What to watch for at today's opioids summit
The White House is hosting an opioids summit today that includes some of the nation’s top health officials. What to watch for:
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The welcome:
First Lady Melania Trump will make the opening speech. She also delivered the opening remarks at an October event at the White House to declare the opioid epidemic a national
public health emergency.
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The panels: White House adviser Kellyanne Conway will moderate
three panels, starting with a talk between HHS Secretary Alex Azar, HUD Secretary Ben Carson, and VA Secretary David Shulkin on prevention and treatment of addiction.
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The new drug czar: Jim Carroll — who stepped in as acting director
of the Office of National Drug Control Policy last week — is slated to take part in today’s summit. President Trump hasn’t actually nominated Carroll to be the permanent director of the office yet.
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Voters care about high health costs this election season
Voters have their eye on high health care costs during this year’s midterm elections. A new Kaiser Family Foundation
poll out this morning find that 22 percent of voters say they want to see candidates discuss health care costs this election season. And interestingly, the poll also found that support for the ACA is higher than it has
ever been in the eight years since the group started polling about the law. Right now, 54 percent of the public has a positive opinion about the ACA. That’s up from 50 percent in January, largely driven by more independents supporting the law.
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Lab Chat: Scientists find cells that help lung tissue regenerate
little organoids on the petri dish, little organoids all the same. (Ed Morrisey, lab / University of Pennsylvania perelman school of medicine)
Scientists have pinpointed a new kind of stem cell in the lungs that multiplies quickly after an illness like the flu — a discovery that points to potential new targets to treat lung diseases. Here’s what
Ed Morrissey of University of Pennsylvania told me about the finding, published in
Nature.
How did you find these cells in mice, and what do they do?
Our study was to look at the population of stem cell progenitors in the alveoli, which is the site of gas exchanges in the lung. We found these cells, which we called alveolar epithelial progenitor or AEP
cells, by looking for their response to a specific cellular pathway. We tagged and tracked them to see what they turned into, and they became the two different major epithelial cell types in the alveoli. And we watched how they reacted to the flu, because
flu evokes significant damage and these cells created a regenerative response in the lungs.
What did you see in human lung tissue?
We compared the mouse and human AEPs in lung organoids. We found these mouse cells behaved almost identically to the human cells. And if we subtracted those cells from the population, they don’t make organoids
at all, which tells us it’s a necessary cell type. That gives us information — we know what kinds of molecules and pathways are active in that cell, so we can look to see if we can inhibit or activate them to promote therapeutic effects.
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Sponsor content by PROCTER & GAMBLE
Enzymes, directed evolution, and the science of clean laundry
Turns out some of those everyday household products you may not think about much — but couldn’t live without — are a lot more complex than they get credit for. Take laundry detergent. That bottle of Tide
sitting next to your washer is powered by enzymes that bring about specific biochemical reactions in the wash. But not all enzymes are created equal.
Here are five things you probably didn’t know about your detergent.
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Inside STAT: Will a new Trump appointee chip away at pharma's monopolies?
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers say they want to lower drug prices. The FDA commissioner has urged the drug industry to "end the shenanigans." And at the White House, President Trump says now is the time to address
drug prices. But the real power to do something could lie across the Potomac, where the newly installed director of the Patent and Trademark Office might be able to take more direct actions to rein in drug makers than perhaps any other person in Washington.
STAT's Erin Mershon explains why — read
here.
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The striking difference in mortality rates nationwide
(health of women and children report)
A new United Health Foundation
report out today highlights the striking disparities in women and children's health nationwide. The report — which is based on publicly available health data — found that black children have a mortality rate twice as high
as Asian children and 1.5 times as high as white children. And the maternal mortality rate among black women is 4 times higher than the rate among Asian and Pacific Islander and Hispanic women, and 2.5 times higher than the rate among white women.
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HHS is looking for America's Next Top Preventive Care Expert
We’re all familiar with the guidelines that tell us how to go about our medical care — when to get screened for which cancers, which pills to take for which conditions, and so on. Those recommendations often
come down from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts that makes evidence-based recommendations about preventive health care. There’s a search underway for fresh faces to join its ranks — the federal health department just
announced it’s taking
nominations for new experts to serve on the task force starting in January 2019.
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Do varicose veins make blood clots more likely?
A new study suggests varicose veins are linked to
an increased risk of one kind of blood clot — but there are some big caveats to that finding. Varicose veins are pretty common — nearly a quarter of adults in the U.S. have the twisted, enlarged veins. Researchers combed through more than a decade of health
data on 212,000 people in Taiwan with varicose veins and just as many without them and found varicose veins were linked to a higher risk of deep venous thrombosis, a kind of blood clot. But it's an observational study that only includes people who sought medical
care, which might be those with varicose veins so severe they require treatment.
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What to read around the web today
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A flawed system fails to inform the public about doctors who elude consequences.
Medpage Today
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Treating and housing the mentally ill is harder than jailing them. But it might actually work.
Los Angeles Times
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Red and blue states move further apart on health policy.
Wall Street Journal
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