Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Survivors Share Tales Of Another Sad COVID Side-Effect: Losing Clumps Of Hair
The New York Times: Losing Your Hair Can Be Another Consequence Of The Pandemic
Annrene Rowe was getting ready to celebrate her 10th wedding anniversary this summer when she noticed a bald spot on her scalp. In the following days, her thick shoulder-length hair started falling out in clumps, bunching up in the shower drain. “I was crying hysterically,” said Mrs. Rowe, 67, of Anna Maria, Fla. (Belluck, 9/24)
CIDRAP: Inflammation Linked To Higher Death Risk, Could Shed Light On COVID In Men
A large study of German patients presented online at this week's European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) Conference on Coronavirus Disease found that men have a 62% higher risk of death from COVID-19, possibly due to higher levels of inflammation. The retrospective study followed 3,129 hospitalized adults from March through July in the LEOSS registry, an open-access database of clinical COVID-19 information established by the German Society of Infectious Diseases (DGI). Patient demographics and comorbidities were evaluated using the Charlson Comorbidity Index, which reflects the number of pre-existing conditions. (9/24)
Houston Chronicle: How Analyzing Sewage Helped Houston Catch A COVID-19 Hot Spot
Researchers with the city, Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine were able to sniff out a potential second outbreak of COVID-19 at a homeless shelter in downtown Houston earlier this year by looking down its drains instead of in people's noses, health officials said Thursday. (McGuinness, 9/24)
ABC News: COVID-19 Canines: How Dogs May Help Sniff Out The Coronavirus In Humans
They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but trainers in Finland claim 8-year-old greyhound mix Kössi learned to identify a scent associated with COVID-19 in just seven minutes. Helsinki Airport welcomed Kössi and nine other "coronavirus-sniffing dogs" as part of a pilot program this week meant to "speed up the process of identifying those infected with COVID-19." (Kaji and Maile, 9/24)
Politico: Here’s How The Pandemic Finally Ends
The microscopic bundles of RNA, wrapped in spiky proteins, latch on to human cells, hijack them, use them as factories to replicate, and then leave them for dead. It’s a biological blitzkrieg—an invasion so swift and unexpected that the germs are free to jump from host to host with little interference. Fast forward to the future. Now, when the prickly enemies invade the lungs, they slip past the human cells, unable to take hold. They’re marked for destruction, soon to be surrounded and eliminated. Though some escape through the airways, they confront the same defenses in their next target—if, that is, they can get anywhere near the human cells. There are so few people left to infect that the germs have nowhere to replicate, nowhere to survive. (Ralph, 9/25)
In other science and research news —
NPR: Inside A Push To Include More African Americans In Brain Research
Mental illness can run in families. And Dr. Kafui Dzirasa grew up in one of these families. His close relatives include people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. As a medical student, he learned about the ones who'd been committed to psychiatric hospitals or who "went missing" and were discovered in alleyways. Dzirasa decided to dedicate his career to "figuring out how to make science relevant to ultimately help my own family. "He became a psychiatrist and researcher at Duke University and began to study the links between genes and brain disorders. Then Dzirasa realized something: "I was studying genes that were specifically related to illness in folks of European ancestry." (Hamilton, 9/24)
WBUR: Neuroscience Has A Whiteness Problem. This Research Project Aims To Fix It
The group is the African Ancestry Neuroscience Research Initiative. It's a partnership between community leaders and the Lieber Institute for Brain Development, an independent, nonprofit research organization on the medical campus of Johns Hopkins University. The Lieber Institute's goals include reducing health care disparities and ensuring that brain research includes individuals from all populations. (Hamilton, 9/24)
Stat: Medical AI Systems Are Often Built With Data From Just Three States
Late last year, Stanford University researcher Amit Kaushal and a collaborator noticed something striking while sifting through the scientific literature on artificial intelligence systems designed to make a diagnosis by analyzing medical images. “It became apparent that all the datasets [being used to train those algorithms] just seemed to be coming from the same sorts of places: the Stanfords and UCSFs and Mass Generals,” Kaushal said. (Robbins, 9/25)
Stat: A Sadly Familiar Disappointment In Alzheimer’s Research
After years of failed attempts to treat Alzheimer’s disease by targeting a toxic brain plaque called amlyoid, a critical mass of scientists turned their attention to a seemingly more promising target: a tangled cranial protein called tau. But the failure of a closely watched tau treatment suggests history may repeat itself for neurology’s next-best idea. (Garde, 9/24)
The New York Times: Nothing Eats Viruses, Right? Meet Some Hungry Protists
On the dinner plate that is planet Earth, there exists a veritable buffet of viruses — an amount of biomass that is the equivalent of about 25 billion human beings. So perhaps it’s a bit baffling that scientists have yet to pinpoint a species that deliberately eats viruses for energy. (Wu, 9/24)
