Surgeon general's call to action, cancer screenings after tanning, & mimicking heart tissue

Surgeon general calls on public to carry naloxone

Surgeon General Jerome Adams is urging the friends and families of people at risk of opioid overdoses to carry the overdose reversal drug naloxone. Adams released the recommendation this morning in a surgeon general's advisory, which is used to highlight major public health issues. Adams said keeping naloxone on hand is like being prepared with other life-saving interventions, such as knowing how to perform CPR or using an EpiPen. “It’s easy to use, it’s life-saving, and it’s available throughout the country fairly easily,” Adams said. More from STAT's Andrew Joseph here.

Speeding up the science to tackle the opioid crisis

Meanwhile, the NIH is launching an ambitious new effort to accelerate scientific solutions to combat the opioid epidemic. “NIH is committed to bringing the full power of the biomedical research enterprise to bear on this crisis,” Dr. Francis Collins, the agency’s director, said in a speech announcing the new initiative. A few ideas that caught my eye:

§ A long-term study on chronic pain: The study will follow patients who’ve had an acute onset of muscle pain or who’ve had surgery to pinpoint biomarkers that might predict whether a person is likely to transition from experiencing acute pain to chronic pain.

§ A research network to test new pain treatments: The agency wants to build a clinical trials network to weed out pain drugs that don’t work and quickly move drugs that show promise to trials.

§ New analysis of the impact on infants: The agency wants to tap into a pediatric clinical trials network to take a deeper look at neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome.

Lab-grown heart tissue that mimics our own

a total eclipse of the heart cells. (Kacey Ronaldson-Bouchard and Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic / Columbia Engineering)

Columbia scientists have created a model of cardiac muscle that mimics the muscle found in adult hearts. Researchers turned stem cells into cardiac cells, then zapped them with electricity to make them contract as they developed. They increased the frequency of those shocks a little bit every day, which helped to imitate the changes that heart tissue undergoes during the final few weeks of fetal development. The result: Engineered tissue that closely mirrors human heart tissue, created in just four weeks. It marks another step toward creating reliable and affordable human heart models to use in drug development.

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Inside STAT: Addiction policy group partners with drug industry

The nonprofit Addiction Policy Forum is finding itself increasingly in the spotlight, both for its high-profile advocacy work and its close connections with drug makers. The bulk of the group's funding comes from pharma companies, and drug execs sit on its advisory board. But there's an even more striking connection between APF and the drug industry: its president and CEO, Jessica Hulsey Nickel. Up until last fall, Nickel was running the nonprofit while also working as a lobbyist for Alkermes, which makes a drug used to treat opioid addiction. STAT's Lev Facher has the story — read here.

Many indoor tanners aren't screened for cancer

Indoor tanners are at a higher risk of skin cancer — but few indoor tanners are being screened for the disease, according to a new report. Only 30 percent of people who'd ever tanned indoors had been screened for skin cancer, compared to 20 percent of people who hadn't tanned indoors. The FDA says people who are regularly exposed to UV radiation should be screened regularly for skin cancer, which affects about 5 million people in the U.S. each year. The authors of the new research say it’s worth looking into whether waiving copays or better educating the public about skin cancer might improve screening rates.

Spending on addiction treatment is climbing

As opioid prescriptions for people covered by large employer health insurance plans continue to fall, spending on treatment for opioid addiction and overdoses continues to climb. A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis out this morning finds people with large employer coverage received $2.6 billion in services for addiction treatment and overdoses in 2016 — a dramatic increase from the $0.3 billion spent in 2004. Half of that was for outpatient treatment, while $911 million was for inpatient care and $435 million was for prescription drugs.

Penny-sized sensors could take a patient's temperature

Biomedical engineers have come up with a system that might one day help doctors keep a closer watch on a patient’s temperature during a sleep study or monitor the pressure on a patient’s body while on bed rest. The new system is made of penny-sized wireless sensors placed all over the body. In a new proof-of-concept paper, researchers report that the system was able to reliably measure a participant’s temperature over nine hours. It was also able to detect pressure, which suggests the system could potentially be used to monitor patients stuck in hospital beds to prevent skin sores.