Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Dec. 11, 2023

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Dec. 11, 2023–Dec. 15, 2023.

Reuters (12/14) reports the CDC “on Thursday issued an alert urging health care [clinicians] to increase immunization coverage for influenza, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).” According to the agency, “low vaccination rates, coupled with ongoing increases in respiratory disease activity, could lead to more severe disease and increased health care capacity strain in the coming weeks.”

The New York Times (12/13, Ghorayshi) reports, “The nausea and vomiting that often define the first trimester of pregnancy are primarily caused by a single hormone, according to a study published on Wednesday.” The study “confirms prior research that had pointed to the hormone, called GDF15,” and researchers “said that the discovery could lead to better treatments for morning sickness, including rare, life-threatening cases of it.” The findings were published in the journal Nature.

Reuters (12/12, Lapid) reports, “Children with obesity should receive intensive counseling to promote healthy diet and exercise habits starting at age 6, according to a draft recommendation” issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force on Wednesday. In 2017, the USPSTF “had recommended ... that screening for obesity start at age 6.” However, “research since then has shown the effectiveness of intensive behavioral interventions ... for achieving a healthy weight and improving the quality of life for children and adolescents, the panel said.”

CNN (12/12, Christensen) reports, “The task force’s draft recommendations do not include weight loss medications or surgery, although it has looked at some research on those interventions.”

The New York Times (12/11, Blum) reports people seeking out the weight loss drug Zepbound (tirzepatide) “may have to stay on it for the foreseeable future—potentially, for the rest of their lives—if they want to keep the weight off...research confirms.” The study, published in JAMA, “followed 670 people who had taken tirzepatide...for 36 weeks.” Then, “half of the participants continued to take a high dose of tirzepatide for a year while the other half received a placebo shot,” in addition to undergoing “lifestyle counseling, ensuring that they were eating fewer calories and exercising regularly.”

Reuters (12/11, Roy) reports the study found patients with obesity “and without diabetes experienced a 14% weight regain nearly a year after they switched to a placebo from an eight-month course of [Eli] Lilly’s Zepbound,” while “those who continued the treatment experienced an additional 5.5% weight reduction during the 52-week period.”

CNN (12/11, Goodman) reports that when researchers looked at patients’ “health improvements in other areas, their blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol and metabolic improvements all seemed to drift back to where they were at the start of the study. But they didn’t go above their baselines.”

The New York Times (12/8, A1, Kolata) reported that the FDA on Friday “approved the first gene editing therapy ever to be used in humans for sickle cell disease.” In addition, the agency “approved a second treatment using conventional gene therapy for sickle cell that does not use gene editing.” And “while patients, their families and their doctors welcome the FDA’s approvals, getting either therapy will be difficult, and expensive.”

NBC News (12/8, Kopf, Lovelace) reported, “The therapy, called Casgevy, from Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics, is the first medicine to be approved in the United States that uses the gene-editing tool CRISPR.” The FDA “also approved a second treatment for sickle cell disease, called Lyfgenia, a gene therapy from drugmaker Bluebird Bio.”

CNN (12/8, Tirrell) reported, “For many in the sickle cell community, the approvals have been a long time coming.” This “disease afflicts about 100,000 people in the U.S., including an estimated 1 of every 365 Black babies born, according to the” CDC, “and has long been considered neglected by the pharmaceutical industry. About 20,000 people in the U.S. are thought to have a severe enough form of the disease to potentially qualify for a treatment like this.”

AMA Morning Rounds news coverage is developed in affiliation with Bulletin Healthcare LLC. Subscribe to Morning Rounds Daily.