Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Researcher Zeroes In On The Pre-Clinical Phase Of Alzheimer's As Way To Stop Disease From Progressing
Stat: Can This Doctor Figure Out How To Stop Alzheimer’s Before It Starts?
Reisa Sperling, one of the world’s foremost researchers of Alzheimer’s disease, was vacationing at Lake Tahoe with her family in 2008 when she noticed her father was behaving strangely. “Where’s your mother?” he would ask, disoriented. “What are we doing here?” At first, Sperling thought her dad, a 74-year-old chemistry professor, might simply be tired. Perhaps the altitude had affected him. And then she had a terrible thought: He was acting just like her grandfather — his own father — who had died of Alzheimer’s in 1993. (Kendall, 6/20)
Stat: Muscle And Fat Loss May Offer Clues To Pancreatic Cancer's Deadly Ways
Of all the places to get cancer, the pancreas may be the worst. Difficult to detect and nearly impossible to treat, pancreatic cancer is the only major cancer with a five-year survival rate below 10 percent. New research, published Wednesday in Nature, challenges some widely held assumptions about the disease and could eventually help doctors diagnose patients earlier, when treatments are most effective. The study’s findings came from investigating how early pancreatic tumors affect peripheral tissues — mainly muscle and fat — in both mice and humans. (Chen, 6/20)
Stat: Consumer Group Petitions FDA To Yank A Widely Prescribed Gout Drug Over Heart Risks
A consumer advocacy group is asking regulators to “immediately remove” a widely used gout medication over concerns that it poses “unique, serious,” and potentially “fatal” risks to patients while not offering any health benefit. In a petition sent to the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday, Public Citizen argued there is “overwhelming evidence that the serious cardiovascular harms of (Uloric) outweigh any purported clinical benefit,” and that a failure to remove the drug ensures “further preventable harm” to patients. (Silverman, 6/21)
The New York Times: Night Owls May Have Higher Depression Risk
Night owls may be at greater risk for depression than early birds. Previous studies have found a link between a person’s unique circadian rhythm, or chronotype, and depression, but none were able to tell whether sleep habits were a cause or an effect of the disease. This new prospective study, in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, is a step closer to establishing causality. (Bakalar, 6/20)
The Associated Press: Kate Spade Foundation To Donate $1M For Suicide Prevention
Kate Spade New York has announced plans to donate $1 million to support suicide prevention and mental health awareness causes in tribute to the company's late founder. To start, the company said Wednesday the Kate Spade New York Foundation is giving $250,000 to the Crisis Text Line , a free, 24-hour confidential text message service for people in crisis. (6/20)
Stat: Lawmakers Press Genetic Testing Companies For Privacy Policy Details
Pressure is growing on direct-to-consumer genealogy and genetic testing companies to be more transparent about their privacy policies, after the arrest of the notorious Golden State Killer using publicly available data from one of the websites. In a letter sent this week — and shared with STAT — Reps. Dave Loebsack of Iowa and Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey peppered four of the platforms with questions about their security systems and customer privacy. The Democratic lawmakers are hoping to work with the companies — 23andMe, AncestryDNA, Family Tree DNA, and National Geographic Geno — to identify and resolve any privacy and security issues. And they’re in a prime position to do so: They sit on the Energy and Commerce committee, which handles both health care and privacy issues in technology. (Thielking, 6/21)
The Washington Post: These College Students Moonlight As ‘Grandkids’ For Hire. Seniors Love It.
When Andrew Parker’s grandfather began suffering from dementia three years ago, his grandmother had to start taking care of the house and caring for him. It was hard work, and one day, Parker got the idea to hire a college student to help out. “I said, ‘Hey, can you go hang out with my grandfather and make him a sandwich or something? I’ll pay you, lets see how it goes.” His grandfather loved it. And more importantly, so did his grandmother. For a few hours, he said, “She got to go do her own thing.” (Bahrampour, 6/20)
Bloomberg: Wanted: Wrinkled Men Not Afraid Of Needles For ‘Brotox’ Revival
ManLand is emblematic of a trend that’s sweeping the medical aesthetics industry as the distributors of drugs such as Botox, Dysport and Xeomin step up their efforts to sell cosmetic drugs to men. None may be more prominent right now than Allergan Plc’s push to market what the media has dubbed “Brotox.” In April, the drugmaker rolled out print, television and social media ads in attempt to lure male customers, running them during baseball games and the Stanley Cup finals. (Ockerman, 6/21)
The New York Times: 86 And Opening Closet Doors At The Hebrew Home
At the start of a recent meeting of the L.G.B.T. & Allies group at the Hebrew Home here, the group leaders Olivia Cohen and Liisa Murray reminded attendees of the ground rules, which they had written on a poster board. “Treat others like you wish to be treated,” was one, and another was “what is said in the group stays in the group.” Participants are also urged to be nonjudgmental and to respect one another. (Hanc, 6/21)
The New York Times: The Shifting Global Terrain Of L.G.B.T.Q. Rights
This year, and especially this month, events and celebrations in countries around the world are marking the growing acceptance of people who identify as L.G.B.T.Q. Some, like New York City and San Francisco, are splashy and spectacular. Others, like Lexington, Ky., and Bilbao, Spain, are much more modest, even wary, but they are still celebrations. (Mohn, 6/21)
