Katie Kokolus

3 days ago | labroots.com | Katie Kokolus

Obesity-related cancer, a generalized term to classify specific cancer types that develop more frequently in obese patients, accounts for around 4 – 8% of cancer cases.  Cancer research has linked breast, colorectal, esophageal, kidney, and pancreatic cancers to obesity. Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist drugs have surged in popularity over the past couple of years for their ability to mediate significant weight loss in obese individuals.

1 week ago | labroots.com | Katie Kokolus

Recent advances in developing cellular therapies, a broad group of strategies that use cells to treat disease, have shown efficacy in some types of blood cancer. Chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR T) cells, treatments involving manipulating a patient’s immune cells to make them more effective in killing cancer cells,  can elicit between 40 – 90% response rates. However, researchers have faced challenges in optimizing these approaches to treat solid tumors.

1 week ago | labroots.com | Katie Kokolus

Burkitt lymphoma, a cancer that impacts a subset of immune cells called B cells, develops most often in children and young adults. Patients with Burkitt lymphoma exhibit elevated levels of a protein called activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID), which acts as an enzyme to accelerate a genetic process known as “translocation.”  In cases of Burkitt lymphoma, AID promotes translocation of MYC, a gene that codes for cellular functions like growth, maturation, and death.

2 weeks ago | labroots.com | Katie Kokolus

A recent report in JAMA Network Open shows some very promising news- cigarette smoking is on the decline in young adults!  A team of researchers aimed to determine if changes in smoking habits across sociodemographic groups would influence gaps in the smoking prevalence between high-prevalence and low-prevalence states. The researchers collected data from 18 US Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Surveys (TUS-CPS) collected between 1992 and 2022.

2 weeks ago | labroots.com | Katie Kokolus

Medicare Part D, an optional component of Medicare, helps beneficiaries pay for generic and name-brand prescription drugs. A Low Income Subsidy (LIS) can provide financial support to enrollees with incomes less than 150% of the Federal Poverty Line. However, the out-of-pocket (OOP) costs, which are the expenses that beneficiaries must pay themselves, for those who do not qualify for LIS can remain high, especially for brand-name specialty oral anticancer medications (SOAMs).