Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Aug. 14, 2023

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Aug. 14, 2023–Aug. 18, 2023.

The Washington Post (8/17, Nirappil, Sun) reports, “Health officials are unveiling a new arsenal of vaccines to protect vulnerable Americans and exhausted health care workers from an expected wave of [COVID-19], flu and RSV as the fall respiratory virus season begins.” Pfizer “said in June it could have begun distributing its updated booster by the end of July if regulators approved.” However, “neither the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nor the Food and Drug Administration have acted yet.” For RSV, the FDA has approved two new vaccines and a monoclonal antibody treatment called Beyfortus (nirsevimab). Still, “the coming vaccine campaign is rife with complications that include higher costs for insurers and health practices because the federal government is no longer buying coronavirus vaccines for everyone – as well as outstanding questions about how to best time these shots, who is going to pay for them and other issues that can’t be addressed until all vaccines are formally approved.”

The Washington Post (8/16, Bever) reports that a study published in JAMA Network Open “shows a concerning trend: Cancer among younger Americans, particularly women, is on the rise, with gastrointestinal, endocrine and breast cancers climbing at the fastest rates.”

The Hill (8/16, Sforza) reports, “The study, using data from the National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results program, found that there was a .74% increase among all age groups in the incidence of early-onset cancers.” Investigators “found that the rates increased in those aged 30 to 39 years and remained stable in all other age groups below the age of 50.”

HealthDay (8/16, Reinberg) reports, “The study noted that early-onset cancers rose 4.35% in women and dropped 4.9% in men over the study period.” The data indicated that “early-onset cases rose 32% among people of Asian or Pacific Island background and nearly 28% among Hispanic people over the study period.” The data also indicated that “rates fell almost 5% among Black Americans and 12% among white people.”

The Hill (8/15, Latour) reports, “Two-thirds of U.S. adults have been impacted in some way by the nation’s substance use crisis,” according to findings from “a new KFF Tracking Poll” announced on Aug. 15. In the poll, 66% “of respondents...said either they themselves or a family member have experienced addiction to alcohol or drugs, homelessness due to addiction, or an overdose resulting in an emergency room visit, hospitalization or death.” What’s more, “among white respondents, 67% said someone in their family has experienced addiction or overdose, compared to 58% of Black adults and 56% of Hispanic adults,” a gap that “‘is mostly driven by addiction to alcohol and prescription [drugs],’ the researchers noted.”

MedPage Today (8/11, Lou) reported, “Reassuringly, a history of oral contraceptive use had no deleterious effects on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and survival over long-term follow-up,” according to the findings of “a U.K. Biobank study” published online ahead of print in the Journal of the American Heart Association. What’s more, “in a comparison between women who have used the pill and never-users, oral contraceptives were even linked to apparent reductions in CVD events and all-cause mortality over a median 11.8 years,” and prevention of all-cause mortality, incident CVD, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation “was greater in people with more years of oral contraceptive use,” the study revealed.

Healio (8/11, Buzby) reported the research team “identified 161,017 women with no CVD at baseline and reported their oral contraceptive use from 2006 to 2010,” then classified participants “as either ever users or never users.”

CNN (8/14, Christensen) reports, “People in areas of the United States with high levels of a certain kind of air pollution have a greater risk of dementia,” investigators concluded in findings published online in JAMA Internal Medicine.

MedPage Today (8/14, George) reports, “Incident dementia was tied to exposure to fine particulate matter, especially air pollution from wildfires and agriculture, an observational study of 28,000 adults over age 50” indicated. Over a period of “10 years, higher concentrations of total PM2.5—particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter—were associated with greater rates of incident dementia.” While “associations differed across emission sources,” the “strongest and most robust associations were for PM2.5 from wildfires...and agriculture.”

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