For years, we have questioned whether risks are higher for patients whose blood pressure seems to spike only at the doctor's office. A new study led by Jordana Cohen, MD, MSCE, says the answer is emphatically yes.

For nearly 20 years, eGFR equations have helped clinicians screen for kidney disease and care for patients. But the problems of racial classification related to eGFR have not been closely examined, write authors Nwamaka D. Eneanya, MD, MPH; Wei (Peter) Yang, PhD; and Peter P. Reese, MD, MSCE.

“If you have a proactive legislation that incentivizes landlords and everyone to treat for bed bugs promptly, you can really decrease the number of bed bugs quickly,” Michael Z. Levy, PhD, commented about a study he worked on with lead author Sherrie Xie, a graduate researcher in epidemiology.

Karen Glanz, Phd, MPH, and Holly Fernandez Lynch, JD, MBE, argue that the research ethics community must act responsibly when it comes to deceptive experiments like the 1960s study featured in the film Three Identical Strangers.

M. Kit Delgado, MD, MSCE, is studying how to “gamify”—or create incentives for—safety steps, so that it becomes “a much more engaging experience and more fun” to stay off the phone while driving.

Black and Hispanic Americans quit smoking successfully only half as often as their white counterparts. The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute has awarded $11 million for researchers led by Scott Halpern, MD, PhD, M.Bioethics, to find out what could help.

A rule change significantly reduces concussions from kickoffs, an especially dangerous play, in college football, reported Douglas Wiebe, PhD, and colleagues recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The positive results in the Ivy League athletic conference show how a public-health intervention can emerge from collaboration among injury epidemiologists, coaches and athletic trainers, commented Dr. Wiebe.

In a continuation of their trailblazing work, Peter Reese, MD, MSCE, and David Goldberg, MD, MSCE, report more encouraging results for patients who need transplants. A total of 20 have now successfully received hepatitis C positive kidneys plus antiviral therapy.

New research led by Vincent Lo Re III, MD, MSCE, shows that people with hepatitis C still frequently meet with insurance denials for once-a-day pills that became available in the United States in 2014 and have a 95 percent cure rate, with few side effects. Read more.

Providing aids such as nicotine patches and chewing gum doesn't help employees kick the smoking habit, and neither does giving them e-cigarettes, shows new research led by by Scott Halpern, MD, PhD. Supplementing the aids with financial incentives is three times more effective than giving them alone. Read more.