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Highlights Fentanyl has meaningfully spread to U.S. illicit drug markets west of the Mississippi. 2019 and 2020 mortality records were identified from seven jurisdictions. Share of national synthetic narcotic mortality tripled from 2017 to 2019. Fentanyl is increasingly involved in fatal stimulant, heroin, and pill overdoses.

Purpose of ReviewThis review evaluated gender and race/ethnic representation in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).Recent FindingsWhites comprise 33% of prevalent SLE cases and comprised 51% of RCT enrollees. Blacks encompass 43% of prevalent SLE cases, but only represented 14% of RCT enrollees. Hispanics comprise 16% of prevalent SLE cases and 21% of RCT enrollees, while Asians comprise 13% of prevalent SLE cases and 10% of RCT enrollees. Males encompass 9% of SLE cases and 7% of RCT enrollees. The reporting and representation of males have remained stable over time, although their representation in RCTs is slighter lower than the prevalence of SLE in males. The representation of Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans increased over time. However, the representation of blacks among RCT participants has decreased since 2006–2011.SummaryRCTs among SLE patients need larger sample sizes in order to evaluate heterogeneity in outcomes among racial subgroups. It is imperative that novel strategies be developed to recruit racial minorities with SLE by identifying and improving barriers to RCT enrollment in order to better understand the disease’s diverse population.

Background: There has been considerable interest in the development of innovative service delivery modules for prioritizing resources in sexual health delivery in response to dwindling fiscal resources and rising infection rates.Methods: This study aims to derive and validate a risk scoring algorithm to accurately identify asymptomatic patients at increased risk for chlamydia and/or gonorrhea infection. We examined the electronic records of patient visits at sexual health clinics in Vancouver, Canada. We derived risk scores from regression coefficients of multivariable logistic regression model using visits between 2000 and 2006. We evaluated the model's discrimination, calibration, and screening performance. Temporal validation was assessed in visits from 2007 to 2012.Results: The prevalence of infection was 1.8% (n = 10,437) and 2.1% (n = 14,956) in the derivation and validation data sets, respectively. The final model included younger age, nonwhite ethnicity, multiple sexual partners, and previous infection and showed reasonable performance in the derivation (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve = 0.74; Hosmer-Lemeshow P = 0.91) and validation (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve = 0.64; Hosmer-Lemeshow P = 0.36) data sets. A risk score cutoff point of at least 6 detected 91% and 83% of cases by screening 68% and 68% of the derivation and validation populations, respectively.Conclusions: These findings support the use of the algorithm for individualized risk assessment and have important implications for reducing unnecessary screening and saving costs. Specifically, we anticipate that the algorithm has potential uses in alternative settings such as Internet-based testing contexts by facilitating personalized test recommendations, stimulating health care-seeking behavior, and aiding risk communication by increasing sexually transmitted infection risk perception through the creation of tailored risk messages to different groups.

This systematic review examines the representation in rheumatoid arthritis randomized clinical trials of racial/ethnic minority groups compared with the representation of these populations in the United States and the representation of women and elderly people with the prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis among these groups nationally.