 main criteria that warrant genetic testing for breast cancer in women are age and having a family history of cancer. Postmenopausal women without any hereditary risk factors, however, often do not undergo genetic testing for the disease.
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Evolocumab Lowers LDL-C in HIV-Positive Persons
March 31st 2020Evolocumab (Repatha), a human monoclonal antibody and proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 inhibitor, produced positive results in persons living with HIV in the BEIJERINCK study by reducing their levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C). These individuals have a risk of cardiovascular disease that is almost twice that of HIV-negative individuals.
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Possible Link Found Between Early Heart Failure and Pregnancy Complications
March 28th 2020Pregnancy complications that include preeclampsia, gestational hypertension, pre-term birth, and low birthweight serve as possible indicators for greater risk of heart failure in the long term, as indicated by change in global longitudinal strain on echocardiogram.
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Ovarian cancer remains the most deadly of the gynecologic cancers. Researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute may have discovered biomarkers that could predict which patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer would benefit from combination poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor/immune checkpoint inhibition treatment, as well as those who should pursue a different course of therapy.
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AB MRI Shown to Improve Cancer Detection Rate in Women With Dense Breast Tissue
March 26th 2020Not all women with dense breast tissue have a high risk of breast cancer, but they all have an increased risk compared with women who have average tissue density. Can this patient population benefit from screening with abbreviated breast magnetic resonance imaging (AB MRI) over digital breast tomosynthesis?
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Mortality, Risk Factors of Patients With Cardiac Injury and COVID-19
March 25th 2020Evidence is considered lacking on the association between mortality and patients who have both cardiac injury and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Is the rate of death higher among these patients compared with patients without cardiac disease who have COVID-19?
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COVID-19 Questions HIV-Positive Individuals Want Answered
March 24th 2020The environment surrounding the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic seems to change by the minute. The full extent to which HIV-positive individuals can be affected if they contract COVID-19, because they are immunocompromised, is not known. Recently, the CDC issued guidance for this patient population.
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Clinical Variable Model More Reliable at Predicting Mortality Among Veterans
March 22nd 2020Are coding changes responsible for declines in the 30-day mortality rate for hospital admissions among veterans utilizing Veterans Health Administration medical centers? Which model is more accurate at predicting this measure: a claims-based model or a clinical factor–based model?
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Study Results Recommend Ongoing, but Updated, HIV-1/HIV-2 Differentiation Testing
March 20th 2020Between 2010 and 2017, there were 327,700 new HIV infections in the United States. Of these, HIV-2 infections accounted for less than 0.03% of the total. It is important to differentiate which HIV strain an individual is infected with because HIV-2 is intrinsically resistant to nonnucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitors, which are typically used to treat HIV-1 infections.
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Palliative Care Is Underutilized for Patients With Heart Failure
March 20th 2020By 2030, heart failure—which tops the list of reasons for hospitalization among individuals older than 65 years—could tax the healthcare system $69.8 billion each year. Study results show the success of palliative care at reducing both healthcare costs and hospitalization.
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CVD Risk Faces Undue Influence From Social Determinants of Health
March 18th 2020Social determinants found within a person’s environment, mainly where they live and work, have been shown to influence outcomes related to health, functioning, and quality of life, especially where risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is concerned, according to study results that will be presented during ACC.20/WCC Virtual.
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Novel Blood Biopsy Detects MRD in Early-Stage Breast Cancer
March 17th 2020Metastatic disease is the leading cause of death in the over 600,000 individuals worldwide who die of breast cancer each year. A new blood-based assay to detect minimal residual disease (MRD) in patients with stage 0 to 3 breast cancer was shown to have 100-fold greater sensitivity compared with digital droplet polymerase chain reaction.
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Does Germline Variant Status Influence Treatment Outcome?
March 13th 2020A primary analysis of data from the GeparOcto trial showed no difference in pathologic complete response among patients with early-stage breast cancer enrolled in 2 neoadjuvant treatment arms: sequential intense dose-dense epirubicin, paclitaxel, and cyclophosphamide and weekly paclitaxel and nonpegylated liposomal doxorubicin.
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Does Treatment Begin and End Sooner With Neoadjuvant or Adjuvant Chemotherapy?
March 13th 2020Patients who undergo neoadjuvant chemotherapy tend to be younger, with larger tumors and greater nodal involvement. But differences in their 30- and 90-day mortality rates compared with those of patients treated adjuvantly are clinically insignificant.
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How Vulnerable Are Patients With Cardiovascular Disease to COVID-19, Flu Complications?
March 12th 2020Patients with cardiovascular disease are especially vulnerable to respiratory infections, although uncertainty remains on just what damage COVID-19 can cause in these patients. The flu season is also in full swing, with an estimated 440,000 individuals hospitalized so far in the United States alone, according to the CDC.
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Questions Remain About Second Patient Who Demonstrates HIV Cure
March 10th 2020A second individual may have been cured of HIV following an allogeneic stem-cell transplant for stage 4b refractory Hodgkin lymphoma with Δ32-mutated cells, which are resistant to the virus. These cells did not express the CCR5 chemokine receptor, 1 of 2 methods of entry for HIV into a host cell.
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Patient Care Must Be an Ongoing Collaboration That Includes Multifaceted Concerns, Panel Says
March 8th 2020The theme of ACCC Immediate Past President Ali McBride, PharmD, MS, BPS, BCOP, for his 2019-2020 term was “Collaborate. Educate. Compensate: A Prescription for Sustainable Cancer Care Delivery.” Nowhere was that more evident than in the panel discussion he led on day 2 of this year’s annual conference.
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Clinical Decision Support Tools Transform Point Of Care Delivery
March 8th 2020Can we predict which patients are at high risk of hospitalization? How can we reduce this risk? Debra Patt, MD, MPH, MBA, executive vice president of policy and strategy at Texas Oncology, posed these questions during the ACCC 46th Annual Meeting and Cancer Center Business Summit.
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Healthcare Needs Bipartisan Support to Benefit Patients, Stabenow Says
March 7th 2020Healthcare is not political, it’s personal, Senator Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan, told an audience at the ACCC 46th Annual Meeting and Cancer Center Business Summit, imploring them to come together in a nonpartisan way to improve care access and quality and to reduce costs.
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Thinking Outside the Box to Elevate, Increase Access to Cancer Care
March 6th 2020Evolution. Disruption. Innovation. Telemedicine. A virtual exchange of information. Healthcare has lagged behind in these aspects, but it’s necessary to transcend time and distance, according to Susan Dentzer, senior policy fellow at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy.
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Does Method of Communication Influence a Woman's Understanding of Familial Breast Cancer Risk?
March 5th 2020Thirty-seven percent of women prefer to receive their lifetime risk of breast cancer through numbers and words, while 73% prefer a combination of lifetime and 10-year age-related risk.
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