Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of April 28, 2025

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of April 28, 2025–May 2, 2025.

HealthDay (4/25, Thompson) reported, “Risk factors for dementia could start taking their toll as early as a person’s 20s and 30s, a new study says.” Investigators found that “younger adults who carry known risks for dementia performed worse on memory and thinking tests between ages 24 and 44.” The “risk factors include education level, gender, blood pressure, cholesterol, exercise and body mass index.” The findings were published in The Lancet: Regional Health Americas.

You may also be interested in: What doctors wish patients knew about Alzheimer's disease.

MedPage Today (4/28, Robertson) reports, “The introduction of the pregnancy checkbox on death certificates was responsible for most of the spike in maternal deaths in the U.S. since 2000, other than a jump attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, a longitudinal cross-sectional analysis showed.” Specifically, “the addition of the pregnancy checkbox on death certificates in 2003 was associated with an increase of 6.78 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births – 66% of the total increase in maternal mortality from 2000 to 2019, reported Seth Flaxman, PhD, of the University of Oxford in England, and colleagues.” However, simultaneously both infant and fetal death rates per 1,000 live births generally declined during the study period. For infants, “deaths decreased from 6.93 in 2000 to 5.44 in 2020, and slightly increased in 2021 to 2023; fetal death rates dropped from 6.28 in 2005 to 5.53 in 2022.” The analysis was published in JAMA Pediatrics.

Cardiovascular Business (4/29, Walter) reports, “Drinking champagne may be associated with significant cardiovascular benefits, according to a new study.” Investigators “identified dozens of lifestyle changes that may help lower a person’s risk of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA).” While “some of the changes—eating more fruit, losing weight—were straightforward...a few of the research team’s findings were unexpected.” For instance, “drinking champagne and/or white wine...was linked to a reduced SCA risk,” as was “spending more time at a computer—though that may tell us more about education levels than screen time.” The findings were published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

You may also be interested in: To prevent heart disease, intervene early and often.

The New York Times (4/30, Caron) reports that survey data, collected by Gallup primarily in 2023, show that “young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 were struggling—not only with happiness, but also with their physical and mental health, their perceptions of their own character, finding meaning in life, the quality of their relationships and their financial security.” Study participants across the globe “had relatively low measures of flourishing on average until age 50,” but the “the difference between the younger and older adults was largest in the United States, the researchers said.” The study was “one of a collection of papers published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Mental Health.”

CNN (5/1, Hetter) says there have been about 6,600 cases of whooping cough reported in the U.S. this year, “nearly four times the number at the same point last year.” There were 35,000 cases of whooping cough reported in 2024, resulting in 10 deaths “including six babies less than 1 year old.” The disease “is especially dangerous in infants. Globally, it is a significant cause of disease and death in infancy, according to the World Health Organization.”

You may also be interested in: What doctors wish patients knew about whooping cough.

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