Good morning, today is my nana’s 90th birthday. Happy birthday Joanie! I’m taking the day off to celebrate, so you’ll be hearing from Timmy tomorrow.
Lawmakers move to preserve telehealth addiction treatment
Two Democratic lawmakers are drafting a bill to preserve the right of health providers to prescribe controlled substances like stimulants and buprenorphine via telehealth, STAT’s Lev Facher and Mario Aguilar report in an exclusive story. The news comes months before the expiration of temporary waivers first enacted by the DEA during the pandemic.
“If flexibilities expire without a permanent framework of some kind of contingency plan in place, we put the care for thousands of patients at risk,” one of the lawmakers, Rep. Doris Matsui, said during a House committee meeting last week. Read more in STAT+ on where things stand.
CDC issues an mpox health alert for travelers
The CDC is urging certain travelers to consider getting vaccinated against mpox if they are heading to countries in Eastern and Central Africa where the virus has been spreading. Doctors should recommend vaccines to those who think they may have sex with a new partner, in a commercial venue, in exchange for money, or at a large public event while in the region, the agency advised. The first of two vaccine doses should be given at least six weeks before any travel.
The strain of mpox spreading in Africa — particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo — is more severe than the strain that’s been in the U.S. since 2022. Follow STAT’s mpox coverage for more.
Is our access to cheap, effective generic drugs under threat?
We’re experts on the Hatch-Waxman Act now, right? (Recap with this explainer.) It’s like the Constitution for generic drugs. Generics make up 9 out of every 10 prescriptions in the country, but experts are worried that we won’t always have access to them. In a story by our partners at Tradeoffs, experts cite three major concerns: the increasingly fragile generics supply chain, mounting quality concerns, and how hard it is to copy newer, expensive brand-name drugs.
“Times have changed,” said Al Engelberg, a retired attorney who helped craft the Hatch-Waxman Act. “You have to figure out a new paradigm for new times.” Read more in STAT+.
What happened when this doctor’s mother got West Nile
Christopher Hartnick, a head and neck doctor in Boston, knows that you’re supposed to look for common causes of sickness before flipping to the pages in the textbook that cover the more far-flung possibilities. So when his mother started getting sick, he thought she may have had a stroke. But then her speech began to slur and her blood pressure fell.
It took a week to identify the problem as West Nile virus. Hartnick’s mother eventually began to recover, slowly, but one symptom dogged her: “I feel like someone else,” she told her son. “I don’t feel like me.” An infectious disease colleague of Hartnick’s confirmed that this is, in fact, a well-known experience for West Nile patients. Read more in his First Opinion essay about the experience.
Former football players who thought they had CTE saw increased suicidality
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy — the brain disorder caused by repeated head injuries and more commonly known by its acronym, CTE — can only be diagnosed via an autopsy after somebody dies. But even if someone doesn’t know they have the condition, they may feel like they do, dealing with symptoms like memory loss, impaired judgment, aggression, depression, and more.
A survey of more than 4,100 former football players who had a professional contract between 1960-2020 found that 34% perceived themselves to have CTE, according to a study published yesterday in JAMA Neurology. The researchers found that these men were twice as likely to report dealing with suicidality as those who didn’t think they had CTE. The data could be helpful in detecting suicidality among former football players and getting them help, the study authors wrote.
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. For TTY users: Use your preferred relay service or dial 711 then 988.
Q&A: Rachel Levine on blood shortages, climate change, and gender-affirming care
You may have heard there was a blood shortage this summer. There’s always a seasonal ebb and flow to blood donations, but experts also say climate change can have an effect, with extreme heat and worsening storms in certain regions keeping people away from blood banks.
To understand more about the shortage, I spoke with Adm. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services. Levine’s office is working to raise awareness of the importance of blood donation and the threat that climate change poses to health more broadly. In a Q&A, Levine spoke about how climate change can impact public health and responded to a critique published in First Opinion last month that her office has not taken enough regulatory action in that arena. We also spoke about how gender-affirming care has become even more politicized since we last spoke two years ago. Read more.
What we’re reading
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After suspension for sexual harassment, prominent biologist’s return to campus prompts dismay, Science
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The letters of Oliver Sacks, New Yorker
- Millions of people are missing from U.S. disability data, STAT
- Africa sees dementia rising as people live longer, Semafor
- Electronic health records giant Epic Systems sued over alleged monopolistic practices, STAT
