Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Childhood Trauma Linked To Later Violence, Vulnerability To Morphine
Cincinnati Enquirer: Childhood Trauma Leads To Violence Later In Life, Experts Say
Dr. Bob Shapiro is the director of the child abuse team at the Mayerson Center for Safe and Healthy Children at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. He said childhood trauma, such as being separated from a parent, can change the architecture of the brain. "The regions of the brain involved in fear and impulsive response have an overproduction of neural connections," Shapiro said. "Therefore those kids are more likely to result in impulsive and violent responses to circumstances." (Knight, 7/15)
ScienceDaily: Childhood Trauma Can Make People Like Morphine More
People who have experienced childhood trauma get a more pleasurable "high" from morphine, new research suggests. Those with no childhood trauma were more likely to dislike the effects and feel dizzy or nauseous. (University of Exeter, 6/22)
In other science and research news —
Stat: How A 3D-Printed Graft Could Speed Healing Ruptured Eardrums
In the weeks that followed the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, doctors saw a flood of patients with a common injury: a ruptured eardrum. Ruptured eardrums aren’t rare — patients with chronic ear infections or some traumatic injury often develop them. But the influx of cases made it clear to otolaryngologist Aaron Remenschneider, at the time a resident at specialty hospital Massachusetts Eye and Ear, that the standard surgical technique of using a graft to patch up the injury could use an upgrade. (Lin, 7/16)
Stat: By Creating Mouse Eggs Entirely From Scratch, Researchers Raise The Prospect Of A Futuristic Fertility Treatment
The tiny clump of mouse cells didn’t look like an ovary. For one thing, it was much smaller, microscopic. And instead of being attached to a uterus it was floating in a test tube. And yet, from within the pocket of cells, oocytes began to form, then grow, maturing into eggs. Later, when some of these eggs would get fertilized and gestate all the way to healthy, fertile, newborn mice, this feat would be made all the more astonishing by the fact that the “ovarioids” that had made them were produced entirely from stem cells. (Molteni, 7/15)
Modern Healthcare: CDC Commits $90M For Pathogen Genomics Research Centers
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has earmarked $90 million to fund the establishment of six centers of excellence that will be tasked with developing technologies to address microbial threats to public health. The Public Health Pathogen Genomics Centers of Excellence will work with academic and public health organizations to advance pathogen genomics and molecular epidemiology to improve the control of, and response to, infectious disease, the CDC said. Grant funding is expected to be awarded in August 2022, with projects beginning the following month. (7/15)
Stat: DeepMind And A Rival Release Dueling Code For Protein-Folding AI
Computational biologists have been on tenterhooks for the past seven months, ever since DeepMind took a hammer to one of their field’s most persistent challenges: accurately predicting the 3D shape of a protein from its amino acid sequence. The Alphabet-owned AI research outfit had developed a neural network that predicts protein structures with near-perfect accuracy, blowing the competition out of the water at a protein structure prediction contest called CASP. The field’s response was ebullient — and then, just as quickly, disgruntled. DeepMind didn’t share details of how its blockbuster method worked, limiting its disclosures to a press release and a brief presentation at the contest. (Palmer, 7/15)
Axios: The Trinity Test And Its Lingering Impact On Hispanics, Mescalero Apache
Hispanics and Mescalero Apache tribal members in New Mexico this month are marking the anniversary of the 1945 Trinity Test — an experiment resulting in health problems for generations living near the site of the world's first atomic bomb explosion. Descendants of those families use the July 16 anniversary to pressure lawmakers to compensate those who have suffered rare forms of cancer ever since the explosion. (Contreras, 7/15)
Bay Area News Group: Gillian Anderson Hits Nerve By Ditching Her Bra, But May Be Wrong About Sagging Breasts
“I don’t care if my breasts reach my belly button,” the 52-year-old star of “The X-Files” and “The Crown” said. Anderson was essentially repeating the popular idea that wearing bras can forestall the normal sagging that occurs over time due to breastfeeding, weight loss or gain, menopause and aging. Certainly, the brassiere industry has pushed that message over the years, as it sells undergarments designed to hold breasts up and ideally make them appear perky and youthful. But in an extensive report earlier this month, Shape magazine found that experts are split on whether going bra-less leads to sagging, after, yes, studying the effects that bras have on women’s breasts. (Ross, 7/14)
