Axios: U.S. Permanently Eases Some Opioid Treatment Restrictions
Pandemic-era policies that made it easier for patients to receive opioid addiction treatment will continue permanently, the Biden administration announced this week. The changes mark the first time in 20 years the federal government has updated rules governing clinics that provide medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder. (Goldman, 2/2)

CNN: An OxyContin Advertiser Will Pay $350 Million In The First-Ever Opioid Marketing Settlement
For the first time, an advertising company that worked on Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin account has settled a lawsuit that accused it of falsely marketing opioids as safe. Publicis, a French marketing company, agreed to pay $350 million within the next two months and will not take on any more opioid clients, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James. She and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser led the settlement negotiations, which included a consortium of eight other states. (Goldman, 2/1)

USA Today: Pennsylvania Courts Settle Over Opioid Use Disorder Discrimination Case
Pennsylvania courts will pay $100,000 to settle a federal lawsuit alleging that people with opioid use disorder under court supervision were prevented from taking prescribed medicine, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday. Experts say the lawsuit represents a nationwide issue where people with substance use disorders seeking jail alternative programs such as drug court, probation or parole are restricted from using federally approved addiction treatments that contain opioids. (Arshad, 2/1)

The Washington Post: New National Opioid Settlement Adds To D.C. Funds As Overdoses Mount 
The District stands to gain about $600,000 in a national settlement agreement with Publicis Health, D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb said Thursday. Attorneys general from multiple states alleged that the company developed “unfair and deceptive” marketing campaigns aimed at persuading doctors to prescribe the addictive opioid OxyContin for longer periods of time and at higher doses. The funds are part of an estimated $80 million officials expect to flow to the District from multistate settlements. The opioid crisis has killed more than 400 Washingtonians annually for four consecutive years, outpacing the city’s homicide toll. (Portnoy, 2/1)

The Boston Globe: Massachusetts Will Receive $8 Million From New Opioid Settlement
Massachusetts will receive $8 million from a $350 million national settlement against the American unit of French marketing company Publicis Groupe SA for its role in marketing the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin, the latest round in a series of legal settlements against companies for fueling the deadly opioid epidemic, according to an announcement Thursday from state Attorney General Andrea Campbell. (Serres, 2/1)

Military.com: Access To Abortion Drug Is A National Security Issue, Former Top Military Officials Claim In Legal Filing 
Former secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force as well as former high-ranking military service members say that restricting access to mifepristone, the medication used in more than half of all medical abortions in the U.S., would hurt recruitment, military readiness and cause undue harm to national security. In a brief filed to the U.S. Supreme Court ahead of oral arguments March 26 in a case challenging the availability of the drug, former secretaries Louis Caldera of the Army, Ray Mabus of the Navy and Deborah James of the Air Force urged the court to reject any move to limit its access. The three secretaries all served under Democratic administrations. (Kime, 2/1)

WMUR.com: New Hampshire Lawmakers Reject 15-Day Abortion Ban, Yet Lack Sufficient Support For Constitutional Amendment
A controversial 15-day abortion ban and a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights were both met with defeat in the New Hampshire House on Thursday. "It has been challenging, just a week past the birth of my daughter, to consider giving a floor speech," Rep. Amanda Toll, D-Keene, said. (Sexton, 2/1)

Stat: Texas Medical Board Asked To Define Abortion Emergency Exception 
Amid ongoing uncertainty about when abortions are permissible in Texas, the state’s medical board is under growing pressure to issue guidance on what type of emergency qualifies for an exemption from the state’s abortion ban. (Goldhill, 2/2)

Mississippi Free Press: ‘Abortion Trafficking’ Would Be A Crime Under GOP Bill
Adults who transport other people’s minor children across Mississippi state lines to get an abortion without permission could face criminal charges for “abortion trafficking” under a bill a Republican state representative introduced this week. It’s one of several abortion-related bills lawmakers introduced in the House in January, alongside bans on advertising abortion information and mail-order abortion pills. House Bill 713, which Rep. Dan Eubanks of DeSoto County introduced in the House on Jan. 29, says that an adult who is not a child’s parent and tries “to conceal an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor” by helping the child obtain an abortion or “abortion-inducing drug” would be committing the crime of “abortion trafficking.” An offender could face fines of up to $10,000 or two to five years of imprisonment, including for cases in which they helped a child obtain an abortion in Mississippi—where nearly all abortions are banned. The bill would not prevent parents or guardians from taking their child to get an abortion. (Harrison, 2/1)

The Guardian: ‘I Wasn’t Allowed To Get The Healthcare I Needed’: The Women Suing Tennessee For Being Denied Abortions
When K Monica Kelly saw that women in Texas had filed a lawsuit challenging the contours of their state’s abortion ban, she posted on Instagram to cheer them on. “I shared how terrible I thought it was, that they weren’t able to get the proper healthcare they needed in their state,” Kelly said. “It never crossed my mind that that was actually going to happen to me soon.” Kelly and her husband spent a year trying to have a second baby. So when they discovered in February 2023 that Kelly was pregnant, the couple was ecstatic. They taught their son, who was then two years old, to describe their family as: “Mama, dada, me, baby, all four!” After an ultrasound looked promising, and they drove more than 10 hours from their home in northern Tennessee to announce the news to their family in Florida. (Sherman, 2/1)

