<Emphasis Type="Bold">Background: Abacavir sulfate (abacavir) is associated with a hypersensitivity reaction (HSR) that affects 5–8% of patients. While serious complications are rare, failure to identify it, or abacavir re-challenge following HSR, can be fatal. Genetic screening for HLA-B*5701 can identify patients...</emphasis>

Patients with HCV infection indicate a willingness to accept an increased risk of side effects for sufficient improvement in the likelihood of treatment response. </AbstractSection> Copyright Springer International Publishing AG 2012

For many treatments, a patient’s prognosis may be refined by conducting a mid-therapy assessment (MTA). When therapy lasts some time, an MTA predicts a patient’s ultimate outcome based on early signs of response. The availability and timing of such assessments also serve as a mechanism by...

The High Priority Violation (HPV) Policy represents a way to target enforcement in environmental regulations; serious air pollution violators are targeted with timely and appropriate enforcement, and such enforcement usually means high degree of regulatory scrutiny. Despite the importance of...

In the spirit of the elasticity of taxable income literature, which has primarily considered federal taxes using individual data, we estimate panel regressions of state personal income tax bases on state tax rates, structures, and other controls. We consider actual tax base data gathered...

Should an investor unwind his portfolio in the face of changing economic conditions? We study an investor's optimal trading strategy with finite horizon and transaction costs in an economy that switches stochastically between two market conditions. We fully characterize the investor's time...

Medicare can realize significant cost savings through anti-obesity medications that produce substantial weight loss, and as a result, reduce the progression to type 2 diabetes, and improve blood pressure and glycemic indicators in hypertensive and diabetic patients, respectively. Medications are...

There is much debate about whether the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill -- the greatest expansion of Medicare benefits since its creation in 1965 -- will improve the health of elderly Americans, and how much it will cost. We model how insurance affects medical care utilization, and subsequently,...

Prescription drug coverage creates a change in medical care consumption, beyond standard moral hazard, arising both from the differential cost-sharing and the relative effectiveness of different types of care. We model the dynamic supplemental health insurance decisions of Medicare...

There has been ongoing debate about the health risks associated with increased body weight among the elderly population. One issue has not been investigated thoroughly is that body weight changes over time, as both the reasons and results of, the development of chronic diseases and functional...