Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Aug. 7, 2023

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Aug. 7, 2023–Aug. 11, 2023.

ABC News (8/10, Kekatos) reports that data show “in early June 2022, 7.5% of Americans aged 18 and [older] were experiencing long COVID,” but “by mid-June 2023, that figure had fallen to 6%, according to a new report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” However, 26.4% of “long COVID patients reported significant limitations in their ability to perform day-to-day activities in June 2023.” Researchers “said this percentage has not changed much since the year before.” The findings were published in the CDC’s MMWR.

CNN (8/10, Musa) reports, “Long COVID tended to be less prevalent in the ‘the youngest and the oldest age groups’ of adults reporting previous infections, the CDC researchers noted.” Instead, “the survey data show that long COVID prevalence was highest among U.S. adults ages 35 to 44.”

The Hill (8/9, Weixel) reports that on Wednesday, the administration “launched a new information system to map emergency medical services responses to heat-related illness across the country.” The new “online dashboard is run by the Department of Health and Human Services in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.” Both “agencies said the system is meant to help public health officials ensure that outreach and medical aid reach the people who need it most during heat emergencies.”

NBC News (8/9, Alba, Nicholas) reports that “the ‘EMS HeatTracker’ is intended to help ensure sufficient medical aid gets to Americans who need it most during severe heat, officials said.”

CNN (8/8, Viswanathan) reports that “for older women,” higher consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages may be linked to “a higher risk of liver cancer and death from chronic liver disease, a new study finds.” The findings were published in JAMA.

MedPage Today (8/8, Bassett) reports that investigators found that “compared with consuming three or fewer sugar-sweetened beverages a month, women who drank at least one of these beverages per day had significantly higher rates of liver cancer.” The same “was also true for chronic liver disease mortality.”

Healio (8/8, Burba) reports, “Conversely, compared with women who consumed three or fewer artificially sweetened beverage per month, those who consumed at least one per day did not have a significantly increased risk for liver cancer...or chronic liver disease mortality.”

CBS News (8/7, Tin) reports, “The EG.5 variant now makes up the largest proportion of new COVID-19 infections nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated, as multiple parts of the country have been reporting their first upticks of the virus in months.” Overall, as of last week, “17.3% of COVID-19 cases nationwide were projected to be caused by EG.5, more than any other group, up from 7.5% through the first week of July.” Data indicate that “the next most common variants after EG.5 are now XBB.1.16 at 15.6%, XBB.2.23 at 11.2% and XBB.1.5 at 10.3%.”

The Hill (8/5, Suter) reported, “A recent study” published online in The Lancet Psychiatry “found that by the age of 75 about half of all people will develop a mental disorder.” Included in the study were “over 150,000 respondents aged 18 and older from 29 countries between 2001 and 2022.”

HealthDay (8/4, Solomon) reported, “Alcohol use disorder and major depressive disorder were the two most prevalent disorders for male respondents, while major depressive disorder and specific phobia were most prevalent for female respondents,” according to the study.

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