First Edition: Oct. 3, 2022

KHN: Severe Sleep Apnea Diagnosis Panics Reporter Until He Finds A Simple, No-Cost Solution 
I woke up in a strange bedroom with 24 electrodes glued all over my body and a plastic mask attached to a hose covering my face. The lab technician who watched me all night via video feed told me that I had “wicked sleep apnea” and that it was “central sleep apnea” — a type that originates in the brain and fails to tell the muscles to inhale. As a journalist — and one terrified by the diagnosis — I set out to do my own research. After a few weeks of sleuthing and interviewing experts, I reached two important conclusions. (Hancock, 10/3)

KHN: Mental Health Crisis Teams Aren’t Just For Cities Anymore 
Jeff White knows what can happen when 911 dispatchers receive a call about someone who feels despondent or agitated. He experienced it repeatedly: The 911 operators dispatched police, who often took him to a hospital or jail. “They don’t know how to handle people like me,” said White, who struggles with depression and schizophrenia. “They just don’t. They’re just guessing.” (Leys and Zionts, 10/3)

KHN: Listen: Grieving Families Face The Cruelest Bills
NPR’s “Consider This” podcast tells the stories of the Markow, Shickel, and Raspe familes. All had very sick infants who died after needing highly technical, very expensive treatment in neonatal intensive care units. Medical bills lived on for each family even after their babies died. “All Things Considered” host Juana Summers spoke to KHN Midwest correspondent Lauren Weber about her reporting on The Cruelest Bills. (9/30)

KHN: Journalists Dig In On The Fiscal Health Of The Nation And Hospital Closures In Rural Missouri 
KHN chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner discussed health care costs and the fiscal health of Medicare and Social Security on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” on Sept. 28. She also discussed President Joe Biden’s comments about the covid-19 pandemic being “over,” as well as health inflation, the government funding bill, and other domestic news on WAMU/NPR’s “1A” on Sept. 23. (10/1)

AP: Nobel Prize In Medicine Awarded For Research On Evolution
This year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to Swedish scientist Svante Paabo for his discoveries on human evolution. Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Committee, announced the winner Monday at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Paabo has spearheaded research comparing the genome of modern humans and our closest extinct relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, showing that there was mixing between the species. (10/3)

The New York Times: Nobel Prize In Physiology Or Medicine Is Awarded To Svante Pääbo
“Through his pioneering research, Svante Pääbo — this year’s Nobel Prize laureate in physiology or medicine — accomplished something seemingly impossible: sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans,” the Nobel committee said in a statement. “Pääbo’s discoveries have generated new understanding of our evolutionary history,” the statement said, adding that this research had helped establish the burgeoning science of “paleogenomics,” or the study of genetic material from ancient pathogens. (Mueller, 10/3)

The New York Times: As New Term Starts, Supreme Court Is Poised To Resume Rightward Push 
The last Supreme Court term ended with a series of judicial bombshells in June that eliminated the right to abortion, established a right to carry guns outside the home and limited efforts to address climate change. As the justices return to the bench on Monday, there are few signs that the court’s race to the right is slowing. The new term will feature major disputes on affirmative action, voting, religion, free speech and gay rights. And the court’s six-justice conservative supermajority seems poised to dominate the new term as it did the earlier one. “On things that matter most,” said Irv Gornstein, the executive director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown Law, “get ready for a lot of 6-3s.” (Liptak, 10/2)

AP: Supreme Court Poised To Keep Marching To Right In New Term
Last term’s epic decisions might have produced bruised feelings among the justices anyway. But the leak of the abortion decision in early May, seven weeks before it was released, exacerbated tensions on the court, several justices have said. The court has apparently not identified the source of the leak, Justice Stephen Breyer said in a recent interview on CNN. Justice Elena Kagan delivered a series of talks over the summer in which she said the public’s view of the court can be damaged especially when changes in its membership lead to big changes in the law. “It just doesn’t look like law when some new judges appointed by a new president come in and start just tossing out the old stuff,” Kagan said in an appearance last month at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. (Sherman and Gresko, 10/1)

Politico: A Shaken Supreme Court Returns To Chambers 
Speaking at a judges’ conference in Colorado last month, Chief Justice John Roberts sounded exhausted by it all. “The last year was an unusual one and difficult in many respects. It was gut-wrenching every morning to drive into a Supreme Court with barricades around it,” Roberts said. “I think, with my colleagues, we’re all working to move beyond it.” (Gerstein, 10/2)

