Bird flu, breast cancer and Barbie

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I’m Brittany Trang, STAT health technology reporter and your new Friday morning host.

A year ago today, some of us from STAT dressed in pink and watched the Barbie movie together. I still think about the ambiguity of the film’s last line, and as you’ll see below, so do medical researchers.

There are now a total of 13 cases of bird flu in humans in the US

The number of confirmed human infections with the bird flu virus linked to the ongoing outbreak among dairy cattle has risen to 13, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday. confirmed three additional cases in Colorado. They are currently referred to simply as H5 and not H5N1, because CDC labs are still typing the neuraminidase, the N number in the virus’s name, STAT’s Helen Branswell reports.

The cases — which Colorado previously announced as “presumptive positive” — involve people who were culling infected poultry on a farm in the state. Genetic analysis of the virus in that poultry outbreak shows that it is similar to the virus circulating in cows; This is believed to be one of several cases where H5N1 has spread in herds of cows to nearby poultry farms. Of the 13 human cases, 10 have been discovered in Colorado, which also has the highest number of reported infected dairy herds — 51, according to the state agency. Department of Agriculture. Michigan and Texas have reported two and one human case, respectively.

A paradox of mastectomy in breast cancer patients

Weighing treatment options for breast cancer is a painful choice. New research published in JAMA Oncology confirms the prevailing knowledge that cutting out the cancerous tumor, getting a single mastectomy, or a double mastectomy all yield about the same survival rate: more than 80% over 20 years of follow-up.

However, cancer reporter Angus Chen of STAT writes that the new study yields a puzzling finding: Survivors who eventually developed a second breast cancer in their opposite or contralateral breast had a higher risk of death from breast cancer, even though a double mastectomy died at the same overall rate.

“That seems like a paradox,” says Steven Narod, a breast cancer researcher and physician at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto and lead author of the study. “If you get contralateral breast cancer, your risk of death increases. But preventing it does not improve your survival.”

Read more from Angus, including possible explanations for the mystery.

The striking increase in suicides among Asian-Americans

Recent U.S. data shows that while suicide rates among young white people fell in 2018 and 2019, rates among Asian American and Pacific Islander youth increased. In a recent one JAMA Network Open Researchresearchers took a closer look at suicide trends among Asian-Americans ages 10 to 19.

Looking at cause-of-death codes in a data set ranging from 1999 to 2021, researchers found that suicide rates for girls began rising in 2004, peaking at nearly 3 per 100,000 people in 2020. For boys, rates began rising in 2009 and peaked she. at 8 per 100,000 people in 2019.

The authors could not explain what caused the increases, but suggested that this upward trend may have stemmed from economic hardship in Asian American households during the Great Recession, as well as increased exposure to sexism and racism – especially for Asian American women and females. girls – with the spread of social media.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. For TTY users, use your preferred relay service or dial 711 then 988.

How Kamala Harris’ late mother shaped her views on health care

Last Mother’s Day, Kamala Harris posted a photo of herself and her sister in brightly colored coats, standing next to their mother on the sidewalk. “My mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, had two goals in life: to cure breast cancer and to raise my sister and me,” she wrote.

Gopalan was best known for her research into the relationship between progesterone receptors and breast cancer. She worked at institutions including McGill and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, served on the President’s Special Commission on Breast Cancer under Clinton, and peer-reviewed for the NIH before her death from colon cancer in 2009.

It is uncertain what the future of Biden’s Cancer Moonshot and the NIH might be under a change in administration. With Harris as the likely Democratic presidential nominee, it’s interesting to see what she’s said about her mother, health care, and thinking like a scientist, even a policymaker. Go deeper with this story from STAT’s Rohan Rajeev.

Barbie, the SEO queen of gynecology

Last summer’s Barbie movie spawned endless memes (even the The American Medical Association intervened), songs of the summer from Billie Eilish And Dua Lipaand a shortage of bright pink paint. But did the iconic final scene – Barbie’s very enthusiastic declaration, “I’m here to see my gynecologist” – spark a renewed interest in getting Pap smears?

Other high-profile medical mentions, like Katie Couric’s colonoscopy on television and that of Angelina Jolie essay about breast cancer in the New York Times – led to increase in colonoscopies And genetic testresearchers in JAMA Network Open wondered if Barbie did the same.

Looking at online search trends, researchers reported that while searches for “gynecologist” and “gynecologist definition” were at 51% and 154% respectively at the time of the Barbie movie’s release, there was no change in searches for gynecologist appointments. It wasn’t clear to researchers whether people needing a gynecologist’s definition were the same people needing gynecological care, but the overall trend suggested that increased awareness did not translate into an increase in the number of people seeking dates.

Hot mice unlock the brain’s secret to pain placebos

The placebo effect is mysterious and often annoying in clinical trials, but new research in nature provides new evidence for which brain circuitry is responsible for the placebo effect in the treatment of pain.

A team led by researchers at the University of North Carolina conditioned mice to expect pain relief by placing them in a room with two chambers: one with a warm floor and one with a comfortably warm floor. They induced the placebo effect by making both rooms warm, but mice kept crossing into the room they were conditioned to expect would be less hot. By studying their brains, researchers were able to identify which specific neurons seemed to be responsible for convincing the mice that they were experiencing pain relief. Injecting the mice with naloxone, an opioid receptor antagonist, abolished the placebo effect, suggesting that the brain’s natural opioid system is involved in modulating those neurons.

Although there is still more work to be done, researchers noted that their results indicate that the pathway they identified could be addressed by new pain-relieving interventions such as medications or cognitive behavioral therapies.

What we read

• Without federal oversight, nursing homes will put profit over care, STAT

• The poor training of American nurses, Working week
• Do medical errors creep up on hospitals when interns arrive? Yes, but the “July effect” is minimal, Boston Globe

• We bought everything it took to make $3 million worth of fentanyl. All it took was $3,600 and a web browser. Reuters

• The plastic industry’s $30 million lie Heated
• You don’t have to worry about toxic metals in your tampons, Slate