Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Aug. 5, 2024

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Aug. 5, 2024–Aug. 9, 2024.

NBC News (8/2, Szabo) reported, “About 42% of online pharmacies that sell semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s anti-obesity drug Wegovy, are illegal, operating without a valid license and selling medications without prescriptions, according to a study published Friday.” Researchers came to this conclusion after testing “samples of semaglutide ordered from six online pharmacies for quality and safety,” two of which “had received warning letters from the Food and Drug Administration within the last year for unlawful sale of unapproved and misbranded semaglutide.” The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

The Hill (8/3, Suter) reported the increased popularity of semaglutide has made it difficult for manufacturers to keep up with demand, leading to more people “searching for the medicine on online pharmacies” and “exacerbating the rise in ‘knock off’ products, per the research.” The researchers “added that the rise in potentially illegal online sales can also be credited to insurance plans that do not cover the injections or patients whose doctors will not write them a prescription for the drug.”

You may also be interested in: WHO warning on fake Ozempic and Wegovy, summer COVID and more

MedPage Today (8/5, DeBenedette) reports, “An estimated 15.6 million adults in the U.S. reported use of at least one potentially hepatotoxic botanical supplement within the past 30 days, according to a survey study using nationally representative data.” The survey also revealed that “the overall prevalence of herbal and dietary supplement use was 57.6%, and the prevalence of using six potentially hepatotoxic botanicals of interest was 4.7%.” The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

You may also be interested in: What doctors wish patients knew about vitamins and supplements.

MedPage Today (8/6, Kahn) reports, “Physicians should start preparing now for the upcoming respiratory virus season, according to the CDC in a webinar hosted by Bruce Scott, MD, president of the American Medical Association on Tuesday.” The webinar discussed “strategies for getting patients vaccinated for COVID-19 and flu and putting into action the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ updated RSV vaccination recommendations.” CDC Director Mandy Cohen, MD, “reviewed vaccine recommendations for the 2024-2025 respiratory virus season.” Every person “ages 6 months and older should get an updated COVID-19 vaccine and updated influenza vaccine, Cohen said.”

Medical Economics (8/6, Payerchin) reports “physicians making recommendations—or not—has an influence on patient decisions about getting vaccines, said” Cohen. In the CDC’s “research, one of the major reasons a patient does not get a vaccine is because the doctor didn’t recommend it.”

The Hill (8/7, Fortinsky) reports a Gallup poll published Wednesday shows “only 40% of U.S. adults said it is ‘extremely important’ for parents to vaccinate their children, a marked decline from the 58% who said the same in 2019 and the 64% who said the same in 2001.” This decline “is similarly stark when tracking the combined percentage who said vaccinating children is either ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important,” with 69% of U.S. adults holding this view compared to 84% in 2019 and 94% in 2001. The results “come as experts warn of the dangers of rising vaccine skepticism.”

The AP (8/8) reports, “U.S. death rates fell last year for all age groups compared with 2022, federal health officials said Thursday,” with COVID-19 falling “to the 10th leading cause of death,” down from fourth in 2022. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data also showed the “leading causes of death were heart disease, cancer and a category of injuries that includes gun deaths and drug overdoses.”

CNN (8/8, McPhillips) reports the drop in COVID-19 deaths “helped the overall death rate in the United States fall 6% in 2023.” While the country’s death rate “has been dropping quickly since reaching a pandemic-high” in 2021, the new CDC data “suggests the death rate is still well above pre-pandemic years.” Additionally, while “all racial and ethnic groups also saw death rates decrease last year,” the overall death rate among Black people remained the highest.

NBC News (8/8, Bendix) reports Americans “ages 85 and up still represented an outsized share” of COVID-19 deaths in 2023. Furthermore, white people had the highest COVID-19 death rates at “nearly 20 out of every 100,000 people.”

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