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Friday, August 25, 2017


[Morning Rounds by Megan Thielking]

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Good morning, and happy Friday! STAT reporter Andrew Joseph here, filling in for Megan to deliver your daily dose of health and medicine news.


HIV status visible on mailing from Aetna

Thousands of people with HIV received mailed letters <http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=7ca61a3ea7&e=4aad33fd68> from Aetna last month that may have disclosed their HIV status on the envelope. The letters, which described a change in pharmacy benefits, came in envelopes with a small window; visible through that was text about treatments for the virus. Aetna has apologized for the breach and is notifying state and federal authorities. Advocacy groups have said the breach caused “incalculable harm” and that some people affected have filed civil rights complaints with the government. Aetna said the mailings went to about 12,000 people.


HPV vaccination rate for at-risk population lags

Survivors of childhood cancer may be at a higher risk of becoming infected with sexually transmitted HPV, which can cause a range of cancers. Despite that, HPV vaccination rates are lower among these young cancer survivors than among other people of the same age, a new study reveals. Only 24 percent of pediatric cancer survivors in the study had started a course of HPV shots, compared to 40.5 percent of their peers who had not had cancer. The study<http://statnews.us11.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=ce9c08d4c6&e=4aad33fd68>, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, suggests doctors may be part of the problem: Nearly three quarters of the survey participants said their healthcare provider had not recommended the HPV vaccine.


Lab Chat: The neurons that pick up on intonation

Scientists have pinpointed the group of neurons that helps us understand where the emphasis falls in a sentence, and thus tease apart its meaning. For the study<http://statnews.us11.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=ad986e1c16&e=4aad33fd68>, published in Science, researchers studied neuronal activity as participants listened to synthesized voices reading short sentences with different tones. They discovered that while some neurons focused on the actual words, and others focused on the overall vocal pitch, another group was locked in on where the emphasis came. Here's what lead author Claire Tang of UCSF told me about the study:

What was known about these neurons before this study?

These groups of neurons weren’t really looked at because they didn’t have a specific response to what we thought were the most important aspects of speech, which are the groups of consonants and vowels that make up words. But it was known that in this area of the brain, activity increases when there’s music or speech.

What are these neurons doing when listening to a sentence?

For the intonation neurons, they really don’t care what the word is that is emphasized, but only that the pitch is raised. We were able to show that the neurons responded to specific portions of relative pitch. It didn’t matter what the absolute pitch was — a high or low voice. Based on the speaker, if they had a pitch increase on a word, the neurons had an increased response.





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Fighters shed pounds to make weight. Are there risks?

[87396691-e5ca-4560-8a09-e04a5b7a5bdb.png]

can you smell what the rock cooked us for dinner? (Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)

The sports world is all abuzz about this weekend's "superfight" between UFC champion Conor McGregor and undefeated boxer Floyd Mayweather. But today, they’ll have to prove they’re ready by stepping on a scale. Both men need to weigh in below 154 pounds, and Mayweather has been throwing some jabs about how McGregor looks “extremely heavy.” So how do fighters drop weight so quickly, and what are the health risks involved? “I always tell people if health was your number one priority, MMA is not the sport you should be going into,” McGregor’s nutritionist told STAT’s Max Blau for this story<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=e254deca11&e=4aad33fd68>.


Seasonal changes seen in hunter-gatherers' gut bacteria

A group of much-studied hunter-gatherers in Tanzania has given scientists insights into everything from diet to exercise to oral health of ancient human societies. Now, in a new study<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=1d79590990&e=4aad33fd68>, researchers have discovered that the gut microbes of the Hadza — one of the few groups still living traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles — change seasonally, corresponding to regular shifts in their diets. Some bacteria dwindled during the wet season — making the microbiome of the Hadza more similar to those of people who live in industrialized areas — but then they rebounded with the dry season. The new discoveries about the seasonality of the Hadza’s microbiomes add to the evidence that diet is a main factor driving the loss of bacterial diversity in the guts of modern humans that has occurred over thousands of years.


Older adults report frequently mishearing clinicians

Another effect of age-related hearing loss: problems understanding what your clinician is telling you. In a new survey<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=05ebfbc9e0&e=4aad33fd68> of 100 older adults, 43 of them said they had misheard a physician, nurse, or both during either a primary care visit or hospital stay. The study did not look at whether any of these miscommunications caused medical errors, but the authors noted that the prevalence of errors goes up among older patients, and communication issues are considered to be a leading cause of errors.


What to read around the web today

  *   Naked, filthy, strapped to a chair for 46 hours. A mentally ill inmate's last days.  LA Times<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=f6dd108c52&e=4aad33fd68>
  *   Sex, drugs, and the return of syphilis. New York Times<http://statnews.us11.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=3b1af116a4&e=4aad33fd68>
  *   There is now a Google test for depression. CNBC<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=2e6c78629f&e=4aad33fd68>



More reads from STAT

  *   It's past time to include mental health<http://statnews.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=5558bac4f3&e=4aad33fd68> in a doctor's visit.
  *   To protect students, colleges need to ban<http://statnews.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=340a6bc2e3&e=4aad33fd68> tanning beds.
  *   Rural-urban gap in some vaccination rates<http://statnews.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=ba1b3e41f8&e=4aad33fd68> leave health officials puzzled.



The latest from STAT Plus

  *   Could activating stem cells promote hair growth<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=c00d56d514&e=4aad33fd68>? Scientists think they have the metabolic root.
  *   Under pressure, Gilead expands <http://statnews.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=a49ec9b038&e=4aad33fd68> Sovaldi licensing deal.
  *   Antibiotic prescriptions drop, but size of decline<http://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=13fb8b5b25&e=4aad33fd68> depends on where you live.




Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend! See you Monday,

[Megan]










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