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Thursday, November 30, 2017
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Welcome to Morning Rounds. Here's what you need to know to get ahead of the day's health news.
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The 21st Century Cures Act is getting a checkup
Congress is getting an update today on how things are going with the the
21st Century Cures Act, the behemoth bipartisan law enacted last year that boosted funding for biomedical research and established new rules to speed up the drug approval process. NIH Director Francis Collins and FDA Commissioner
Scott Gottlieb will testify about progress in putting those plans into action. They’re both expected to address regenerative medicine — creating living, working tissues to replace or heal damaged organs. The law let the FDA set up a speedier review process
for innovative regenerative medicine therapies. Gottlieb says the FDA has granted that designation to 11 therapies so far, as of Oct. 31. You can watch live
here at 10 ET.
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More than half of U.S. kids might be obese as adults
Nearly 60 percent of kids today will be obese by age 35 if current trends continue, researchers
report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers pooled health data from kids and adults to project changes in height and weight trends over time. The upshot: Obesity during childhood can put kids on a trajectory
that’s hard to change. The authors estimated that 75 percent of 2-year-olds who have obesity now will still have obesity when they’re 35. Obesity rates are higher among Hispanic and black children, and the study found those racial and ethnic disparities will
likely persist as kids grow up.
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How librarians could help advance precision medicine
Local librarians, as always, are lending a helping hand — this time, to the NIH’s All of Us research initiative. It’s an ambitious effort to enroll 1 million people in a decades-long research project to
advance precision medicine. One of the project’s
goals is to make sure more than half of the participants are from groups that have been historically underrepresented in biomedical research. That’s where the librarians come in: The program is hoping to reach more participants
who rely on local libraries for resources, including access to computers and the internet. The NIH has awarded $4.5 million in funding to arm public libraries with information about the All of Us program and to support library staffers working to improve health
literacy in the community.
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Inside STAT: Creating lifelike patient models with clay
Gregory loan, right, works to develop tools like this fake head, left. (hyacinth empinado / stat)
Gregory Loan spends his day working with fake blood, silicone body parts, and robotic tools. He’s part of a team of engineers and special effects artists who create body parts and mannequins for clinicians
at Boston Children’s Hospital to practice procedures. He sculpts body parts out of clay and silicone and designs tools that allow the mannequins to respond to physicians as they work. “Whether that’s a heartbeat or it’s breathing or it’s a pulsing vein or
artery, these things will help break down that barrier and make people believe that they’re working on a real patient,” he says. STAT’s Hyacinth Empinado explores the work in a new video — watch
here.
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Combining HIV prevention tools helps cut new cases
A plan to prevent new HIV cases in Uganda is paying off. New research shows that HIV incidence dropped 42 percent between 2009 and 2016 in the Rakai District of Uganda, according to a longitudinal
study of more than 34,000 people. During that time, health officials ran a program promoting HIV testing, antiretroviral therapy to prevent spread of the virus, and voluntary circumcision, which has been shown to substantially cut the risk of heterosexually
acquired HIV infection in men. Circumcision rates rose from 15 percent in 1999 to 59 percent in 2016. And in 2016, the proportion of study participants with HIV who were taking ART hit 69 percent. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who runs the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases, said in a statement that the findings show that it’s possible to carry out this kind of HIV prevention strategy at a population level.
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Do vitamin D supplements during pregnancy make a difference?
Medical groups have disagreed for years about whether to recommend vitamin D supplements for pregnant women, and the answer isn’t going to get clearer any time soon. Some studies have suggested that taking
vitamin D while pregnant reduces a woman’s risk of preeclampsia and gestational diabetes, but other studies have failed to find a link. Now, researchers have
analyzed 43 randomized, controlled trials on vitamin D and concluded that there isn’t enough evidence to recommend taking the nutrient during pregnancy. Many of those trials were small or designed in a way that made them prone to bias. Without bigger,
well-designed trials, the authors say there won’t be a clear answer about whether vitamin D during pregnancy actually makes a difference.
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What to read around the web today
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Doctors make big money testing urine for drugs, then ignore abnormal results.
Kaiser Health News
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Hospital improperly billed patients for rape exams, New York Attorney General says.
NPR
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Sanofi expects $120 million hit as dengue vaccine hits major snag.
Reuters
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More reads from STAT
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Researcher allegedly used
thousands in NIH grant money for trips with a ballet dancer and bar tabs.
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Obamacare? That’s so last month. On Capitol Hill,
drug prices are now the hot topic.
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Thanks for reading! More tomorrow,
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