AP: Arizona Judge Won’t Suspend Ruling That Halted All Abortions
An Arizona judge on Friday declined to put her order that allowed enforcement of a pre-statehood law making it a crime to provide an abortion on hold, saying abortion rights groups that asked her to block the order are not likely to prevail on appeal. The ruling from Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson means the state’s abortion providers will not be able to restart procedures. Abortions were halted on Sept. 23 when Johnson ruled that a 1973 injunction must be lifted so that the Civil War-era law could be enforced. (Christie, 10/1)

Reuters: U.S. VP Harris, Actress Priyanka Chopra Discuss Mansplaining, Abortion Rights
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday reminded top female Democrats of their duty to fight for reproductive rights and how electing two more Democratic senators in the upcoming midterm elections is critical to that fight. "If there were ever any reason for this group to exist in recent memory, the moment is now," Harris said during the Democratic National Committee's Women's Leadership Forum on Friday in Washington. (9/30)

AP: US Outlines Plan For Long-Term Baby Formula Imports
U.S. regulators on Friday unveiled their plan to allow foreign baby formula manufacturers to stay on the market long term, an effort to diversify the nation’s tightly concentrated industry and prevent future shortages. The Food and Drug Administration said recent entrants to the U.S. market will have until October 2025 to make sure their formulas comply with federal standards for nutrition, labeling and manufacturing. The agency noted that some companies should be able to meet those requirements sooner. (Perrone, 9/30)

Modern Healthcare: Rural Medicare Programs Get Short-Term Extensions From Congress 
Two Medicare programs that boost payments for hundreds of rural hospitals were extended through mid-December with the House’s passage of a short-term federal spending package on Friday. (Kane, 9/30)

CNBC: Some Seniors Make This Costly Medicare Enrollment Mistake. A Bipartisan Bill Looks To Fix It
A bipartisan bill in the House aims to fix a costly enrollment mistake that some older adults make when they transition to Medicare from an employer-based health plan. (O'Brien, 10/2)

Politico: The War Against Superbugs Caught In Congressional Quagmire
Lawmakers are on the brink of missing a critical window to fix America’s broken antibiotic market — and to prepare for the growing crisis of superbugs that federal officials say is a national security threat and experts warn is already a silent pandemic. Nearly 50,000 people die each year in the U.S. from drug-resistant and antibiotic-associated infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency says the crisis grew worse during Covid-19 as doctors over-prescribed antibiotics and inundated hospitals failed to control drug-resistant infections, which spiked by at least 15 percent in 2020. (Gardner and Mahr, 10/2)

Politico: Courts Could Throw State Marijuana Markets Into Disarray 
President Joe Biden is showing no interest in loosening federal restrictions that have left states in charge of developing how the multibillion-dollar U.S. cannabis industry grows. The nation’s courts may ultimately force the issue — in a chaotic fashion that could undermine efforts to diversify the industry and protect public health. (Zhang, 10/2)

CIDRAP: Studies Detail Monkeypox Transmission Risks 
A study of almost 400 samples taken from men with monkeypox reveals a high prevalence of the virus on skin, throat, and anus swabs compared to in blood or urine—with detections in semen in the midrange—and high viral loads in skin and anal swabs. Two other new studies detail transmission risk in a tattoo parlor and in healthcare settings, and in US news, officials report a monkeypox-related death in Ohio. (Soucheray, 9/30)

AP: California: Docs May Be Disciplined For Spreading COVID Lies
Doctors who spread coronavirus lies could be disciplined for unprofessional conduct in California under a law signed Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The bill, AB2098, introduced by Democratic Assembly Member Evan Low, declares that a physician or surgeon commits professional misconduct if they disseminate “misinformation or disinformation” about the nature and risks of COVID-19, its prevention and treatment and the development, safety and effectiveness of vaccines. (9/30)

CIDRAP: COVID-19 Continues Upward Trend In Europe
Europe's COVID cases showed more signs of rising last week, marking the first regionwide spike since the most recent BA.5 wave, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said today in a weekly update. In the past, increasing cases in Europe have come ahead of similar rises in other regions, so trends in Europe are a closely watched global indicator. (Schnirring, 9/30)

Fox News: Two-Thirds Of U.S. Adults Do Not Plan On Getting COVID Boosters
Around two-thirds of adults in the United States are not planning to get the updated COVID-19 booster shots soon, according to a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a health policy nonprofit organization. (Rumpf, 9/30)

