Good morning! For a restricted time, you may get your first three months of a STAT+ subscription for simply $5. It’s been a few decade since you could possibly get a footlong from Subway at that value. So it’s a reasonably whole lot for all the newest information in well being and the life sciences, when you ask me.
AAP misconstrued analysis on childhood weight problems and consuming problems
For the primary time in 15 years, the American Academy of Pediatrics final yr put ahead new scientific pointers for addressing weight problems in kids. The rules shifted the previous commonplace of “watchful ready” by means of youth to contemplating interventions like bariatric surgical procedure, GLP-1 drugs, and intensive behavioral therapy. The group suggested pediatricians to pursue therapy “on the highest stage of depth applicable for and accessible to the kid.”
The brand new pointers involved some consultants, particularly these targeted on the danger of consuming problems. The AAP cited three educational papers to assist the conclusion that these aggressive therapies wouldn’t gasoline disordered consuming behaviors. However in interviews with STAT contributor Kate Raphael, authors of every paper mentioned that the AAP misconstrued or misused their work.
“I’m not positive that I do know why we had been quoted,” one writer mentioned. Learn extra in an unique story from Raphael in regards to the AAP’s questionable use of proof to assist a few of its suggestions.
37%
That’s the proportion of respondents in a ballot of about 1,000 individuals who mentioned they’ve been vaccinated up to now however don’t really feel they want flu and Covid vaccines this yr. The poll, carried out by the Ohio State College Wexner Medical Heart, discovered that barely over half (56%) have gotten or plan to get the flu shot this season, whereas lower than half (43%) have gotten or will get the Covid vaccine.
(Why would possibly extra individuals get a flu shot than a Covid shot? STAT’s Helen Branswell answered this query earlier this yr.)
New intel in Missouri fowl flu case
Final week, we discovered about an individual in Missouri who contracted fowl flu in what STAT’s Lev Facher brilliantly known as an “immaculate an infection” — that means the individual someway bought sick with none publicity to any sick animals or poultry. However the plot thickened on Friday, when CDC revealed {that a} shut contact of that individual was additionally sick across the similar time. However the second individual was not examined for influenza.
The details about this second individual — a possible second human fowl flu case — was not talked about as soon as in an hour-long press briefing involving CDC officers on Thursday, STAT’s Helen Branswell reported. Slightly, the knowledge was disclosed Friday in its weekly report on influenza exercise. Learn extra from Helen on what we all know.
Are medical doctors’ protests in India lacking the purpose?
Medical doctors throughout India have been protesting for weeks after certainly one of their very own was raped and murdered at a public hospital by any individual who was neither a affected person nor workers. Protestors are demanding “justice for the sufferer” and a safer work atmosphere. In West Bengal, the place the homicide occurred, junior medical doctors in public hospitals have been on strike for a month.
However in a First Opinion essay, historian Kiran Kumbhar — who previously practiced medication in India himself — argues that the protests are overlooking a key side of the horrible crime. It was much less about medication, and extra about an ongoing epidemic of violence towards girls, he writes. Learn extra.
Half one million kids in Gaza vaccinated towards polio
Round 560,000 kids beneath the age of 10 have obtained the primary dose of an oral vaccine towards polio throughout WHO’s first emergency vaccination marketing campaign in Gaza, the group announced Friday. “The progress made on this first spherical is encouraging, however the job is much from completed,” Jean Gough, UNICEF Particular Consultant within the State of Palestine mentioned in a press launch. Consultants started to worry that polio was spreading within the area in July after the virus was detected in wastewater samples.
The group initially got down to vaccinate 640,000 kids within the first two weeks of September — however it’s exhausting to maintain monitor of what number of kids are left in Gaza because the inhabitants continues to flee violence and innumerable lives are misplaced in assaults, WHO mentioned. The group hopes to provoke a marketing campaign inside a month to provide kids a second dose of the vaccine, and known as for one more humanitarian pause and “a long-lasting ceasefire.”
Is it attainable to humanely make a mouse depressed?
There’s an pressing want for brand new, simpler antidepressant drugs. Earlier than these medicine are examined in people, they’re typically examined in mice — however how do scientists know which mice are depressed? Within the “compelled swim check,” developed in 1977, a mouse is positioned in a small tank crammed with water. When the mouse stops combating to flee and easily floats, unmoving, researchers label that as a depressive state. Within the “tail suspension check,” a mouse is dangled by its tail in a small chamber. Once more, as soon as it stops attempting to flee, it’s formally depressed.
These so-called depressed mice have been used to advance human medication, however psychiatrist Karen S. Greenberg writes that these strategies have had combined outcomes at greatest. In a First Opinion essay, Greenberg argues that such checks have to be retired in favor of extra fashionable, non-animal-based approaches to testing. Learn extra.
What we’re studying
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Gloves on! London Review of Books
- AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi will increase survival charges in bladder most cancers in pivotal research, STAT
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‘What occurs three months from now?’ Psychological well being after Georgia highschool taking pictures, KFF Health News
- FDA approves Roche’s injectable model of blockbuster a number of sclerosis drug, STAT
- Fuel stoves could quickly include a tobacco-style well being warning label in California, NPR
- Pfizer drug exhibits promise in cancer-related situation that causes weight reduction and weak spot, STAT
