Morning Rounds: Grindr gets into health care lobbying

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Surprisingly, a story by my colleagues Nick Florko and Sarah Owermohle about how Grindr hired a Washington lobbyist is NOT the first time the, uh, “social networking app” (their words!) has appeared in STAT reporting. A quick Google search tells me that the word first appeared in an early episode of The Readout LOUD. In “print,” that honor belongs to a First Opinion essay during the mpox outbreak in 2022.

Could a proposed new risk model lead to more heart attacks?

Last November, a new risk model for assessing a person’s risk of heart attack or stroke was presented by the American Heart Association. It was developed specifically to improve upon a 2013 version that was widely criticized for overestimating risk. Last month, one study focused suggested far fewer Americans (like, 40% less!) would be candidates for statins, the cholesterol-lowering drug, with the new risk calculator. Now, another study estimates that it could lead to 107,000 more heart attacks and strokes over 10 years.

The research is creating controversy in cardiology circles while two medical societies formulate new guidelines to inform practice, STAT’s Liz Cooney writes. Read more.

Quitting smoking could be another potential use for semaglutide

Add it to the list: A study published yesterday in Annals of Internal Medicine found that, among people with type 2 diabetes who also smoke, new use of semaglutide was associated with a lower risk for medical encounters related to tobacco use disorder compared to other anti-diabetes medications.

Researchers compared more than 222,000 new users of various diabetes meds, including almost 6,000 new semaglutide users. Those who took semaglutide received fewer prescriptions and less counseling specifically for smoking cessation, adding to research that suggests GLP-1 medications could reduce cravings for addictive substances. The study indicates a need for clinical trials evaluating the medication’s potential as a treatment for tobacco use disorder.

Researchers are calling for better data on trans people

Diana Tordoff, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford, wanted to find a way to analyze HIV transmission that accurately accounted for trans people, who are at higher-than-average risk of contracting the infection. But when she set out to build a better mathematical model, she found that the data didn’t exist to do so. 

Mathematical models — like computer simulations of how a disease spreads in the real world — are a key part of considering prevention policies. There are hundreds focused on HIV, dozens of which are used regularly around the world, but only seven that even consider the existence of trans people — and even these are flawed.  

Historically, there’s been more of a focus on trans people in HIV research than in any other area of health care. But a lack of data on gender and sexual identity is still posing obstacles for public health efforts. Read more from me on why the missing data is a problem for future prevention and treatment policies.

Grindr wants to lobby Washington on HIV prevention and IVF

The queer dating app Grindr is … getting into lobbying? The company hired The Daschle Group, founded by former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, to lobby on “HIV prevention; LGBTQ family formation challenges including surrogacy and IVF,” STAT’s Nicholas Florko and Sarah Owermohle reported yesterday after reading federal disclosures filed last week.

The move comes as competing bills designed to protect IVF, or in vitro fertilization, sit in the Senate. Washington has also seen increased lobbying around access to PrEP, the HIV prevention medicine. It is unclear how much Grindr is paying Daschle’s firm to lobby on its behalf.

Read more on what the move means for Grindr and what we know about the lobbyists the company hired.

Do you know how hot your food is supposed to be?

To be clear, there is no evidence that you can get the H5N1 bird flu virus by cooking and eating the meat that lands in your fridge. If you’re worried about bird flu, just make sure you’re not part of the small percentage of U.S. adults drinking raw milk.

But since the way our food affects our health is on the mind these days, the Annenberg Public Policy Center surveyed nearly 1,500 Americans earlier this month about food safety. When presented with various temperatures for heating poultry, beef, and steak, then asked about which ones would kill any H5N1 virus, over half of respondents said they were not sure. On top of that, only about one in four U.S. adults use a food thermometer either “often” or “all the time.”

So as a refresher: Cooking poultry and eggs to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit kills bacteria and viruses. Ground beef needs to get to at least 160, while steak needs to get to at least 145.

How a parasite could help get meds into the brain

There’s a very exclusive list and a very powerful bouncer at the front door of our brains, as the body works hard to keep it safe from external substances. But what if somebody on the list could bring a plus one? A mouse study published yesterday shows how a parasite that’s already able to cross the blood-brain barrier was engineered to treat a brain development disorder in mice.

Scientists at MIT engineered the parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, to make and secrete therapeutic proteins once it was inside the mouse brains. This “smart microbe” could be a gamechanger, but first, scientists need to think about the treatment’s safety. Read more on the science from STAT’s Alia Sajani.

What we’re reading

• Combining ayahuasca compound with drugs like Ozempic could help treat diabetes, mouse model suggests, Scientific American

• What America can learn from Rwanda to solve its mental health crisis, National Geographic

• How to tell if Biden drove a hard bargain on drug prices, STAT
• Iowa’s six-week abortion ban is now in effect, The 19th
• Health care’s ‘Pepsi challenge’: Doctors’ offices are testing AI tools in head-to-head pilots, STAT