Public Health Roundup: The Mysterious Diplomat Illness, CRISPR’d Pigs, Vaping Deaths And More

CNN: 'Sonic Attack' Study: New Details Emerge On Diplomat's Brain Injury
Doctors shared details Thursday about what happened to the brain of one diplomat who may be a victim of the so-called sonic attacks that have impacted dozens of people in Cuba and China. Researchers revealed the results of an independent brain analysis of Mark Lenzi, a US diplomat who was stationed in Guangzhou, China, in 2017 when he started experiencing unexplained symptoms including headache, difficulty reading, irritability, as well as memory and sleep problems. (Nedelman, 12/19)

Stat: World's Most CRISPR'd Pig Raises Hopes Of Transplantable Organs 
A biotechnology company that is trying to create CRISPR-edited pigs so their organs could be safely transplanted into people has produced animals with a record number of genetic changes, the startup’s chief scientific officer and her colleagues reported on Thursday. The eGenesis scientists had previously used CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing to remove 25 potentially dangerous-to-humans viruses from pigs’ genome. In the new paper, CSO Luhan Yang and her team surpassed that milestone, creating cloned pigs with additional genetic changes — which she calls Pig3.0. (Begley, 12/20)

The New York Times: What It Took For A Fox News Psychiatrist To Finally Lose His License
Late in 2009, a 28-year-old woman not long out of graduate school found herself in a stressful job at a Bronx hospital and decided it would be useful to talk to someone. Searching online, she came across the name of a psychiatrist, Keith Ablow. Dr. Ablow was familiar to her from his writing, both his journalism and the best-selling thrillers he turned out — “Denial,’’ “Projection,” “Compulsion,’’ “Murder Suicide.’’ She had read all of those, as well as “Psychopath,’’ a book about a psychiatrist who prods the interior lives of strangers only to kill them, baroquely obscuring the distinction between patient and victim. (Bellafante, 12/20)

Reuters: U.S. Vaping-Related Deaths Rise To 54, Hospitalizations To 2,506
U.S. health officials said on Thursday two more deaths occurred since last week from a mysterious respiratory illness tied to vaping, taking the total toll to 54. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also reported 97 more hospitalized cases from 50 states, the District of Columbia, and two U.S. territories, as of Dec. 17. The number of people hospitalized now stands at 2,506. (12/19)

The New York Times: Boys Born Small At Higher Risk For Infertility
Boys born small may be at risk for infertility in adulthood. Danish researchers examined birth and health records of 10,936 men and women born between 1984 and 1987. The study, in Human Reproduction, found that 10 percent of the babies were born small for gestational age. The health and behavioral characteristics of the mothers of low-birth-weight babies were similar to those of mothers of babies of normal weight, although they were more likely to be first-time mothers and to smoke and consume alcohol. (Bakalar, 12/19)

CNN: Millions Of Americans Are Driving Under The Influence Of Marijuana, CDC Says
The most recent national estimates of drivers who operate a car under the influence of marijuana put the numbers in the millions, according to a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thursday's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that in 2018, 12 million American adults said they had driven under the influence of weed in the 12 months prior to the survey. About 2.3 million said they had driven under the influence of illicit drugs such as cocaine or methamphetamine. (Christensen, 12/19)

The Wall Street Journal: Is Your Phone Or Watch Constantly Buzzing? It Could Be In Your Head.
Jay Antenen feels a soft vibration on his wrist during a weekend yoga class. It is his Apple Watch, alerting him to an incoming message. Sometimes, it is his imagination. “I’ll glance at it, but there’s no message,” he says. “Is this a widespread thing? I thought I was just crazy.” The phenomenon has, in fact, become so common that mental-health experts have named it phantom phone syndrome: Smartphone and smartwatch users so alert to incoming messages they sometimes feel devices vibrate when they don’t. Some people detect a buzz even when the devices are put away. (Hernandez, 12/19)

Los Angeles Times: World's Languages Describe Emotions In Very Different Ways
Is the meaning of love truly universal? It might depend on the language you speak, a new study finds. Scientists who searched out semantic patterns in nearly 2,500 languages from all over the world found that emotion words — such as angst, grief and happiness — could have very different meanings depending on the language family they originated from. (Khan, 12/19)

The New York Times: When The Surgeon Is A Mom
As a health care professional, Dr. Erika Rangel is trained to know when things are going wrong. That alarm went off one day in her fourth year of surgical residency. Her son, just 3 months old, had developed a fever. She couldn’t be late for her operating shift, but his day care wouldn’t accept him if he was sick. So she did what desperate mothers do and got inventive: She slipped liquid Tylenol into his bottle, in the hopes of lowering his temperature, and dropped him off. (Goldberg, 12/20)

The Wall Street Journal: Two Siblings Discover Each Other Through DNA Testing
Susannah Gilbard, 61 years old, always knew she was adopted. As far as she was concerned, her life was complete and there were no missing elements in her Queens, N.Y., upbringing. “From the beginning of time everybody asked [me], ‘Don’t you want to know where you come from? And don’t you want to find out your health issues?’ and, you know, this endless list of questions, and my answer was always, ‘no.’ I’m not interested at all because, frankly, I have really good parents. I was really lucky. Everything was fine.” (Cousens, 12/19)

Kaiser Health News: A Veteran Started Vaping THC To Cope With Chronic Pain. Then He Got Very Sick. 
As vaping has grown more popular in recent years, the trend has been fueled by the habit’s pleasurable allure: Compared with smoking cigarettes or pot, vaping is discreet and less smelly. Vaping fluids come in hundreds of flavors. There’s no tar or other byproducts of burning. And vape pens are high-tech, customizable and sleek. But none of that mattered to Paul Lubell when he decided to try vaping. He wasn’t thinking about pleasure; he was trying to avoid pain. The retired Navy veteran turned to vaping marijuana, hoping it would help him cope with his chronic, debilitating musculoskeletal pain. (Harris-Taylor, 12/20)