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We’ve acquired some good awards information this morning. Yesterday, my colleague and good friend Jason Mast gained the the 2024 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, for his reporting on the intersection of medical science, enterprise, and human lives. I requested Jason if there was a STAT story he was most happy with and he shared this heart-wrenching one from final summer time when the primary gene remedy was authorised for 4- and 5-year-old boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
We additionally realized that, over the weekend, the fantastic Usha Lee McFarling gained AAJA’s Excellence in Science / Environment / Health Reporting award for tales overlaying Asian American well being disparities.
Why ransomware is ‘the Covid of cybersecurity’ at U.S. hospitals
Earlier this 12 months, Change Healthcare paid $22 million to ransomware hackers after a cyberattack wreaked havoc on your entire well being care system and compromised personal data for a “substantial portion” of Individuals. And sadly for us, this wasn’t an remoted occasion. Between 2016-2021, the variety of assaults like these in well being care greater than doubled.
The rocketing variety of cyber incidents exhibits that affected person care is on the mercy of know-how’s double-edged sword, STAT’s Brittany Trang experiences. She interviewed over a dozen cybersecurity consultants, present and former federal officers, researchers, and hospital executives to higher perceive how the well being care system is defending itself in opposition to cyber threats. One key downside: A long time of laws have emphasised retaining dangerous guys out of affected person data, ignoring potential mechanisms to reduce the harm if (when) methods do go down.
Learn extra in STAT+ on how well being care turned a gold mine for hackers.
Billionaire Todd Wagner desires you mad in regards to the meals provide
Todd Wagner might be finest generally known as a co-owner of Magnolia Photos (liable for hit movies resembling this 12 months’s “Thelma” and 2009’s “Meals, Inc”) together with entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban. However now he has a brand new enterprise: FoodFight USA, an advocacy group targeted on ultra-processed meals that has the eye of among the strongest folks in Washington. Wagner says he has already met with the White Home, FDA’s Robert Califf, and dozens of congressional lawmakers.
“I would like folks indignant,” Wagner stated to STAT’s Nick Florko. “That is an indictment of meals corporations which have tainted our meals provide.”
Nick sat down with Wagner for an in depth interview on the meals system, regulatory obstacles just like the “usually acknowledged as protected” loophole, Hollywood, and extra. Learn the interview.
$5 aspirin is pretty much as good as a $300 injection. Why are folks nonetheless getting injected?
When the New England Journal of Medication printed a research discovering that aspirin was simply as efficient as injectable blood thinners at stopping life-threatening blood clots after surgical procedure, the authors believed that hospitals would instantly change their practices to replicate the findings. Offering folks with aspirin would enhance well being fairness (it’s cheaper) and high quality of life (capsules > injections).
However that was final January, and alter has been sluggish to return. In a brand new First Opinion essay, those self same physician-researchers argue that clinicians want to think about well being fairness in decision-making, not simply hospital insurance policies and previous habits.
“Not each change in drugs must be a grand gesture,” they wrote. Learn extra on how small adjustments can have huge impacts in relation to equitable care.
How ingesting habits affected mortality amongst older folks
Older adults who drink extra are at higher threat of dying than those that solely drink sometimes, in response to a research printed yesterday in JAMA Network Open. Folks whose ingesting was categorized by the research as high-risk (primarily based on grams consumed per day) confirmed increased all-cause, most cancers, and cardiovascular mortality. However even low-risk ingesting was related to increased mortality when folks had been additionally coping with health-related or socioeconomic threat elements.
The findings are primarily based on U.Ok. Biobank information from over 135,000 folks over 60 who drink. A desire for wine and solely ingesting throughout meal occasions had been discovered to be related to much less of an elevated mortality threat, however the authors write that extra analysis is required to find out if these decisions are merely reflective of more healthy life or different elements.
(Associated: Earlier this summer time, STAT’s Isa Cueto and Emory Parker wrote a terrific breakdown of ingesting habits within the U.S. and the way they have an effect on our well being.)
Is uncooked milk cheese protected to devour, given the continuing outbreak of H5N1 chicken flu in dairy cows?
The FDA and U.S. Division of Agriculture hoped to get a solution to that query in a brand new spherical of testing of economic dairy merchandise that included butter, ice cream, pasteurized and unpasteurized cheeses bought in a number of states. Of the 167 objects bought, 23 had been uncooked milk cheeses purchased in Idaho, Minnesota, Ohio, North Carolina, and Texas.
However a newly posted preprint (a but to be printed research) experiences that the companies nonetheless can not give a definitive reply, as a result of not one of the uncooked milk cheeses bought examined constructive for the virus. It has been assumed that among the processes concerned in making uncooked milk cheeses would possible kill the virus. As an illustration, below FDA guidelines, uncooked milk cheeses which can be bought throughout state traces should be aged for at least 60 days. “As a result of there was no proof of virus within the cheese, we are able to’t draw any conclusions on whether or not the present necessities of 60 days of getting older are enough to inactivate viable virus,” the FDA and USDA authors stated, including extra analysis must be performed. Proof of virus was present in among the cheeses made with pasteurized milk, however further testing confirmed it was inactivated virus.
— Helen Branswell
ICYMI: Three MDMA papers retracted over information integrity issues
Over the weekend, we realized that the journal Psychopharmacology was retracting three papers about MDMA-assisted psychotherapy — simply days after the FDA’s rejection of the carefully watched PTSD remedy.
The retractions had been as a consequence of “protocol violations amounting to unethical conduct,” significantly throughout a Section 2 trial on the research web site in Canada, Psychopharmacology stated. This web site is the place an unlicensed therapist was accused of sexual assault in civil court docket by a trial participant.
Learn extra in STAT+ from Meghana Keshavan.
What we’re studying
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Dozens of pregnant girls, some bleeding or in labor, being turned away from ERs regardless of federal legislation, AP
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You’ve misplaced weight taking new weight problems medicine. What occurs when you cease? New York Times
- Noah Lyles’ collapse with Covid: How to not handle well being on the Olympics, STAT
- ‘Scared to dying’: Nurses and residents confront rampant violence in dementia care services, KFF Health News
- Nurse started working at hospital throughout WWII and hasn’t stopped. She’s 97, Washington Post
