Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of April 3, 2023

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of  April 3, 2023– April 7, 2023.

CNN (4/6, Christensen) reports, “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health advisory Thursday about the Marburg virus outbreak in Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania.” The agency’s “warning says that although there are no cases in the United States and the current risk is low,” physicians “should be on the lookout for any imported cases.” Physicians suspecting “that someone is sick with Marburg virus should take a detailed travel history, the CDC said.” Infected patients “should be managed under isolation until there is a negative test, and the local health department should be contacted immediately.”

CNN (4/5, Christensen) reports an investigational respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine “prevented RSV-associated lower respiratory tract illness—which includes acute bronchitis and pneumonia—and prevented RSV-associated acute respiratory illness, with no apparent safety concerns,” according to late-stage results published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Separate interim results show the vaccine candidate “was given during late-stage pregnancy and was found to be effective against severe RSV-associated lower respiratory tract illness such as pneumonia and bronchiolitis, or inflammation of the small airway passages entering the lungs, in infants.”

The Hill (4/5, Neukam) reports that “while the shot was successful in preventing severe cases of the illness, it did not reach its goal of more effectively preventing non-severe cases of the virus.”

According to HCPlive (4/4, Campbell), “research indicates excessive sodium intake was associated with both coronary and carotid atherosclerosis,” according to findings published online in the European Heart Journal Open. The study, “which included data from individuals at a pair of sites involved in the Swedish Cardiopulmonary bioImage Study,” indicated that “greater levels of estimated 24-hour sodium excretion were associated with increased occurrence of carotid plaques, higher coronary artery calcium scores...and coronary artery stenosis.”

The Washington Post (4/3, Searing) says, “More than 1 in 4 adults—26%—has seasonal allergies, the most prevalent allergic condition afflicting U.S. residents, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” A companion report (PDF) on allergies in children showed “that a smaller percentage—19%, or nearly 1 in 5 children—has a seasonal allergy.” Researchers at the CDC “found that the likelihood of young people having a seasonal allergy increases with age, from 10% of children 5 and younger to 24% of those ages 12 to 17.” Data show that “the opposite occurs among adults, with 25% of adults 44 and younger having a seasonal allergy vs. 22% of those 75 and older.” Investigators “also found that seasonal allergies are more common among boys than girls and among women than men.”

The Washington Post (3/31, Cimons) reported, “Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol every day does not—as once thought—protect against death from heart disease, nor does it contribute to a longer life, according to a sweeping new analysis of alcohol research.” The new “review, which examined existing research on the health and drinking habits of nearly 5 million people...also found that drinking relatively low levels of alcohol—25 grams a day for women (less than 1 ounce) and 45 grams (about 1.5 ounces) or more per day for men—actually increased the risk of death.” The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

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