CIDRAP: More Than 16,000 Americans Died Of Combination Cancer, COVID In 2020
In the first 10 months of the pandemic, COVID-19 was an underlying cause of 3,142 US cancer deaths, and cancer contributed to 13,419 COVID-19 deaths, according to a study published yesterday in JAMA Oncology. (9/30)

CIDRAP: Kids With Shortness Of Breath After Covid-19 May Have Airway Obstruction
Yesterday in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, researchers from National Jewish Health published a study showing children who experienced shortness of breath after COVID-19 infection had evidence of peripheral airway obstruction. (9/30)

San Francisco Chronicle: COVID Can Infect Fat Cells. May Explain Why Some Get Much Sicker
The virus that causes COVID-19 can infect and replicate in fat cells, and cause inflammation in fat tissue, Stanford University researchers found in a new study that could help explain why obese people are at higher risk for severe COVID. (Ho, 9/30)

The New York Times: What to Do if You’re Experiencing Hair Loss After Covid
If you recovered from Covid-19 in the past few months, such an increase in shedding may not be a coincidence. Some research estimates that 22 percent of those who were hospitalized with Covid-19 experienced temporary hair loss. It is harder to evaluate how common the condition is in people who had milder forms of the disease, but studies suggest hair loss is also among the more than 60 persistent symptoms often associated with long Covid — some of which are more well-known, such as the loss of smell, cognitive impairment and sexual dysfunction. Doctors say they too have noticed a surge in patients seeking help for the phenomenon. “I have never seen anything like it in my life,” said Dr. Michele Green, a New York City-based dermatologist affiliated with Northwell Health’s Lenox Hill Hospital who specializes in hair loss. “I’m seeing more male and female patients, from every age group, every working profession. It’s really been across the board.” (Sheikh, 9/30)

The Boston Globe: New Nasal Spray Vaccines Might Reduce COVID Infections, But The Money Is Still Missing
“None of these vaccines have been tested to prove that they can prevent transmission or infection,” said Karin Bok, deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “It’s not clear how we’re going to get that done, and at the very least, it is going to take a couple of years to get there.” (Cross, 10/1)

CIDRAP: COVID Study Spotlights Unsafe Wait Times For Hospital Beds
A research letter today in JAMA Network Open shows that, in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, US hospitals dealing with patient surges held emergency-department (ED) patients in places like hallways while awaiting an inpatient bed for a median of 6.6 hours, far longer than the Joint Commission's 4-hour standard. The Joint Commission, a US-based healthcare accreditation organization that sets standards for hospitals and other medical settings, has deemed ED boarding—or holding admitted patients in the ED, often in hallways, as they wait for a bed to open up—a patient safety risk. (Van Beusekom, 9/30)

Reuters: Amylyx Prices Newly Approved ALS Drug At $158,000 Per Year 
Amylyx Pharmaceuticals Inc on Friday set the list price of its newly approved drug to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at about $158,000 per year in the United States, a discount to its most recently approved competitor. The drug Relyvrio was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday, making it the third ALS treatment to get the regulator's nod after Japanese firm Mitsubishi Tanabe's Radicava, priced at around $170,000 per year, and the generic drug riluzole. (Leo, 9/30)

Axios: New ALS Treatment Sparks Yet Another Drug Pricing Debate
The FDA's expedited approval of a new ALS treatment priced at $158,000 a year, has touched off another debate over balancing regulation with patient access. (Owens, 10/3)

AP: NIH To Fund Unproven ALS Drugs Under Patient-Backed Law
When patients with a deadly diagnosis and few treatment options have tried to get unapproved, experimental drugs, they have long faced a dilemma: Who will pay? Responsibility for funding so-called compassionate use has always fallen to drugmakers, though many are unwilling or unable to make their drugs available for free to dying patients. After years of lobbying Congress, patients with the debilitating illness known as Lou Gehrig’s disease have found an unprecedented solution: make the federal government pay. (Perrone, 10/1)

NPR: ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Helped Fund The Development Of A New Drug For Treatment
The ALS Association said that $2.2 million of funds that were raised from the Ice Bucket Challenge went into funding the development and trial of the new drug that the Food and Drug Administration approved this week for treatment of ALS, which is also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. (Davis, 10/1)

Reuters: Walmart, CVS Must Face Lawsuit Over Placement Of Homeopathic Products 
The District of Columbia’s highest court revived two lawsuits that claim CVS and Walmart are misleading consumers by selling unproven homeopathic products alongside FDA-approved over-the-counter medicines on their store shelves and websites. (Grzincic, 9/30)

