Governors get together to talk opioids, veteran care

The country’s governors are convening this weekend in Washington, D.C., to talk about the big issues states are facing, including health care. On the agenda at the National Governors’ Association get-together: innovative treatment and rehab strategies for veterans and the opioid crisis. On Saturday, state leaders will discuss what’s worked and what hasn’t to stem opioid misuse and overdose deaths. The NGA just picked five "learning lab" states that will be testing grounds for interventions to reduce rates of neonatal abstinence syndrome, which occurs when infants are born dependent on opioids.

COPD is far more common in rural areas

More than 15 million adults in the U.S. have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — but the condition hits rural areas particularly hard, according to a new analysis. A look at the findings:

§ COPD is almost twice as common in rural areas. In 2015, 4.7 percent of people living in large metropolitan areas reported they’d been diagnosed with COPD, compared to 8.2 percent of adults living in rural areas. And Medicare recipients in rural areas were more likely than their peers in urban areas to be hospitalized with COPD.

§ West Virginia had the highest rate of COPD. An estimated 12 percent of adults in West Virginia have the condition, compared to just under 4 percent in Utah, which had the lowest rate nationwide.

§ There’s a need for better care in hard-to-reach areas. The study’s authors say their findings highlight the need for tobacco cessation programs and expanded access to pulmonary rehab in rural areas, among other interventions.

Check out this footage of DNA gaining shape

you can do it, little chromatin! (Cees Dekker Lab TU Delft/Scixel)

For the first time ever, scientists have captured this incredibly cool footage of DNA being shaped. Inside the nucleus of every cell, there's a bunch of DNA that's coiled around proteins into chromosomes. There’s been a long-running debate among researchers about how protein complexes organize the chromosomes that make up our DNA. So researchers lassoed two ends of a double-stranded bit of DNA, stained it, and watched as a loop of DNA started stretching quickly out of the protein complex. The video might help scientists agree on a single idea of how the geneome gets organized.

What snoozing fruit flies can tell us about our sleep

If you’re still rubbing the sleep out of your eyes this morning, you’re not alone — fruit flies get snoozy the same way we do. And new research shows that the fruit fly neurons that control circadian rhythms use tiny thermostats as a way to regulate sleep. Scientists already knew that those neurons can tick the body’s internal temperature down to sleep and up before waking. Curious whether the cells that control our internal clocks also sensed room temperature, researchers exposed flies to hot and cold temperatures. They found that external temperature impacted the neurons — they were more excited around cold, and more inhibited around heat. That finding might tell us more about how our own bodies regulate sleep.

Inside STAT: Can a miniature human heart prevent patient harm?

blink and you might miss the mini heart beating. (novoheart)

Ever since biomedical engineer Kevin Costa and his colleagues created rat heart organoids able to pump like actual hearts, they've been racing to do the same thing for human hearts. Novoheart, the company Costa co-founded, has succeeded in creating the only known heart organoid with a pumping chamber. The work is part of a push to create more realistic research models that mimic human organs and can offer clues about what causes some diseases. But scientists are also betting on organoids as a way to identify problems with experimental drugs before companies take them into expensive clinical trials — and before patients are harmed. STAT’s Sharon Begley has more here.

How does cost impact contraception choices?

A new study suggests that easy access to any kind of contraception — all free of charge — might change the kind of birth control women choose for themselves. Doctors at the University of Utah tested the idea by following what kind of birth control more than 4,400 women used for six months, then offered free, same-day access to any kind of contraception they wanted. They were allowed to switch methods at any time. By the end of the study, women were 2.5 times more likely to choose an intrauterine device — the most expensive, but most effective, option — than they were at the beginning. It’s a small study in one city, but points to the role that cost plays in contraceptive choices.

What to read around the web today

§ What I saw treating the victims from Parkland should change the debate on guns. The Atlantic

§ A larger role for midwives could improve deficient care for U.S. mothers and babies. ProPublica

§ Ten ERs in Colorado tried to curtail opioids and did better than expected. Colorado Public Radio

The latest from STAT Plus

§ FDA chides Collegium for obscuring risk info about its opioid painkiller.

§ Genome editing, CRISPR, and what comes next.

Have a great weekend!