Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
The Anatomy Of A Pandemic: A Look Back On The H1N1 Outbreak Ten Years Later
Stat: The Last Pandemic Was A ‘Quiet Killer.’ Ten Years After Swine Flu, No One Can Predict The Next One
On June 11, 2009 — 10 years ago today — the World Health Organization declared that the swine flu virus we now simply call H1N1 had indeed triggered a pandemic, the first time in four decades a new flu virus had emerged and was triggering wide-scale illness around the globe. Since it started circulating in the spring of 2009, H1N1 has infected about 100 million Americans, killing about 75,000 and sending 936,000 to the hospital, the CDC estimates. Another virus, H3N2, is responsible for more infections, but “in terms of the severity, H1 is kind of this quiet killer,” said Dr. Daniel Jernigan, head the CDC’s flu division. (Branswell, 6/11)
The New York Times: How Dengue, A Deadly Mosquito-Borne Disease, Could Spread In A Warming World
Climate change is poised to increase the spread of dengue fever, which is common in parts of the world with warmer climates like Brazil and India, a new study warns. Worldwide each year, there are 100 million cases of dengue infections severe enough to cause symptoms, which may include fever, debilitating joint pain and internal bleeding. There are an estimated 10,000 deaths from dengue — also nicknamed breakbone fever — which is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes that also spread Zika and chikungunya. (Pierre-Louis and Popovich, 6/10)
CBS News: Researchers Test Vaccine They Hope Could Stem Alzheimer's
Researchers at University of New Mexico researchers believe they may have found a way to prevent Alzheimer's disease, reports CBS Albuquerque affiliate KRQE-TV. UNM's Health and Sciences Department Associate Professor Kiran Bhaskar, who's been passionate about studying the disease for the last decade, says the search for a cure started with an idea in 2013. "I would say it took about five years or so to get from where the idea generated and get the fully functioning working vaccine," he says. Bhaskar and his team started to test the vaccine on mice. (6/11)
St. Louis Public Radio: SLUCare Geriatrician, Founder Of CST Discuss Innovations In Dementia Treatment
More and more people are experiencing the debilitating effects of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. The Alzheimer’s Association notes that one in three seniors die with dementia, and by 2050 nearly 14 million Americans are expected to be living with it. (Hemphill, 6/10)
The Wall Street Journal: New Thinking On Longstanding Asthma Treatments
Every day millions of asthma patients follow the standard doctor-recommended treatment: They take puffs from their steroid inhalers. Amber Keating is one of them. For 19 years, a daily steroid inhaler has been a cornerstone of the 42-year-old Los Angeles resident’s treatment. But in recent years she began to question its effectiveness as she had more flare-ups. So she was interested to see a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that the majority of a group of patients with mild, persistent asthma did no better when taking a steroid inhaler than with a placebo. (Reddy, 6/10)
The Associated Press: Vaping Device Maker Sponsoring Public Health Research
A historically black college in Tennessee is planning to research the impact of electronic cigarettes and vaping with a grant from vaping device maker JUUL Labs. Meharry Medical College in Nashville says that it and JUUL Labs have structured the $7.5 million grant in ways meant to ensure the "full autonomy" of the new Meharry Center for the Study of Social Determinants of Health, including "sole ownership of the sponsored research and complete control over publication of the findings." (6/10)
NPR: Human Brains Are Sensitive To Musical Pitch, Unlike Those Of Monkeys
What sounds like music to us may just be noise to a macaque monkey.That's because a monkey's brain appears to lack critical circuits that are highly sensitive to a sound's pitch, a team reported Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The finding suggests that humans may have developed brain areas that are sensitive to pitch and tone in order to process the sounds associated with speech and music. (Hamilton, 6/10)
The Washington Post: Living With HIV Means Increased Risk Of Heart Disease
People living with HIV are more likely to get heart disease than those without the virus, making it all the more critical they exercise, eat well and avoid smoking, U.S. doctors say. In recent decades, antiretroviral therapy has helped transform the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from a near-certain death sentence into a chronic, manageable disease. As HIV patients are living longer, however, they’re also at higher risk for heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, sudden cardiac death and other diseases than people without HIV, according to a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association published in the journal Circulation. (Rapaport, 6/11)
The Washington Post: Why Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizers Are Still A Safe Bet
Mysteriously slick subway poles, a sneezing colleague, the arrival of flu season: These are all reasons to be grateful for any bottle of alcohol-based hand sanitizer that’s within reach. Yet in an era of superbugs — bacteria that become resistant to antibiotics — and fears about being too clean, you might wonder whether constantly pouring Purell into our palms is doing more harm than good. (Kiefer, 6/10)
The New York Times: Heartburn Drugs Can Lead To Fatal Heart Or Kidney Disease
The heartburn drugs called proton pump inhibitors, or P.P.I.s, are known to have serious side effects. Now researchers have documented the ways in which they may be deadly. The report, in BMJ Open, used a Veterans Affairs database of 157,625 new users of P.P.I.s like Prevacid and Prilosec, and 56,842 people prescribed a different type of acid-suppressing medicine called H2 blockers (Pepcid and Zantac, for example). (Bakalar, 6/11)
The New York Times: Three Created A Fertility Revolution With I.V.F., But One, A Woman, Went Unrecognized
Two male British scientists gained worldwide fame as the developers of in vitro fertilization, but both viewed a woman, Jean Purdy, as an equal partner in the breakthrough, records made public on Monday show. One of the male scientists, Dr. Robert Edwards, tried to have her work recognized, but instead it has gone largely unknown for four decades. “I regard her as an equal contributor to Patrick Steptoe and myself,” Dr. Edwards wrote in a letter to Oldham Health Authority in 1981, adding that Dr. Steptoe had also acknowledged Ms. Purdy’s role in a book published by the two male scientists. (Magra, 6/10)
Kaiser Health News: Why Your Perception Of ‘Old’ Changes As You Age
My perception of old age is inextricably linked to my grandmother. When I was a kid, I thought this 65-year-old, white-haired woman whose entire body wobbled when she walked was very old. Now that I’m 66, my personal perception — or perhaps, misperception — of old age has changed. I suspect I’ve got lots of company. Many of us are convinced that while everyone else is aging, that person we see in the mirror every morning is magically aging at a somehow slower pace. The age confusion can start early. A 2018 Michigan State University online survey of respondents ages 10 to 89 revealed that most think middle age begins at 30 — and that old age begins at, OMG, 50. (Horovitz, 6/11)
