Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of April 14, 2025

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of April 14, 2025–April 18, 2025.

The AP (4/11, Shastri) reported that U.S. measles cases surpassed “700 as of Friday, capping a week in which Indiana joined five others states with active outbreaks, Texas grew by another 60 cases and a third measles-related death was made public.” Other states with active measles outbreaks – defined as three or more cases – include New Mexico, Kansas, Ohio and Oklahoma. The multistate outbreak “confirms health experts’ fears that the virus will take hold in other U.S. communities with low vaccination rates and that the spread could stretch on for a year.”

NBC News (4/14, Lovelace Jr.) reports a study suggests a new antibiotic pill “developed by GSK was found to be safe and effective in treating gonorrhea in a late-stage clinical trial.” Researchers said that gepotidacin “is part of a new class of antibiotics called triazaacenaphthylenes, which work by targeting two key enzymes that gonorrhea needs to copy itself and survive.” They found that “gepotidacin was shown to successfully treat about 92% of patients when taken twice daily, compared with about 91% in a group of patients who got a standard treatment.” Crucially, the study authors wrote that “the pill was effective against strains of gonorrhea bacteria that are resistant to existing antibiotics.” The study was published in The Lancet.

CNN (4/14) reports the FDA approved gepotidacin in March “to treat uncomplicated urinary tract infections in women and girls ages 12 and older. Recurrent UTIs have become a bigger problem as the bacteria that cause them have become more resistant to the antibiotics available to treat them.” Researchers noted in the study that “using gepotidacin to treat gonorrhea as an oral treatment option, not an injection, may be more efficient and reduces the risk of persistent, drug-resistant infections.”

Stateline (4/15, Hassanein) reports Blue Cross Blue Shield on Tuesday “began mandating that” patients with severe asthma “self-administer their drugs at home, unless their provider gets prior approval from the insurance company. The patients affected are those covered in Illinois, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Montana, but not those with Medicare or Medicaid.” The treatments in question, given as injections, “are Fasenra (benralizumab), Tezspire (tezepelumab), Nucala (mepolizumab) and Xolair (omalizumab).” The drugs are all biologics. Stateline says the “decision is expected to affect thousands of patients.” Dr. Priya Bansal, a pediatrician and asthma and allergy physician in Illinois, said that the “change interferes with a provider and patient decision on whether in-office or at-home treatment is best for the patient.”

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The AP (4/16, Stobbe) reports the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Wednesday “recommended an expansion of RSV vaccinations for adults and a new combination shot as another option to protect teens against meningitis.” The 15-member expert panel “also voted to recommend a shot to protect travelers from a mosquito-borne illness called chikungunya.”

Reuters (4/16, S K, Sunny) reports the panel “voted 14-to-0 to recommend that at-risk adults ages 50 to 59 receive a single dose of RSV vaccine,” with one member abstaining. The CDC “currently recommends the vaccine for adults age 75 and older and at-risk adults ages 60 to 74.” If the agency adopts the recommendation, “it would make about 30% of U.S. adults in that age group eligible for the RSV vaccine, according to panelist Michael Melgar.”

MedPage Today (4/17, George) reports a study suggests “hearing loss may play a bigger role in dementia than previously thought.” Researchers observed that in a “sample of nearly 3,000 older adults, up to 32% of incident dementia over 8 years could be attributable to any degree of audiometric hearing loss.” They said that “population attributable fractions (PAFs) were similar by hearing loss severity. For mild hearing loss, the PAF was 16.2%. For moderate or greater hearing loss, it was 16.6%.” Furthermore, “PAFs were larger in people ages 75 and older (30.5%), women (30.8%), and white participants (27.8%) compared with those younger than age 75, male, and Black.” The researchers highlighted that the “PAF of 32% in this study was substantially higher than other estimates. The 2020 Lancet Commission on Dementia Prevention reported a global PAF of 8.2% for hearing loss, for example.” The study was published in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.

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