Truthout: Right-Wing Members Of Congress Push Anti-Abortion Measure On College Campuses
The disingenuously named “Pregnant Students’ Rights Act” offers no real support to pregnant and parenting students. (Bader, 2/1)

NBC News: These Women Support Trump And Abortion Rights — And Feel They Don't Have To Choose
A group of female Pennsylvania voters who backed former President Donald Trump in 2020 and support at least some abortion rights said in focus group interviews that they don’t see their views on abortion as a barrier to voting for Trump again in 2024. It’s an illuminating window into how a group of potential swing voters — previous Trump voters concerned about abortion access — are engaging with one of Democrats’ key issues ahead of the next election. Despite labeling abortion as a top issue facing women in America, most of the women who participated in the two focus groups said they’d back Trump in a rematch against President Joe Biden, explaining that other issues are more important to their vote. (Kamisar and Murray, 2/1)

NPR: A Woman Was Arrested After She Miscarried. Now, Democrats Tell Biden: Do More
Democratic members of Congress are urging the Biden administration to do more to protect pregnant patients seeking medical treatment from criminal prosecution - a threat they say has intensified in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's 2022 decision overturning decades of abortion-rights precedent. The new letter, spearheaded by the Democratic Women's Caucus, references the case of Brittany Watts, an Ohio woman who faced felony charges after suffering a miscarriage last year. (McCammon, 2/2)

KFF Health News: KFF Health News' 'What the Health?': The Struggle Over Who Gets The Last Word 
The Supreme Court in March will hear oral arguments in two very different cases that boil down to the same question: How much power do “experts” in health and science deserve? At stake is the future accessibility of the abortion pill mifepristone, and the ability of government officials to advise social media companies about misinformation. Meanwhile, abortion opponents are preparing action plans in case Donald Trump retakes the White House. While it’s unlikely Congress will have enough votes to pass a national abortion ban, a president can take steps to make abortion far less available, even in states where it remains legal. (2/1)

On over-the-counter birth control —

The Hill: For First OTC Birth Control Pill, Price A Major Question Mark
The first over-the-counter birth control pill in the U.S. will hit the market soon, and the Biden administration is facing pressure from Democrats and reproductive health groups to make sure it’s affordable.  The manufacturer of Opill says it’s on track to make the drug available sometime during the first quarter of this year, meaning it could be on shelves by March.  (Meyn, 2/2)

Other news about reproductive and transgender health —

Military.com: Pentagon Would Have To Study Difficulties Of Troops And Spouses Getting Maternity Care Under New Bill 
The Defense Department would have to undertake a detailed study of service members' and spouses' access to maternity care within the military health care system under bills being introduced Thursday by a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers of Congress. Lawmakers hope the bills will ultimately improve access to prenatal, birthing and postpartum care for those covered by Tricare amid reports in recent years of women struggling to be seen by an obstetrician. (Kheel, 2/1)

KFF Health News: Colorado Legal Settlement Would Up Care And Housing Standards For Trans Women Inmates 
Taliyah Murphy received a letter in early 2018 about a soon-to-be-filed class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of transgender women like her who were housed in men’s prisons in Colorado. It gave her hope. Murphy and other trans women in Colorado had faced years of sexual harassment and often violence from staff members and fellow incarcerated people. They were denied requests for safer housing options and medical treatment, including surgery, for gender dysphoria, the psychological distress that some trans people experience because of the incongruence between their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity, according to the lawsuit. (Clark, 2/2)

Fox News: NIH Awards $200K For Researchers To Create Transgender Voice Training App
The National Institute of Health (NIH) has awarded over $200,000 to researchers to create a "transgender voice training" app that aims, in part, to help trans women sound more feminine. ... "Transgender and gender diverse people exhibit a significantly lower quality of life than the general public," according to an abstract of the study first reported by The College Fix. "One reason for this is voice dysphoria: distress because a person’s voice does not match their gender identity (e.g., trans women with deep voices)." (Tietz, 2/1)

Stat: Updated Covid Vaccine Has 54% Effectiveness, New Study Suggests
New data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that the most recent Covid-19 booster offers about 54% percent protection against infection with the virus. (Branswell, 2/1)

CIDRAP: Among SARS-CoV-2 Variants, Beta Had Highest Death Rate, Meta-Analysis Suggests
A global meta-analysis published yesterday in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases estimates that the deadliest SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern (VOC) was Beta, followed by Gamma, Alpha, Delta, and Omicron, with variant-specific case-fatality rates (CFRs) ranging from 0.7% to 4.2%.While the CFR for Omicron was lowest, a French study late last year revealed that it was still four time higher than for seasonal flu. (Van Beusekom, 2/1)

Also —

Roll Call: Vaccine Skepticism, Equity Issues Hinder Cervical Cancer Fight
Cervical cancer is the only cancer that is vaccine-preventable and curable, but the United States is lagging in its efforts to meet the World Health Organization’s 2030 targets to effectively eliminate the disease. A mix of low vaccination uptake — just 61.7 percent of U.S. teenage girls were up to date on their HPV vaccine doses in 2022, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey — combined with health equity issues have hobbled U.S. efforts to end the disease. (Cohen, 2/1)

