Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Dec. 16, 2024

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Dec. 16, 2024–Dec. 20, 2024.

USA Today (12/13, Walrath-Holdridge) reports the FDA last week recalled “a popular antidepressant, often known by the brand name Cymbalta...due to the presence of a potentially cancer-causing chemical. More than 233,000 bottles of duloxetine capsules sold by Rising Pharmaceuticals were voluntarily recalled on Nov. 19, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration assigned the recall as a class II risk on Dec. 5. The risk level is the FDA’s second most severe level as it could cause ‘temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences.’”

The Washington Post (12/16, Docter-Loeb) says, “Nearly a quarter of U.S. adults reported living with chronic pain in 2023, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” About 24.3% “of survey respondents said they experienced chronic pain either most days or every day, the CDC said, and nearly 9% of adults had ‘high-impact chronic pain’ in the previous three months, meaning their pain frequently limited their life or work activities.” The CDC “also found that chronic pain and high-impact chronic pain increased with age, and that American Indian and Alaska Native non-Hispanic adults were significantly more likely to have chronic pain than Asian non-Hispanic and Hispanic adults.”

You may also be interested in: Updated pain-management guidance emphasizes individualized patient care.

The New York Times (12/17, Caryn Rabin) reports, “A 53-year-old Alabama woman with kidney failure who waited eight years for an organ transplant has received a kidney harvested from a genetically modified pig, NYU Langone Health surgeons announced on Tuesday.” The patient “went into surgery just before Thanksgiving.” The woman “was in better health than others who have received porcine organs to date and left the hospital 11 days after the procedure.” However, she “returned on Friday for a series of intravenous infusion treatments.” Even before the organ “transplant, she had high levels of antibodies that made it difficult to find a compatible human donor kidney.” According to the Times, “the case will be closely watched by the transplant community, as success could speed initiation of a clinical trial, bringing pig transplants closer to reality and helping to solve the organ-supply shortage.”

The AP (12/17, Neergaard) reports, “Towana Looney is the fifth American given a gene-edited pig organ—and notably, she isn’t as sick as prior recipients who died within two months of receiving a pig kidney or heart.” The patient’s “surgery marks an important step as scientists get ready for formal studies of xenotransplantation expected to begin next year, said Dr. Robert Montgomery of NYU Langone Health, who led the highly experimental procedure on Nov. 25.”

Healio (12/18, Rhoades) reports, “As many as 15 million adults in the United States have a 10% or greater risk for heart failure, results of a research letter...showed.” Researchers found that “the majority of those at higher risk for heart failure...had uncontrolled modifiable risk factors for the condition, including obesity and hypertension.” The findings were published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

The New York Times (12/19, Jewett) reports the FDA “on Thursday updated the definitions of the term ‘healthy’ for labeling on foods, a move that reflected changes in nutrition and that tightened limits on saturated fat, sugar and salt in food that could be sold under that claim.” The agency “said Thursday that its policy, outlined in a final rule [PDF], was meant to ‘empower consumers’ by helping them quickly spot nutritious food at the grocery store.” The new “rule sets forth highly specific guidelines around what food manufacturers can label ‘healthy’ or other terms, like ‘healthful’ or ‘healthiest.’” In order “to make that claim for instance, a 50-gram serving of a dairy product must contain no more than 5% of a person’s daily sugar level and 10% of a person’s daily salt and saturated fat limit.”

The AP (12/19, Aleccia) reports, “Under the rule, products that claim to be ‘healthy’ must contain a certain amount of food from one or more food groups such as fruit, vegetables, grains, dairy and protein.” For the first time, the new “rule sets certain limits for added sugars.” Additionally, foods must “limit sodium and saturated fat at levels that depend on the type of product, the FDA said.”

NBC News (12/19, Edwards) reports, “Most everything in the grocer’s produce section—whole fruits and vegetables—would qualify under the new rule issued Thursday.” Meanwhile, “other nutrient-rich foods, such as whole grains, dairy, eggs, beans, lentils, seafood, lean meat, nuts and seeds also pass the test as long as they have limited added sugar, salt and saturated fat.”

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