Stat: Epic Overhauls Popular Sepsis Algorithm Criticized For Faulty Alarms
Epic Systems has revamped its widely criticized sepsis prediction model in a bid to improve its accuracy and make its alerts more meaningful to clinicians trying to snuff out the deadly condition. (Ross, 10/3)

Charlotte Ledger and North Carolina Health News: Tryon Drops Medical Plan, Panicking Patients
As tensions escalate nationally over health care costs, insurers and health care providers are increasingly playing hardball in their contract negotiations, creating stress and confusion for patients. That phenomenon was on display this past week in Charlotte, where Tryon Medical Partners – the largest independent primary care practice in the Charlotte region – told patients it would no longer accept the Humana Medicare Advantage insurance plan. (Crouch, 10/3)

NBC News: Florida Hospital Without Running Water Faces Crisis After Hurricane Ian
Staff members at the Health Park Medical Center in Fort Myers told NBC News that the facility's running water went out Wednesday and hasn't yet been restored. If water service isn't back soon, the workers said, they fear disease outbreaks and infections in the wake of the storm. (Hampton, Rosenblatt, Bendix and Siemaszko, 10/1)

Crain's Detroit Business: Michigan-Based Hospital System Lays Off 'Hundreds' As Losses Mount
Sparrow Health System plans to lay off hundreds of workers after recording a $90 million loss during the first six months of the year, even as it struggles with worker shortages. (Walsh, 9/30)

NBC News: There's A Big Disparity In The Number Of Latino Doctors And Surgeons. Advocates Are Working To Change That
"For the last 40 years, the number of Latino physicians has not changed. That's a failure," Dr. Cesar Padilla, one of the organizers of the campaign and a clinical assistant professor at Stanford's University School of Medicine, told NBC News. (Flores, 9/30)

Stat: Threats Prompt Hospitals To Strip Websites Of Info On Gender-Affirming Care
Children’s hospitals that have been targeted on social media for providing gender-affirming care — and even some that haven’t — are stripping information about those services from their websites. Advocates fear the changes could make it even harder for transgender adolescents to get care. (Bannow and Sheridan, 10/3)

Los Angeles Times: Newsom Signs Bill Protecting Transgender Youths Fleeing Red-State Laws
Again heralding California as a refuge from discriminatory policies in conservative states, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law on Thursday that aims to protect transgender youths and their families from bans against gender-affirming care. Senate Bill 107 by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) provides for a range of safeguards meant to block out-of-state attempts to penalize families that come to California seeking medical treatment for transgender children and teens or move to the state to avoid consequences for already seeking that treatment elsewhere. (Mays, 9/29)

Politico: ‘4-Alarm Blaze’: New York’s Public Health Crises Converge
This past winter, as Covid cases were beginning to decline, state health officials in New York were expecting a respite after two exhausting years and a chance to refocus on run-of-the-mill public health duties. Almost a year later, they are still waiting. (Banco, 10/2)

Los Angeles Times: Ketamine May Help Severely Depressed, Study Shows
Patients arriving at Dr. Philip O’Carroll’s Newport Beach office for their first ketamine treatment are in pain and often lost. They have visited other doctors, tried other solutions and are ready for what is considered a last resort. (Curwen, 10/2)

The Washington Post: More States Are Allowing Children To Take Mental Health Days
With child mental health problems on the rise in the past few years, a growing number of states have adopted laws that let students take an excused absence if they feel anxious, depressed or need a day to “recharge.” A dozen states already have measures in place that allow kids to take off for mental health and not just physical health reasons. A handful of others are considering making similar changes to school absentee rules. (Atkins, 10/2)

The Boston Globe: Brie, Camembert Cheeses Recalled After Listeria Cases In Multiple States, Including Massachusetts
A Michigan-based cheese company is recalling its Brie and Camembert products as federal health authorities investigate an outbreak of listeria reported in several states, including at least one case in Massachusetts, officials said. (Stoico, 9/30)

Reuters: Ebola Kills Doctor In Uganda, First Health Worker Killed In Latest Outbreak
A Tanzanian doctor working in Uganda who contracted Ebola has died, the first health worker killed by the disease in the latest outbreak in the country, Uganda's health minister said on Saturday. "I regret to announce that we have lost our first doctor, Dr. Mohammed Ali, a Tanzanian national, 37-year-old Male," the health minister, Jane Ruth Aceng, tweeted. (10/1)