CRL Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Robert Stout discusses the lasting impact of COVID-19 infection in both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. With symptoms impacting all patients, the “long-hauler” survivors will likely impact insurers’ decisions into the future. Life insurance is about the financial protection of families over the long term. While…

By Michael Fulks, MD By 2018, over 42% of US adults were obese (BMI 30+) with little variation by age and sex, and almost 10% were morbidly obese (BMI 40+). These numbers continue to increase and until now, no treatment short of bariatric surgery has been effective. …

Dr. Steven J. Rigatti explores marijuana use during the COVID-19 pandemic as a follow-up to earlier commentary on alcohol and tobacco use. Introduction Prior research from CRL demonstrated significant changes in the patterns of alcohol and tobacco use during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, it was shown that smoking followed the pre-pandemic…

Recently Dr. Michael Fulks commented on 2020 mortality data from JAMA, citing an increase of 17.7% from 2019 to 2020 (click here for the full post). This week, Dr. Steven J. Rigatti comments on other recent articles discussing mortality, and how the finding may impact the insurance industry. Two recent…

Dr. Michael Fulks, Consulting Medical Director to CRL, comments on the 2020 leading causes of death in a COVID-19 world. The following table from JAMA, published in March 2021, tells us that there were roughly 500,000 more deaths in 2020 than 2019, a considerable increase of 17.7%. More than 345,000…

Marijuana testing is used by a number of life insurers in the risk assessment process. New chemical entities will make risk more difficult to predict. Read more from Drs. David Kuntz, Robert Stout and Steven Rigatti below. Drugs of abuse testing had its formal beginning with the Federal Drug Testing…

Urine protein tests offer a simple way for insurance companies to obtain an important predictor of life risk. CRL recently completed an update of prior research which confirms the value of these tests and suggests an optimal threshold at which urine protein levels should be sent for albumin testing. See…

Dr. Steven J. Rigatti, Consulting Medical Director to CRL, comments on alcohol and tobacco usage rates from a pre-pandemic period to a pandemic period. Formal studies and new research from CRL indicate trends that affect life insurers and applicant policies. Introduction The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has had numerous impacts on the…

A new paper on COVID-19 research from CRL doctors was published this week. Over 460k samples collected from July 2020 to January 2021 were analyzed using the FDA Emergency Use Authorized test, CRL Rapid Response™. Results demonstrated that the viral load in asymptomatic and symptomatic cases of COVID-19 is similar. This research also demonstrates that molecular tests using saliva are equally effective for detecting viral load in symptomatic or asymptomatic individuals.