In other outbreaks —

CIDRAP: RSV Studies Show Risk Factors For Pregnant Women, Infants 
A new study of pregnant women before and during the COVID-19 pandemic reveals that few had severe respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections during pregnancy, and pregnancy was not a risk factor for severe outcomes, while a second study notes that the highest disease risk is in newborns. The first study was published yesterday in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. While the risk of RSV has been well-understood for infants and the elderly, the risk to pregnant women has been less studied. (Soucheray, 2/1)

Bloomberg: What To Know About Candida Auris, Deadly Fungus Spreading Globally
Candida auris is a type of yeast that can cause severe illness and spreads easily in health care facilities. Cases proliferated during the Covid-19 pandemic. Widespead infections in the US led the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to label it an “urgent threat.” More recently, scientists in China called for closer monitoring of the potentially fatal fungus after a study showed found that almost all of the cases recorded there in 2023 exhibited resistance to drugs. (De Wei and Ganatra, 2/1)

San Francisco Chronicle: CDC Offers Doctors Guidance On Testing For PFAS, ‘Forever Chemicals’
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released new guidance for doctors on how to manage and test patients who may have been exposed to “forever chemicals” — potentially harmful substances found in drinking water, food wrappers, cookware and assorted everyday items that have been linked to high cholesterol, organ damage and other health problems. The new guidance, issued Jan. 18 by the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, marks an expansion of the agency’s previous thinking on how health care providers should address patients’ concerns about exposure to ... PFAS. (Ho, 2/1)

NPR: The EPA Is Proposing That 'Forever Chemicals' Be Considered Hazardous Substances
The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing that nine PFAS, also known as "forever chemicals," be categorized as hazardous to human health. The EPA signed a proposal Wednesday that would deem the chemicals "hazardous constituents" under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. For the agency to consider a substance a hazardous constituent, it has to be toxic or cause cancer, genetic mutation or the malformations of an embryo. (Archie, 2/2)

San Francisco Chronicle: How Climate Change Will Affect The Health Of Californians
California has taken steps to address climate change and cut greenhouse gas emissions. ... The policies are intended to reduce the state’s air pollution, which consistently ranks among the worst in the nation — especially in the San Joaquin Valley and the Los Angeles basin — and contributes to the premature deaths of thousands of Californians annually. Regulators estimate California’s climate policies could reduce the cost of hospitalizations, asthma cases, and lost work and school days by $199 billion in 2045 alone. (Young, 2/1)

The Atlantic: Deer Are Beta-Testing A Nightmare Disease
Scott Napper, a biochemist and vaccinologist at the University of Saskatchewan, can easily envision humanity’s ultimate doomsday disease. ... “Imagine if consuming a plant could cause a fatal, untreatable neurodegenerative disorder,” Napper told me. “Any food grown within North America would be potentially deadly to humans.” This nightmare illness doesn’t yet exist. But for inspiration, Napper needs to look only at the very real contagion in his own lab: chronic wasting disease (CWD), a highly lethal, highly contagious neurodegenerative disease that is devastating North America’s deer, elk, and other cervids. (Wu, 2/1)

KFF Health News: Possibility Of Wildlife-To-Human Crossover Heightens Concern About Chronic Wasting Disease 
Each fall, millions of hunters across North America make their way into forests and grasslands to kill deer. Over the winter, people chow down on the venison steaks, sausage, and burgers made from the animals. These hunters, however, are not just on the front lines of an American tradition. Infectious disease researchers say they are also on the front lines of what could be a serious threat to public health: chronic wasting disease. (Robbins, 2/2)

Reuters: Sen. Warren Urges DOJ To Stop 'Abusive' Prison Health Bankruptcy 
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on Thursday called for the U.S. Department of Justice to do more to stop what she called Corizon Health's "abusive tactics" in bankruptcy. Corizon, a prison healthcare contractor, placed a newly created affiliate, Tehum Care, into bankruptcy in Houston in February 2023 in order to avoid accountability for its "alarming record of patient neglect and malpractice" in prisons across the U.S., Warren said in her letter to DOJ's bankruptcy watchdog, the Office of the U.S. Trustee. (Knauth, 2/1)

On this week's testimony about online addiction —

The Hill: Durbin Compares Zuckerberg To Tobacco Execs After ‘Outrageous’ Statement 
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Thursday compared Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the nation’s largest tobacco companies’ executives, who testified before Congress in 1994 that they did not believe tobacco was addictive. In an interview on “CNN This Morning,” Durbin said Zuckerberg made an “outrageous statement” during the Wednesday hearing when he suggested there was no causal link between social media use and negative mental health effects. (Fortinsky, 2/1)

The Washington Post: Online Safety Legislation Is Opposed By Many It Claims To Protect
Lawmakers who grilled the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Discord and X on Wednesday all seemed to agree that protecting children’s safety online was a priority. Many of those children were less accepting of the idea, and they let their opinions flow as they listened to the hearing through a Discord server. “These senators don’t actually care about protecting kids, they just want to control information,” one teenager posted. “If congress wants to protect children, they should pass a ... privacy law,” another teenager said. Others in the server accused the lawmakers of “trying to demonize the CEOs to push their ... bills,” which were often described with profanity. They’re not alone in their opposition to the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill introduced in Congress by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D‑Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R‑Tenn.), and similar efforts by state legislatures. (Lorenz, 2/1)

