Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Roundup: Drug Side Effects Sending People To ER; Human Eye Transplants; Infectious Disease In U.S.
Stat: Drug Side Effects Have Led To Increased ER Visits In Older Americans
Side effects from medication are causing more older Americans to visit emergency rooms and leading to more hospitalizations, according to an analysis of ER data from 2005-2006 and 2013-2014. And across all age groups, the drugs most often causing side effects that sent people to an ER were the same ones identified a decade ago —anticoagulants, antibiotics, diabetes agents, and opioid analgesics. These were among the findings in a study that examined emergency department visits for adverse reactions to medicines in 2013 and 2014, compared with 2005 and 2006. (Silverman, 11/22)
Stat: Researchers Aim For First Human Eye Transplant Within The Decade
Scientists have strived for successful eye transplants for centuries. Early attempts read like the diary of Mary Shelley: implanting a dog’s eye into a rat’s groin, transplanting a rat’s eye onto the neck of another rat, plucking the eye of a sheep from one socket and placing it into the other. But never has a whole-eye transplant been successfully done in a living person. The eye’s complex web of muscles, blood vessels, and nerves — connected directly to the brain — has doomed past experiments to failure. Now a team of Pittsburgh transplant surgeons aims to turn that tide, and they’re hopeful they can do so in just the next decade, using donor eyes to restore sight in people who have suffered traumatic eye injuries. (Hare, 11/23)
NPR: 100 Years Of Infectious Disease In The United States
Infectious diseases are no longer the major killers in the U.S. that they once were, but they still surprise us. According to a report published Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association, deaths from infectious disease accounted for 5.4 percent of deaths from 1980 to 2014. (Hobson, 11/22)
The New York Times: Creeping Progress In Pledge To Cut Calories In Sugary Soda
It hasn’t been a good year for the troika that dominates soft drink sales, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Dr Pepper Snapple. The public’s attention on the health effects of sugary sodas has continued to increase, slowing growth and increasing political pressure. This year, soft drink companies and their lobbying group, the American Beverage Association, spent $38 million to defeat election-season proposals to impose taxes on sugary drinks in four cities: San Francisco, Oakland and Albany in California, and Boulder, Colo. The companies lost all of those fights. Now, seven cities around the country have a soda tax. (Strom, 11/22)
Stat: Anti-Aging Benefits Of Blood Transfusions From Young Are Questioned
The author of a study published Tuesday cautioned against the idea that transfusions of “young” blood can reverse the aging process, a notion that has captured the public imagination and motivated startups. In the new research, published in Nature Communications, scientists replaced half of the blood in old mice with blood from young animals, and did the opposite swap in young mice, giving them old blood. They found that the younger mice experienced symptoms associated with aging — they stopped making new neurons in a part of the brain associated with memory formation. And the old mice seemed younger in some respects — their muscles recovered better after being injured. (Swetlitz, 11/22)
The Hill: FDA Issues Sunscreen Guidelines
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is loosening its grip on sunscreen. The FDA issued a series of guidelines Tuesday aimed at speeding up the review process for sunscreen manufacturers, some of whom have waited decades for their products to be approved. In the long-awaited guidelines, the FDA requests data from maximum-use trials to determine whether the active ingredients in sunscreen are absorbed into the body. “Sunscreens are intended to be used on a regular basis in liberal amounts and over large portions of the body surface whenever consumers are exposed to the sun,” the FDA wrote in the Federal Register. (Devaney, 11/22)
Health News Florida: Retired NFL Players File Lawsuit, Want League To Pay For Brain Injuries
Lawyers representing 142 retired NFL players filed a federal lawsuit against the NFL Monday in Fort Lauderdale. They want the league to recognize CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, as an occupational hazard that should be covered by workers compensation. (Haden, 11/22)
Miami Herald: Two National Recalls Of Sterile Products That Might Not Be Sterile
Two national distributors of sterile medical products, one based in Palm Beach County, have issued voluntary large recalls of products after U.S. Food & Drug Administration facility inspections of each company cast doubt on the products’ sterility. Juno Beach-based Tri-Coast Pharmacy is recalling 85 sterile products produced between May 17 and Nov. 17 that haven’t expired. The list, which includes various cocktails and some types of testosterone, can be viewed here. (Neal, 11/22)
