View this email in your browser<http://mailchi.mp/statnews/tk-580521?e=4aad33fd68> [STAT]<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=4eca544b77&e=4aad33fd68> Tuesday, February 20, 2018 [Morning Rounds by Megan Thielking] Sponsored by [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/f8609630ae206654824f897b6/images/5c94f79b-d7f6-4ebe-b994-812f3c07209d.png] Good morning, everyone, and welcome back from the long weekend! I'm here to get you ahead of the day's news in science and medicine. Gene drive experts convene to talk ethics Dozens of African regulators and scientists are convening in Gabon this week to discuss the ethical, legal, and environmental concerns surrounding the use of genetically engineered mosquitoes designed to eliminate malaria. It’s the fourth and final meeting in a series convened across Africa on “gene drives,” which are supercharged genetic modifications that spread to nearly every single offspring. In Burkina Faso, scientists are already laying the groundwork<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=205a5a1bb1&e=4aad33fd68> for potential release. They’re currently working with genetically engineered mosquitoes that don’t involve gene drive, and submitted an application at the end of last year with the country’s regulators to take those mosquitoes out into the wild. Is the worst stretch of the flu season behind us? It’s possible that this year’s particularly nasty flu season might’ve plateaued<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=2d77e18073&e=4aad33fd68>, but it’s still too soon to say whether it has peaked. The latest numbers from the CDC — which cover the week of Feb. 4 to Feb. 10 — show that 7.5 percent of people seeing a doctor that week were there due to a flu-like illness, down slightly from 7.7 percent the week before. And 43 states are still seeing heavy hospital traffic when it comes to patients with flu-like symptoms, the same number as the week before. Later this week, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will take another close look at FluMist, the only non-injectable flu vaccine that's licensed in the U.S. For the past two years, the panel didn't recommend the vaccine because of concerns it didn't protect against H1N1 flu viruses. But FluMist maker MedImmune is hoping to persuade the committee to restore its recommendation. There's growing concern<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=f180441506&e=4aad33fd68> the company might abandon FluMist if the company can't find a clear path back to its biggest market. Inside STAT:<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=f56a385671&e=4aad33fd68> The bygone era of virus hunting [87396691-e5ca-4560-8a09-e04a5b7a5bdb.png]<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=26deeb5e30&e=4aad33fd68> c.j. Peters in his home in galveston, texas. (michael starghill jr. for stat) Clarence James Peters spent his career as a virus hunter, trudging to remote villages to steal the secrets of diseases like Bolivian hemorrhagic fever and Rift Valley fever. Now 77, Peters can still recount the vivid details of his time in the field, mostly in Latin America, where the work was interesting and the bosses were out of sight. “If you’re in the shadow of the flagpole from headquarters, you’re in trouble,” he says. The stories Peters can tell paint a picture of the golden age of virus hunting, when scientists often did first and asked second. Take, for example, the time Peters found himself driving through the suburbs of Washington, D.C., with five plastic-wrapped monkeys, their frozen corpses full of Ebola viruses, in the trunk of his car. Read Helen Branswell’s fascinating profile of Peters here<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=29e8b32956&e=4aad33fd68>. Sponsor content by Amgen Assessing minimal residual disease in blood cancer: an evolving technology that continues to advance A diagnostic test is only as good as the technology behind it — and for blood cancers like acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the technology often involves a microscope through which a pathologist looks for signs of cancerous cells.1 There are more precise methods that take advantage of modern molecular tools to detect minute amounts of cancer present at concentrations that less sensitive tests cannot detect.2 Oncologists are now calling for what is known as minimal residual disease monitoring to be “part of the equation.” Learn more. <https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=1d7530de59&e=4aad33fd68> 1Gökbuget N, et al. Blood. 2012;120:1868-1876. 2Paeitta E. Bone Marrow Transplant. 2002;29:459-465. USA-103-057860 Doctors marathon 'Grey's Anatomy' to test its accuracy There’s a lot about "Grey’s Anatomy" that feels like a stretch — remember when a massive storm knocked out the hospital's power and Meredith had to guide an intern to find her internal bleeding in a dark OR after her C-section? In a new paper<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=a081ccefbf&e=4aad33fd68>, researchers who marathoned 269 episodes of the show<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=16c7048d6c&e=4aad33fd68> have found the show's portrayal of trauma doesn't line up with data about real-life trauma patients. The show was more morbid — the death rate was three times higher — and less realistic about long-term care. Only 6 percent of the trauma patients on Grey’s were transferred to long-term care, compared to 22 percent of actual patients. If you, like me, are wondering how anyone can watch so much "Grey's Anatomy," here's your answer: Study author Dr. Jordan Weinberg tells me that he and his colleagues spared themselves some of the drama by fast-forwarding through the show to only watch the parts with patients. A potential new way to taper down opioid doses A new study<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=b996727aa9&e=4aad33fd68> points to a potential way to help some chronic pain patients taper their use of prescription opioids. Doctors helped design individualized taper plans for 82 patients at a California pain clinic, 51 of whom participated all the way through a four-month follow-up survey. A quick look at the findings: § The details: The average dose of opioids dropped, but patients didn’t report more intense pain. The likelihood that patients would be able to more than halve their opioid dose wasn’t impacted by the length of time they’d taken opioids, their starting dose, or their baseline pain intensity. § The takeaway: “Our data challenge common notions that patients taking high-dose opioids will fail outpatient opioid tapers or that duration of opioid use predicts taper success,” the study’s authors write. § The caveat: This is just a small study in one pain clinic. To understand whether this approach would work more broadly, we’d need more research. A drug for hand pain isn't any better than a placebo A drug that’s sometimes given to patients with pain due to osteoarthritis in their hands isn’t any better than a placebo pill, according to results from a randomized trial just published in Annals of Internal Medicine<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=1a21928c67&e=4aad33fd68>. It’s estimated that up to 31 percent of adults over age 70 have symptoms of osteoarthritis in their hands. Sometimes, doctors give a drug called hydroxychloroquine — which was approved to treat malaria — as an off-label treatment. Researchers assigned 248 patients to either get the drug or a placebo — and six months out, there was no significant difference in pain between the two groups. What to read around the web today § Dental inequality hurts Americans. New York Times<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=d5e9747fbe&e=4aad33fd68> § A doctor’s regrets lead to call to action on opioid patients. Boston Globe<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=d32c96610a&e=4aad33fd68> § Bad bedside manner: Bank loans signed in the hospital leave patients vulnerable. Kaiser Health News<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=35ecafa96e&e=4aad33fd68> More reads from STAT § Bacterial sex: the promiscuous process driving antibiotic resistance<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=78eb10a8d6&e=4aad33fd68>. § Judge voids order Gilead must pay $2.5 billion<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=bf430a606b&e=4aad33fd68> to Merck over a patent dispute. The latest from STAT Plus § In biotech, it pays to be bullish on Alzheimer’s trials<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=22b2b7bd05&e=4aad33fd68>, even when facts stand in the way. § Philippines threatens to sue Sanofi <https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=3daf7f6f5a&e=4aad33fd68> for refusing to issue refunds for unused dengue vaccine. Thanks for reading! More tomorrow, [Megan] [Facebook]<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=0fb673605d&e=4aad33fd68> [Twitter]<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=5a517456d4&e=4aad33fd68> [STAT]<https://statnews.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f8609630ae206654824f897b6&id=d71dd04851&e=4aad33fd68>