Axios: FDA Revisits Pulse Oximeters Debate Over Accuracy In Dark Skin
A Food and Drug Administration expert panel on Friday is set to resume the pandemic-driven debate over how to make pulse oximeters more accurate for people with darker skin. There's growing evidence that the devices don't reliably detect low oxygen levels in Black patients, resulting in delayed care, missed diagnoses of hypoxemia and possibly worse outcomes. (Bettelheim and Reed, 2/2)

NBC News: Black Women Under 35 With High Blood Pressure May Have Triple The Risk Of Stroke, Study Says
Black women who develop high blood pressure before age 35 may have triple the risk of having a stroke by middle age, new data suggests. The findings come as the medical community has noted with concern that the rates of stroke are increasing among middle-aged adults, while stroke rates in older individuals have been steadily decreasing over decades, according to lead study author Dr. Hugo Aparicio, an associate professor of neurology at Boston University. The study will be presented next week at the American Stroke Association’s international conference in Phoenix. (Bellamy, 2/1)

The Hill: Black Americans Find Most Joy In Family, Friends And Faith: Pew 
More than 80 percent of Black adults in the U.S. said they were at least somewhat happy, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Thursday.  Black Americans regardless of income find the most joy in spending time with friends and family as well as practicing their faith and traveling, according to the survey’s findings from 4,736 Black adults.  But overall, Black Americans with higher family incomes are more likely to be happy with 54 percent reporting to be happy compared to 26 percent of Black Americans with low family incomes, the survey found.  (O'Connell-Domenech, 2/1)

St. Louis Public Radio: Prominent Black Physician Collection At Missouri Historical Society
Dr. John H. Gladney rose to prominence in the 1950s. In 1956, he opened his private practice, becoming the first Black ear, nose and throat specialist in St. Louis. He was later tapped as the first Black doctor in the country to head a department of otolaryngology, holding the post at St. Louis University School of Medicine. In his field, he’s known for his research efforts making the link between hearing loss and diabetes. That work led to his induction into the American Triological Society in 1962 as its first Black fellow. (Lewis-Thompson, 2/2)

Also —

Bloomberg: Lloyd Austin Apologizes For Handling Of Cancer, Hospitalization
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin apologized on Thursday over his handling of his prostate-cancer surgery and two-week hospital stay, saying he should have informed President Joe Biden and the American public. “I did not handle this right,” Austin said during a briefing at the Pentagon, where he returned to work earlier this week. “I should have told the president about my cancer diagnosis,” he said, adding that he had apologized directly to Biden and that he didn’t want to burden the president with his personal problems. (Marlow, 2/1)

NBC News: Why Are Black Men At Greater Risk For Prostate Cancer?
Whether prostate cancer is, in fact, more common in Black men than other groups remains an open question, said Dr. Abhinav Khanna, a urologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. But it is sometimes more aggressive in Black men, he said. Black men in the U.S., Khanna said, are two times more likely to die from prostate cancer than white men. “Not all prostate cancer is lethal, but we have seen that black men do have a higher risk of dying from prostate cancer,” he said. One potential reason is that Black men — depending on their socioeconomic status — may not get screened as vigilantly as white and Asian men do in the U.S. (Lovelace Jr., Martin and Dunn, 2/1)

Axios: Study Points To An Easy Way To Reduce Hospital Infections
A simple switch in disinfectants used on patients' skin before surgery can prevent thousands of in-hospital infections each year, a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests. Hospital-acquired infections kill tens of thousands annually, sicken many more and cost billions — and they're often preventable through measures like disinfecting surgical sites. (Reed, 2/2)

Modern Healthcare: ECRI: Patient Misuse Of Home Health Devices A Top Concern In 2024 
A safety watchdog group has raised a red flag over the at-home use of medical devices, but one provider said concerns should not derail the move of hospital-level care to the home. As more individuals opt to receive care at home, devices like infusion pumps and ventilators are increasingly being used outside of the clinical settings for which they were designed. These trends are being driven by increased use of home healthcare, home dialysis and hospital home care. (Devereaux and Eastabrook, 2/1)

AP: Getting A Dental X-Ray? A New Recommendation Says You Don't Need A Lead Apron
Those heavy lead aprons may be on their way out at the dentist office, depending on where you live. The nation’s largest dental association said Thursday it will no longer recommend the use of lead aprons and thyroid collars on patients who are getting dental X-rays. There are two main reasons for the change. X-ray beams are now more focused, so there is less concern about radiation hitting other parts of the body. Also, the aprons and collars can sometimes block dentists from getting the images they need. (Shastri, 2/1)

On medical debt —

AP: After Washington State Lawsuit, Providence Health System Erases Or Refunds $158M In Medical Bills 
Providence health care system is refunding nearly $21 million in medical bills paid by low-income residents of Washington — and it’s erasing $137 million more in outstanding debt for tens of thousands of others — to settle the state’s allegations that it overcharged those patients and then used aggressive collection tactics when they failed to pay. The announcement Thursday came just weeks before Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s case was set for trial against Providence Health and Services, which operates 14 hospitals in Washington under the Providence, Swedish and Kadlec names. (Johnson, 2/1)

In financial news —

Modern Healthcare: Rising Medicare Advantage Costs Pinch Humana, Aetna, Cano Health  
Runaway medical expenses are hurting Medicare Advantage plan, risk-bearing provider and digital health company finances, leading investors and insurers to question their positions in the market. Large insurers UnitedHealthcare, Humana and Aetna have begun to warn investors and regulators that higher-than-anticipated utilization in Medicare Advantage mean they may miss their financial targets for 2023 and that profitability may be squeezed this year. (Tepper, 2/1)

