View this email in your browser<http://mailchi.mp/statnews/isyuoki1g1-579009?e=4aad33fd68>


[STAT]<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=91637d44cd&e=4aad33fd68>

Friday, December 15, 2017


[Morning Rounds by Megan Thielking]


Sponsored by
    [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/f8609630ae206654824f897b6/images/cce0f578-a6a6-451a-b9d9-acfc4d2e839f.png]



Good morning, and happy Friday! STAT reporter Andrew Joseph here filling in for Megan. To the health and medicine news we go:


The final day to sign up for an ACA health plan

Today's the last day to sign up for health care coverage in many Obamacare marketplaces, though some states have extended the deadline to give consumers more time to shop for 2018 plans. Experts expect fewer people will sign up than last year, in part because the Trump administration shortened the enrollment period and slashed funding for outreach and advertising. If you still need to sign up, check out our guide<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=9a065725bb&e=4aad33fd68> to this year's enrollment.


Hurricane Harvey and TB: lessons for future disasters

Tuberculosis treatment regimens require strict adherence, which can go awry in the wake of a disaster. But officials in Texas have new data from Hurricane Harvey that show the promise of video-enabled directly observed therapy, in which a health official checks that patients have taken their medication via a digital device. Of the 61 patients enrolled in such a program and who were affected by the storm, 59 of them did not miss a single dose, the officials reported<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=10473135b1&e=4aad33fd68>. Overall, state and local officials were tracking 282 high-priority TB patients, and all but two were accounted for within a week of the beginning of the storm. (The other two were identified the next week.) Since Hurricane Katrina, state and local TB programs have made efforts ahead of storms to provide patients with medication and to encourage patients to share contact info in case they’re displaced.


How to improve mental health care in the U.S.

A new federal committee has come out with recommendations<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=4a7ca8c8dd&e=4aad33fd68> for how the government can improve care for the 10 million adults with serious mental illness and 7 million adults and children who have serious emotional disturbances each year. Among the improvements called for:
§  Coordinate federal efforts more effectively.
§  Expand access to evidence-based best practices.
§  Steer people with serious mental illness or emotional disturbances to health settings instead of the criminal justice system. (Two million people with serious mental illness are incarcerated each year.)
§  Find ways to improve the availability and affordability of care.

The report was delivered to Congress this week by the Interdepartmental Serious Mental Illness Coordinating Committee, a group established by a 2016 law, the 21st Century Cures Act.





Sponsor content by Elysium Health

Try the supplement with results published in npj

It’s now possible to boost declining levels of NAD+, a molecule required for fundamental metabolic functions in the human body that declines as we age.

Elysium Health’s first product, Basis, is the culmination of 25+ years of aging research and is clinically proven to increase NAD+ levels by an average of 40 percent, as demonstrated by double-blind, placebo-controlled study recently published in the peer-reviewed journal: Nature Partner Journals: Aging and Mechanisms of Disease. The increase was sustained throughout the entire duration of the trial. This is the first-ever demonstration that NAD+ levels can be increased and sustained in humans over a period of time. Try Basis now.<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=4665c7c244&e=4aad33fd68>






Inside STAT:<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=23cd77f543&e=4aad33fd68> The #MeToo movement in research labs

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

(Elaine Thompson/AP)

When Dr. Reshma Jagsi published a survey on sexual harassment in biomedical research labs in 2016, she got an outpouring of response from women in the field. But as the #MeToo movement has spread, her research has gotten a second life, and this time Jagsi is hearing from male scientists astounded to hear how widespread the issue is in their field. STAT’s Leah Samuel has more<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=68e646aa6f&e=4aad33fd68> on how #MeToo is pushing biomedical science to reckon with pervasive sexual harassment.


Why your coworker can get away with 5 hours of sleep

Researchers have uncovered dozens of genes associated with the amount of sleep fruit flies need, which could help explain why some people require more or less sleep than others. For the study<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=f7c78fdaf7&e=4aad33fd68>, researchers separately bred short-sleeping and long-sleeping flies over 13 generations, leading to populations that slept for averages of 3.3 hours and 17.8 hours every day. Then, they looked at the flies’ genomes, identifying 126 changes in 80 candidate genes that were associated with sleep duration. The genes were involved in a range of biological processes, from neurodevelopment to cell communication, which suggests that “sleep is a very complex process,” said Susan Harbison of the NIH, the study's lead researcher. Importantly, the researchers found that the different flies all had the same lifespans. “There are not any obvious consequences to being a long or a short sleeper,” Harbison said.


Top schools launch initiative to help biomedical trainees

It’s a hard time to be a postdoc. So 10 universities and institutes have formed the Coalition for Next Generation Life Science to release data related to admissions, education and training programs, and career prospects for graduate students and postdocs interested in pursuing biomedical research. The initiative comes as competition for academic jobs grows increasingly intense, and is meant to help highlight alternative careers for scientists, the institutes' leaders write<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=3c956ec77f&e=4aad33fd68> in the journal Science. Participating institutions, which include UCSF, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and MIT, will publish such data as how long graduate students spend getting their doctorates and how long scientists work as postdocs before landing a permanent job, as well as what jobs former students and postdocs have.


What to read around the web today
§  Death and dysfunction: How N.J. fails the dead and betrays the living. NJ.com<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=792c4826cd&e=4aad33fd68>
§  Months after approval, breakthrough cancer drug given to just five patients. Bloomberg<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=e617cd8868&e=4aad33fd68>
§  Forty years later, Ebola survivors are still making antibodies to the virus. Science<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=3446aa617c&e=4aad33fd68>


More reads from STAT
§  Lab bankruptcies thwart Medicare efforts<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=7d29857843&e=4aad33fd68> to recover millions in testing overcharges
§  Zika-affected babies show<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=236afffc7c&e=4aad33fd68> severe health, developmental issues two years later
§  White House tamps down expectations<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=fa59d9699d&e=4aad33fd68> of additional opioid funding this year


The latest from STAT Plus
§  Industry insiders are upbeat<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=69717e3154&e=4aad33fd68> about 2018, but that doesn't mean more hiring
§  Those calculators for the true value of a drug could backfire<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=6930dab329&e=4aad33fd68>, a new report warns
§  Biosimilars may get to the market faster<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=f2b3e3f21e&e=4aad33fd68>, thanks to another court ruling




Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!
[Megan]







[Facebook]<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=a9616d6273&e=4aad33fd68>

[Twitter]<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=50da81afc7&e=4aad33fd68>

[STAT]<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=551633888c&e=4aad33fd68>