April 1, 2024
(Axios) – There’s been a major shift in what Americans say — or won’t say — about our weight. Why it matters: The blockbuster success of anti-obesity drugs is driving efforts to frame obesity as a chronic disease with clear … Read More
April 1, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Kazen, a jovial 61-year-old, is a pioneer in this kind of court-supervised treatment, which is designed to help people with the most severe mental illnesses who have already been jailed or treated in emergency rooms several … Read More
March 28, 2024
(The Economist) – This is a series in The Economist Technology Quarterly. The series includes: AIs Will Make Health Care Safer and Better (Read More) Artificial Intelligence Has Long Been Improving Diagnoses (Read More) Medical AIs with Human Faces Are … Read More
March 28, 2024
(New York Times) – Most people, study after study shows, don’t take the medicines prescribed for them. It doesn’t matter what they are — statins, high blood pressure drugs, drugs to lower blood sugar, asthma drugs. Either patients never start … Read More
March 28, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – The first major U.S. health insurers have agreed to start paying for the popular anti-obesity drug Wegovy for certain people on Medicare with heart-related conditions. CVS Health, Elevance Healthand Kaiser Permanente said they would cover Novo … Read More
March 27, 2024
(STAT News) – The lobby of this addiction clinic is unremarkable, really, except for the network of metal chutes and tubes that hug the walls as they snake downward from a pharmacy on the upper floors. Every few minutes, a … Read More
March 27, 2024
(Nature) – Vaccines are usually used to prevent infectious diseases. A therapeutic cancer vaccine is different. Rather than teaching the immune system to recognize pathogens in advance of an infection, these vaccines use identifying proteins produced by cancer cells, known … Read More
March 26, 2024
(New York Times) – During about 90 minutes of argument, most of the justices seemed doubtful that the plaintiffs, who do not prescribe abortion pills or regularly treat abortion patients, even had standing to bring the challenge. The justices, including … Read More
March 26, 2024
(KFF Health News) – Rosen was one of more than 275,000 cancer patients in the United States who are infused each year with fluorouracil, known as 5-FU, or, as in Rosen’s case, take a nearly identical drug in pill form … Read More
March 26, 2024
(New York Times) – The Food and Drug Administration has greenlit a new medicine to protect some of the people most at risk from Covid. The agency granted emergency use authorization for Pemgarda, a monoclonal antibody infusion, in immunocompromised people … Read More
March 26, 2024
(Washington Post) – Using a swab inside the cheek and a sophisticated computer algorithm, a DNA test recently approved by federal regulators promisesto assess genetic risk of opioid addiction. The test’s maker says results give doctors and patients a crucial … Read More
March 26, 2024
(The Atlantic) – Amid the hype around the GLP-1s, with their multibillion-dollar sales and corresponding reputation as a modern miracle of medicine, a sort of pharmaco-amnesia has taken hold across America. Patients and physicians alike have forgotten, if indeed they … Read More
March 25, 2024
(Axios) – Eliminating the federal right to abortion surprisingly hasn’t reversed a yearslong rise in the number of legal abortions in the U.S. — but a case the Supreme Court hears on Tuesday just might. Why it matters: The justices will … Read More
March 25, 2024
(NPR) – On Tuesday, the same justices who undid constitutional protection for abortion will hear arguments in the next frontier of abortion restriction: tightening access across the country for a medication that’s used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions nationally. … Read More
March 22, 2024
(NPR) – For the first time, Medicare will allow coverage of one of the new blockbuster weight-loss drugs for enrollees in Part D plans. The plans may now cover Wegovy when prescribed to prevent heart attacks and strokes, according to … Read More
March 21, 2024
(Washington Post) – Physicians say they’re seeing an explosion of birth-control misinformation online targeting a vulnerable demographic: people in their teens and early 20s who are more likely to believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms that … Read More
March 21, 2024
(New York Times) – Before he died last year, Roland Griffiths was arguably the world’s most famous psychedelics researcher. Since 2006, his work has suggested that psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms, can induce mystical experiences, and that those experiences, in … Read More
March 21, 2024
(NPR) – Despite the improvement, U.S. life expectancy remains below its peak of 78.9 years reached in 2014. It also lags behind other comparable countries. Final data compiled by CDC shows two public health crises, the COVID pandemic and overdoses … Read More
March 21, 2024
(KFF Health News) – Online stores sprang up during the covid-19 pandemic’s telehealth boom touting testosterone as a cure-all for men’s age-related illnesses — despite FDA rules issued years ago restricting such “low testosterone” advertising. In ads on Google, Facebook, … Read More
March 21, 2024
(Nature) – A small Indian biotechnology company is producing a home-grown version of a cutting-edge cancer treatment known as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy that was pioneered in the United States. CAR-T therapies are used mainly to treat blood … Read More
March 19, 2024
(New Scientist) – A widely used anti-clotting drug called heparin is currently obtained from the intestines of a trillion pigs a year, which means there is a risk of accidental or deliberate contamination, as well as infections. Now, a way … Read More
March 19, 2024
(CNN) – Abortions are on the rise in the United States, despite bans that have taken effect in more than a dozen states since the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that revoked the federal right to abortion in June 2022. … Read More
March 18, 2024
(Axios) – An international draft treaty aimed at bolstering readiness for the next pandemic enters a final round of scheduled negotiations Monday, with key disagreements remaining about how much knowledge and product drugmakers must share with the world. Why it … Read More
March 18, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Federal authorities are investigating Meta Platforms for its role in the illicit sale of drugs, according to documents and people familiar with the matter. U.S. prosecutors in Virginia have been sending subpoenas and asking questions as … Read More
March 14, 2024
(NPR) – A national survey of more than 2,000 high school seniors across the country found that more than 11% used a drug called delta-8 THC in the past year. The psychoactive compound is derived from hemp, and often called … Read More