Modern Healthcare: Tenet Healthcare To Sell 4 Hospitals To UCI Health
Tenet Healthcare plans to sell four of its hospitals in Southern California and related outpatient locations to University of California Irvine's health system for $975 million. Under the definitive agreement announced Thursday, Lakewood Regional Medical Center, Los Alamitos Medical Center, Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center and Placentia Linda Hospital, along with their adjoining outpatient facilities, would join UCI Health. The facilities would use Dallas-based Tenet subsidiary Conifer Health Solutions as their revenue cycle management service. (DeSilva, 2/1)

Modern Healthcare: Tenet Healthcare, Novant Health Close $2.4B Deal
Tenet Healthcare closed a $2.4 billion deal to sell Novant Health three hospitals, 27 physician clinics, an outpatient center and a free-standing emergency department in South Carolina. East Cooper Medical Center in Mount Pleasant, Coastal Carolina Hospital in Hardeeville and Hilton Head Hospital on Hilton Head Island, along with their connecting clinics and facilities, were part of the transaction, nonprofit Novant Health said Thursday. (DeSilva, 2/1)

Bloomberg: Brazilian Health Care Provider Dasa To Evaluate Sale
Brazil’s health industry is struggling with higher costs, claims and regulation after the pandemic, which is putting pressure on companies to consolidate. UnitedHealth Group Inc. agreed to sell its Brazilian unit in December to entrepreneur Jose Seripieri Filho. The deal size wasn’t specified, but UnitedHealth said it will take a $7 billion charge with the sale.Dasa was valued at about 5.5 billion reais ($1.1 billion) as of Thursday’s close. (Lucchesi, 2/1)

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: St. Louis Wants Proof On New Hospital Before Subsidy Payout
The city says it needs more proof that minority contractors were paid before it doles out a $6.4 million subsidy to a new hospital developed by companies affiliated with Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration. McKee has been planning the new hospital in north St. Louis for a decade, and two weeks ago, the Homer G. Phillips Memorial Hospital, licensed for 15 emergency room beds, two triage stations and three inpatient beds, finally opened. (Barker, 2/1)

Also —

Modern Healthcare: Oracle Taps Seema Verma To Lead EHR Division 
Seema Verma, former administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is expanding her role at tech giant Oracle. Verma, who was CMS administrator under President Donald Trump, will serve as executive and general manager of Oracle Health, a source at Oracle confirmed. The change was first reported by Bloomberg. (Turner, 2/1)

San Francisco Chronicle: Why Do More Women Get Autoimmune Diseases? Stanford Study Finds A Clue
Women have long been far more vulnerable to autoimmune diseases than men, accounting for about 80% of the more than 24 million Americans afflicted with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and other debilitating disorders. A new Stanford study, published Thursday in the journal Cell, offers one potential explanation: a gene on the second X chromosome, which only women have, can “leak” out of its rightful place in the cell and get spotted by the body’s antibodies, which see it as a threat and attack it. This type of interaction in the body — when your antibodies attack your own tissue — is a symptom of autoimmune diseases. (Ho, 2/1)

Fox News: Marijuana Use Linked To Increased Asthma Risk In Youth, Says Study: ‘Worrisome' Health Implications 
Where there’s smoke, there’s … asthma? That’s the concern among some experts, as a recent study from the City University of New York (CUNY) identified a link between cannabis legalization and asthma among kids and teens. The research, published in the journal Preventive Medicine in its Feb. 2024 issue, found that in states where marijuana is legal, the share of teens with asthma is slightly higher than in states where it remains illegal. The recreational use of cannabis is now legalized in 24 states. (Rudy, 2/1)

WMFE: Lung Cancer Screening Guidelines Are Not One Size Fits All: Nonsmokers Are Also At Risk 
Winter Garden resident Jacquee Wahler is a lung cancer survivor. That fact alone stands out. However, what's atypical is that Wahler didn't fit any of the typical signs associated with the disease when diagnosed, nor did she fit the American Cancer Society's updated guidelines for who should receive yearly screenings. Wahler was 49 years old at the time her lung cancer was first flagged, and a nonsmoker. (Pedersen, 2/1)

Fox News: Music Could Be The Secret To Fighting Off Dementia, Study Says: ‘Profound Impact’
There’s nothing like a nostalgic song to transport you back to a special time and place — and now a new study has shown that music could help protect those memories for a lifetime. Researchers at the University of Exeter discovered that people who "engage in music" over the course of their lives tend to have improved memory and better overall brain health as they age, according to a press release. The findings were published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. (Rudy, 2/2)

NBC News: Millions Unaware Of Deadly Heart Attacks And Strokes Linked To Stealthy Cholesterol: What Can You Do For Prevention
Millions of Americans are born genetically predisposed to extremely high levels of a type of cholesterol that cause deadly heart attacks and strokes by middle age, yet they are almost always unaware of their risk. The cholesterol is called lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a). Like low-density lipoprotein — LDL, or the "bad" cholesterol — it leads to plaque buildup in arteries. But Lp(a) has a second nasty trick that makes it even more dangerous: it causes blood clots. And unlike LDL, it's entirely genetic, which means diet and exercise have no effect on Lp(a) levels. (Edwards, 2/1)

