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Happy Halloween! Tonight I’m going to a wedding rehearsal dressed as Jo March from Little Women. The bride and groom dress up as Buttercup and Westley from “The Princess Bride,” which might be the most precious thing I’ve ever heard.
(To get into the creepy mood, check out this STAT 1.0 era story at five ghost hospitals in the US)
Bird flu was found in a pig for the first time. This is not good
The H5N1 bird flu virus has been found in a pig on a farm in Oregon, the USDA reported yesterday. The pig showed no signs of illness. There were five pigs on the farm, all of which were euthanized for testing. A second pig may also have been infected, Oregon authorities later revealed. Two others have tested negative.
Why is this a big problem? As STAT’s Helen Branswell explains, pigs are sometimes called a “mixing vessel” for flu viruses, because they can be infected with both avian and human flu viruses. If a pig is infected with both at the same time, the viruses can exchange genes, potentially creating a hybrid virus that can spread to and among humans better than regular bird flu viruses. This is called ‘rescheduling’.
Oregon state veterinarian Ryan Scholz said this version of H5N1 came from wild birds — it is not related to the strain that has been spreading among U.S. dairy cows since the spring. Read more from Helen about what we know.
How good are Apple’s new Airpod hearing features?
Many people with hearing loss never receive treatment. So there was immediately a lot of excitement among audiologists about what’s new from Apple AirPods Pro features that allow users to test their hearing and use the popular earbuds as a hearing aid for the $249 price tag.
Apple says the earbuds are “clinical grade” – but what exactly does that mean, and do they live up to expectations? STAT’s Mario Aguilar spoke with Apple executives and hearing experts about the limitations of the new technology and the benefits it can bring. Read more.
Some voters’ health policies are literally betting on this election
Everyone has an opinion about who should or will win the presidential election next week. But some people actually bet money on it. More than $100 million was wagered on Kalshi, an online gambling company, during the presidential election, according to an online gambling company. story from NPR yesterday
When I looked at the company’s election forecast prediction Yesterday there appeared to be a 63% chance that Trump would win. What would that mean for healthcare? It is difficult to predict exactly. Probably yes preserve the ACA. He is promised to tackle chronic diseases, in the face of a growingMake America healthy again” movement. He has held strong divided policy against immigrants and transgender people, while soothing his position on a national abortion ban.
But if Harris wins? The basics of hair healthcare platform lies in the ACA and the Inflation Reduction Act – two laws passed by Democrats. She has been advocating for it for a long time reproductive health careand recently proposed canceling medical debt And expanding Medicare price negotiations.
We’ll know the outcome soon enough. But if you’re tired of election news, I recommend a story from STAT’s Lev Facher about how some addiction professionals want the field focus more on gambling as a public health problem?
Research shows that the police have unfettered access to information about prescription drugs
As more and more states implement bans on gender-affirming hormones for young people, researchers became interested in how easy it is for police to access data on who uses drugs like testosterone. A study published yesterday in JAMA found that testosterone prescribing data in nearly half of U.S. states was accessible to law enforcement without safeguards such as a warrant or subpoena.
That’s possible because for controlled substances like testosterone, every state has a prescription drug monitoring program that tracks their dispensing. Some of these programs also track medical codes, potentially allowing law enforcement agencies to determine from the data whether someone is receiving a drug like testosterone because they are cisgender with hypogonadism, or because they are a trans man.
Only eleven states require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before accessing prescription data, while fourteen states require a subpoena. (At the federal level, drug enforcement can always access this data without a warrant.) More research is needed to better understand the implications of this access, the authors write — specifically whether the data is used to enforce gender-related bans to enforce. confirm care.
The latest news about GLP-1s
There were two major updates yesterday involving the blockbuster weight-loss drugs Ozempic (the diabetes version of semaglutide) and Wegovy (the weight-loss version). Here’s what you need to know:
- On the regulatory side: All doses of Ozempic and Wegovy are listed as available on the FDA’s drug shortage list as of yesterday, STAT’s Elaine Chen reported. This raises the possibility that the drugs could soon be delisted completely, which could pose challenges for patients who rely on compounded versions of the drugs (which are only legally available due to the shortage). Read more.
- About the science: In a 68-week study, Wegovy reduced arthritic knee pain in people with a high BMI. Participants taking the drug lost an average of almost 14% of their body weight – changes that were accompanied by a reduction in pain. Read more from STAT’s Isa Cueto about the study and what it could mean for patients.
Autism diagnoses among women and racial minorities have increased in the 2010s
Men and boys are more likely to be diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder than women and girls. But an analysis of electronic health records between 2011 and 2022, published yesterday in JAMA network openedResearch found that diagnosis rates among girls and women have increased significantly over the past decade, narrowing the gender gap from a four-to-one to a three-to-one ratio of men to women. Similar long-standing diagnostic differences between white patients and racial/ethnic minorities also narrowed over time.
The data shows that children aged 5 to 8 were diagnosed most often, with an increase from 2.3 per 1,000 children in 2011 to 6.3 in 2022. But the biggest increase was among those aged 26 to 34 year-olds, a group that had 450% more annual diagnoses by the end of the period.
It should be noted: none of these changes are necessarily caused by a sudden change in the number of people with autism. Instead, the study authors point to changes in screening practices, diagnostic definitions and policies, as well as increased advocacy and education, including on social media.
What we read
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Can John Green Make You Care About Tuberculosis? New York Times
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More men are getting vasectomies since Roe was overturned. Scientific American
- What Trump and RFK Jr.’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Gets Right – and Very Wrong, STAT
- The screen you really don’t want to see in a classroom, Atlantic Ocean
- I am a geriatric doctor. This is what I think is going on with Trump’s executive position, STAT