Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of April 17, 2023

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of  April 17, 2023– April 21, 2023.

The Washington Post (4/20, Duncan) reports, “About 42,795 people were killed in traffic crashes last year, according to an estimate Thursday from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a sign that a pandemic-era surge in deaths has been slowed but not reversed.” Although “the estimate represents a decline of 0.3% compared with 2021,” it is still “an increase of almost 18% compared with 2019.”

The AP (4/20, Boak) reports, “The department has adopted a strategy for reducing the deaths, including more than $800 million in grants to help communities with projects in high-crash areas, NHTSA said.”

The AP (4/19, Sherman) reports, “As autism diagnoses become increasingly common, health officials have wondered how many” children in the U.S. “have relatively mild symptoms and how many have more serious symptoms, such as very low IQ and inability to speak.” Now, “a first-of-its-kind study...shows the rate of such ‘profound’ autism is rising, though far slower than milder autism cases.” The study revealed that “the rate of profound diagnoses grew from about three cases per 1,000 children in 2000 to about five cases per 1,000 in 2016,” whereas “the rate of kids diagnosed with milder forms of autism grew from 4 per 1,000 to 14 per 1,000 over those years.”

According to HealthDay (4/19, Murez), “For the new report, the CDC analyzed 2000-2016 data from the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network for more than 20,000 children aged eight with autism,” also finding that “children with profound autism were more likely to be female, from racial and ethnic minority groups, of low socioeconomic status, born preterm or with low birth weight, and have self-injurious behaviors and seizure disorders.” The findings were published online April 19 in the journal Public Health Reports.

The Washington Post (4/18, McGinley, Sun) reports that the FDA “cleared the way for people who are at least 65 years old or immune-compromised to receive a second updated booster shot against the coronavirus, an option designed to bolster protection for the most vulnerable Americans even as the pandemic recedes.” This “bivalent booster...targets Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 as well as the original coronavirus.” Although “BA.4 and BA.5 have largely disappeared, the shot works on other Omicron subvariants that have become widespread, officials say.”

CNN (4/17, McPhillips) reports, “As more communities reel from deadly mass shootings...there’s evidence that the trauma of gun violence in the United States is taking a collective toll on” mental health in the United States. In fact, “research published” online Feb. 8 in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance “suggests that the negative effects that mass shootings can have on mental health may extend beyond the survivors and community directly affected to a much broader population.” To date this year, there have been “at least 162” mass shootings in the United States.

USA Today (4/14, Rodriguez) reports, “A test of spinal fluid may be able to predict who is likely to develop Parkinson’s disease years before symptoms appear, according to a new study.” Experts suggest “this test using spinal fluid could be the first step toward less-invasive testing to diagnose Parkinson’s disease using blood tests or nasal swabs.” The new “test, called the SYNTap test by biotech company Amprion, is available for physicians to order for patients who are exhibiting symptoms of Parkinson’s or a related disorder.” The findings were published in The Lancet Neurology.

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