Stat: Adopting New Red Light Myopia Treatments May Be Short-Sighted
Myopia, or near-sightedness, is on the rise: Nearly half of the world’s population will be nearsighted by 2050, according to the World Health Organization. The condition is increasingly common among children in particular, which ophthalmologists attribute to a combination of less time spent outdoors and more time spent with iPads and iPhones. (Merelli, 2/2)

Reuters: Judge Certifies Class Action Challenging ChapStick 'All Natural' Labels 
A lawsuit accusing a former GlaxoSmithKline unit and Pfizer of misleading consumers by marketing some ChapStick products as “all natural” and "naturally sourced" even though they allegedly contain synthetic or highly processed ingredients can move ahead as a class action, a California federal judge has ruled. (Mindock, 2/1)

The Hill: 123 Passengers Sickened Aboard Cruise Ship: CDC 
More than 100 passengers and crew aboard a Queen Victoria cruise ship have fallen sick with a gastrointestinal illness, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported. The Cunard Cruise Line ship departed on Jan. 22 and is set to return on Feb. 12, the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) said. According to ABC News, the cruise departed Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and is scheduled to go to San Francisco before ending in Honolulu. (Irwin, 2/1)

CNN: Mother Of Michigan School Shooter Testifies It Was Her Husband’s Responsibility To Store Son’s Gun 
Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the teenager convicted of killing four people at a Michigan high school in 2021, took the stand in her manslaughter trial Thursday and testified it was her husband’s responsibility to store their son Ethan’s gun safely. “I didn’t feel comfortable putting the lock thing on it,” she said.... Crumbley testified her son had never asked her to get help for mental health issues, contrary to his private journal writings and texts to a friend. She said he expressed some anxiety about taking tests and what he would do after high school, “but not to a level where I felt he needed to go see a psychiatrist or mental health professional right away.” The prosecution rested its case Thursday. (Levenson and del Valle, 2/1)

Fox News: Tennessee Dem Introduces Bill For 'Thoughts And Prayers Tax' On Firearm Sales
"Tongue-in-cheek, I made it AR-15 percent," Mitchell told WKRN. "I call it the ‘Thoughts and Prayers Tax.’ If we’re going to do nothing else in this state, we’re going to put this taxation into a fund to fund K through 12 mental health counselors for our children." "If we don’t solve this problem, we’re going to need a lot more mental health counselors in our schools, either for the school shooting or for the children who go home, and the guns are unsecured at home, and they either shoot themselves or their neighbors’ children. It’s either we act and do something, or we’re going to have to start taxing to pay for the other problem it’s causing," he added. (Hagstrom, 2/1)

In other health news from across the U.S. —

Minnesota Public Radio: Report: MinnesotaCare Expansion Could Cost Up To $364 Million Annually, Enroll 151,000 More People
State-subsidized MinnesotaCare insurance is currently available only to people under a certain income limit, but some state legislators want to open the program up to anyone. The Minnesota Department of Commerce released a report Thursday laying out the costs for a potential expansion of the state’s public health insurance program. The report says an expansion could cost the state up to $364 million annually and enroll up to 151,000 more people in the program. (Timar-Wilcox, 2/1)

Houston Chronicle: One In 10 Houston Children Lack Health Insurance, Report Finds
Nearly 12 percent of Houston-area children went without health insurance in 2022, more than double the national average, according to a recent report by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. ... “This is not just a one-city problem that the state is seeing,” said Alec Mendoza, a senior policy associate for health at the advocacy group, Texans Care for Children. “This is something that is widespread across the entire state, no matter the zip code, no matter the demographics, the economics or the geography.” (Severson, 2/1)

Iowa Public Radio: Bill Would Require Additional Oversight And Regulation Of Temporary Medical Staffing Agencies
As Iowa's nursing homes and hospitals struggle with chronic staffing shortages, lawmakers have advanced a bill that would put additional regulations and oversight on health care agencies that supply temporary medical staff. The bill, which passed a House Health and Human Services subcommittee on Thursday, would require staffing agencies to register with the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, which would oversee new requirements such as a wage cap that limits the amount temporary workers can make. (Krebs, 2/1)

Los Angeles Times: This Social Service Hotline You've Never Heard Of Could Help Pinpoint California's Next Big Crisis 
Months before the 2022 baby formula shortage drew congressional attention, operators at the nation’s 211 social service hotlines noticed an uptick in low-income parents pleading for help feeding their infants. A decade earlier, before the mortgage crisis crippled the country’s largest banks, 211 hotlines were jammed with people unable to make house payments. Anyone monitoring the hotlines in more recent months would have seen California’s homeless crisis was spreading to other states, as callers were riven with anxiety over eviction notices. (Bierman and LeMee, 2/1)

In military health news —

The War Horse: California Program Helps Older, Housing-Insecure Veterans
On a recent morning, four veterans who served in the 1960s and 1970s gathered at tables at the Jon W. Paulson Veterans Community in a common room that smelled of strong coffee. Eric Hill, an Army veteran with thinning gray hair, spent almost eight years living in his van, often staying the night in the San Francisco Veterans Affairs hospital’s parking lot. “When I was younger, you know, get in the car, travel around the country, with or without anybody, and that was fine,” he says. “But when you’re in your 60s, it’s not as easy. And now I’m 75. I feel very fortunate that I have this place.” (Marshall-Chalmers, 2/1)

Military.com: Army Eyes Privatized Barracks As It Struggles To Find A Solution To Poor Living Conditions For Soldiers 
The Army is hoping privatization can fix the myriad quality-of-life issues facing its barracks, at least partly because it has few other ideas. In December, key service leaders had a barracks summit to draw up plans to get soldier housing back up to standards following months of media reports on rampant mold and other problems, as well as a damning federal watchdog report detailing squalid conditions in military rank-and-file base housing. (Beynon, 2/1)

The Washington Post: Families Swap Kidneys Through Organ Donor Program That Finds Matches
Over a thousand miles apart on opposite sides of the country, Frankie Pompa and Anthony Gonzalez faced the same dilemma: they needed new kidneys. Severe kidney disease had upended their once-active lives and tethered them to dialysis machines. They faced a long crawl through waitlists for a matching organ donor before they could receive a transplant. Family members offered to help Pompa and Gonzalez by donating their own kidneys. But when Pompa’s sister, Joely Sanders, and Gonzalez’s wife, Tracey Gonzalez, volunteered, they received crushing news: their organs were not compatible with their loved ones. Pompa’s sister couldn’t help him. Gonzalez’s wife couldn’t help him. But, Pompa and Gonzalez later learned, they could help each other. (Wu, 1/28)

Military.com: Meet The Soldiers Who Have Created A Lifesaving Network Of Bone Marrow Donations In The Army
Spc. Christian Sutton and his team of nearly two dozen other young soldiers have signed up nearly 6,000 troops as potential bone marrow donors since March 2022. The effort by members of the Army's rank and file fills a critical void amid a nationwide shortage of donors and has become one of the most significant grassroots health care initiatives in the service's recent history. (Beynon, 1/30)

Stat: From A Small Town In Wales, A Scientific Sleuth Has Shaken Dana-Farber — And Elevated The Issue Of Research Integrity
The blog post that has shaken the leadership of Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, one of the world’s preeminent cancer research centers, was written some 3,000 miles away, in a bare-walled, sparsely decorated flat, save for a stack of statistics books and a collection of Rubik’s Cubes. It’s here that Sholto David, an unemployed scientist with a doctorate in cell and molecular biology, spends his time poring over research papers looking for images with clues that they’ve been manipulated in some way to portray misleading findings — perhaps duplicated, spliced or cropped, or partially obscured. (Joseph, 1/27)

The Washington Post: The NFL Concussion Settlement’s Broken Promises 
When Irv Cross applied for money from the NFL concussion settlement in 2018, his dementia was obvious to anyone who spent more than a few minutes with him. At 78, the former NFL player and trailblazing sports broadcaster struggled to speak coherently, forgot to change his clothes and suffered from urinary incontinence, his wife told doctors. Cross had been diagnosed with dementia by another doctor months before he was evaluated by two NFL settlement doctors, his medical records show. (Hobson, 1/31)

The New York Times: The Quiet Luxury Of South Korea’s Postpartum Care Centers 
Some new mothers say postpartum care centers are the best part of childbirth in South Korea, where fewer people are deciding to have children because of high costs. (Charlton, 1/28)

The Washington Post: D.C. Sent $10,800 To Dozens Of New Moms. Here’s How It Changed Their Lives
In 2022, the D.C. government announced a pilot program that offered 132 new and expecting low-income mothers $10,800 over the course of a year — no strings attached — intended to assess how unconditional cash payments could improve their families’ outcomes and economic mobility. Facilitated by the nonprofit Martha’s Table, the $1.5 million Strong Families, Strong Futures pilot was limited to families in Wards 5, 7 and 8, which contain some of the District’s poorest neighborhoods. The city’s program was based on similar successful cash-transfer pilots that have now been modeled in at least 100 U.S. jurisdictions and drew 1,553 applications in just three weeks, requiring a lottery system to winnow down the final group. (Brice-Saddler, 2/1)

The New York Times: The Man In Room 117 
Andrey Shevelyov would rather live on the street than take antipsychotic medication. Should it be his decision to make? (Barry, 1/28)

The Baltimore Sun: The State Of Maryland Vs. A Young Woman With Schizophrenia 
A pair of city police officers pulled their patrol vehicle behind a red Mazda stopped around 4 p.m. on a dreary day last winter in the middle of the road in an industrial stretch of South Baltimore. The car was running, hazard lights flashing. The windshield wipers squeaked across the glass. Inside, the officers found the car keys and a wallet. But the driver was nowhere to be found. (Mann, 1/26)

The New York Times: He Creates Million Dollar Smiles With Diamonds
Dr. Thomas Connelly has turned the cliché “million dollar smile” into reality. In 2021, the “Father of Diamond Dentistry” — as Rolling Stone named him — reconstructed Post Malone’s smile with 18 porcelain veneers, eight platinum crowns and two six-carat diamonds replacing the singer-songwriter’s upper canines. Just diamonds. The total cost: $1.6 million.“Posty needed me; he had terrible teeth,” said Dr. Connelly, 51, seated comfortably on a sofa in one of his treatment rooms in his Beverly Hills office. (Cheney, 1/30)

The New York Times: Dick Traum, 83, Dies; Marathoner Championed Disabled Athletes
Dick Traum, who was regarded as the first person to run a marathon on a prosthetic leg, finishing New York’s race in 1976, and who went on to found the Achilles Track Club to encourage other disabled athletes in an era when they faced barriers to participation in sports, died on Jan. 23 in Manhattan. He was 83. (Gabriel, 1/31)

The New York Times: The Measles Outbreak In Europe Is A Warning To America
In 2022, there were 941 reported cases of measles in the World Health Organization’s European region. Over just the first 10 months of last year, according to an alarming bulletin the W.H.O. issued in mid-December, there were more than 30,000. (David Wallace-Wells, 2/1)

Modern Healthcare: More Residency Programs Could Ease Physician Shortage
The U.S. is facing a dire shortage of physicians, especially in primary care and some of the most critically needed specialties. The statistics are daunting, with the Association of American Medical Colleges projecting a deficit of 37,800 to 124,000 physicians over the next decade. (Dr. Jay Feldstein and U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, 2/2)

The Washington Post: Abortion Access Is A National Security Issue
While it might not seem to be a military issue, the Supreme Court will soon decide a case that will affect the armed forces and hundreds of thousands of women who serve in uniform — as well as those civilians we need to recruit. The question before the court is whether to severely limit access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used for medication abortions up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. Medication abortions make up over half of the cases in the United States. (Louis Caldera, Ray Mabus and Deborah James, 2/1)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Abortion Rights Scored A Victory In Pa. Court, But The Fight Is Far From Over
In June 2022, the United States Supreme Court catastrophically impacted women’s lives and health across the nation by overturning Roe v. Wade and leaving it up to elected officials to decide whether residents have the right to abortion. As part of that decision, the court also overruled one of my cases from 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. (Kathryn Kolbert, 2/1)

Newsweek: Wasting In A World Of Plenty 
Globally, 45 million children are experiencing the worst type of malnutrition—known as wasting—which for some means literally starving to death. More than 1 million children die of wasting each year. At the same time, two out of three women of reproductive age lack the key vitamins and minerals they need to survive and thrive, and 3 billion people cannot afford a nutritious diet. (Matt Freeman, William Moore and Anna Hakobyan, 2/1)

USA Today: Covid, Flu And RSV Are Still Here. The 'Tripledemic' Doesn't Care That We're Over Being Sick
There’s a saying in many hospitals: The nicer a patient is, the worse their prognosis. This was unfortunately true when I treated a recent hospitalized patient with metastatic breast cancer. (Dr. Thomas K. Lew, 2/2)

Stat: Why Medicare Shouldn’t Cover Every FDA-Approved Drug
Who among us is looking forward to getting older in 2024? Not senators (most of whom are 65 and older), the two leading presidential candidates (100% of whom are over 75), or the eight Cabinet members who are already more than 65 (growing to 10 in February). Members of the U.S. House of Representatives are younger (averaging 58 years of age), but even so, many are already over 65. (Zuckerman, 2/2)

Stat: Why Scientists Are Rebelling Against Traditional Journal Publishers 
Last spring, I joined a rebellion. The entire editorial board of the prestigious scientific journal NeuroImage, of which I was a member, resigned after its publisher refused to take steps to ease the high costs scientists are required to pay for publication in the journal. While this decision threw the brain imaging research community into a frenzy, the rest of the world barely noticed. Yet it should. The accessibility we are striving for is crucial to combat misinformation, increase the pace of discovery, and promote innovation. (Shella Keilholz, 2/1)

Chicago Tribune: Insurers’ Losses To Squeeze Advantage Plans
Medicare Advantage is causing huge losses for insurers like Humana, which recently reported a surprising loss, attributed to higher than anticipated spending in Advantage plans. The company’s stock immediately fell 22% on Jan. 25 on the news, as the company disclosed their earnings would likely be less than half what had been widely expected. Other Medicare Advantage insurers — including United Health Group and CVS Health — saw stock declines as the narrowing profit margins are causing a squeeze because of more spending on care for their Advantage patients. Humana forecast the losses continuing through 2025. And that should scare you — if you are in an Advantage plan. (Terry Savage, 1/31)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Pennsylvania Has Put Billions In Medicaid Business Out For Bid
The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services put more than $5 billion in annual Medicaid business out for bid this week. (Harold Brubaker, 2/1)

Stat: Do Digital Therapeutics Have A Future In Medicine? 
South Korea is the only country to officially recognize digital therapeutics as a category. Nevertheless, the concept of software-based tools designed to manage or treat medical conditions has received enormous attention in the U.S. as proponents tout their potential to both widen access to care and improve patient outcomes. This optimism has driven significant financial investment in the sector, which ballooned to $3.4 billion in 2021. (G. Luke Hartstein and John Torous, 2/1)

Stat: What We Need To Know About Arena Bioworks 
I’ve spent a good deal of my career thinking about how we structure and fund research in the biomedical sciences in the U.S. and questioning whether the U.S. model of embedding research in universities is the right one. So to me, the launch of Arena BioWorks is welcome news. As media reports have highlighted, the new effort — a press release says that it was “inspired by the success of Bell Labs” — promises to let scientists engage in research without first getting funding from NIH or other sources, as well as the option, if the results are promising, to spin off a for-profit company. (Paula Stephan, 2/2)