Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Feb. 13, 2023

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Feb. 13, 2023–Feb. 17, 2023.

According to CNN (2/16, Russell), “Children under 5 in the U.S. are missing out on vital nutrition by drinking sugary drinks and passing up fruits and vegetables, a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.” The findings published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report revealed “parents reported that almost half of kids did not eat a vegetable every day and about a third did not eat a fruit every day,” while “more than half of the kids – 57% – drank at least one sugar-sweetened beverage that week.”

HealthDay (2/16, Murez) reports the researchers surveyed “parents of more than 18,000 children between the ages of 1 and 5” and also “found gaps related to race and household food sufficiency, including that parents of Black children were most likely to report that their children did not eat a fruit or a vegetable each day.”

According to the New York Times (2/15, Blum), findings published online ahead of print in the Journal of the American Heart Association tied “irregular sleep to an early marker of cardiovascular disease” (CVD). The study team “examined a week’s worth of sleep data from 2,000 adults over 45 and found that those who slept varying amounts each night and went to bed at different times were more likely to have hardened arteries than those with more regular sleep patterns.” In particular, “people whose overall sleep amounts varied by two or more hours from night to night throughout the week...were particularly likely to have high levels of calcified fatty plaque built up in their arteries, compared with those who slept the same number of hours each night.”

Healio (2/15, Buzby) reports, “Compared with participants with regular sleep patterns, older adults with irregular sleep durations were more likely to have high coronary artery calcium burden and abnormal ankle-brachial index, researchers” concluded in the 2,032-participant, “cross-sectional, community-based MESA Sleep Ancillary study.”

CNN (2/14, Goodman) reports people who have had COVID-19 “have a higher risk of developing diabetes, and that link seems to have persisted into the Omicron era, a new study” published in JAMA Network Open found. The researchers found COVID-19 “increased the odds of a new diabetes diagnosis by an average of about 58%.”

Healio (2/14, Monostra) reports the study specifically found “adults who contract COVID-19 have a higher risk for developing incident diabetes in the 90 days after the infection compared with before the infection.”

Medscape (2/14, Tucker, Subscription Publication) reports the study also found “vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 appears to diminish” the likelihood of “diabetes following COVID-19 infection.”

USA Today (2/13, Alltucker) reports one in ten new drugs “were cleared by federal drug regulators in recent years based on studies that didn’t achieve their main goals, a new study shows.” The study “found that of 210 new therapies approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2018 through 2021, 21 drugs were based on studies that had one or more goals, or end points, that weren’t achieved.” Those 21 drugs “were approved to treat cancer, Alzheimer’s and other diseases.” Researchers “said the findings raise questions about whether the federal agency’s drug approvals lack transparency about...some products’ safety and effectiveness.” The findings were published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

NBC News (2/11, Carroll) reported “a handful of factors, such as education, income and job type, may increase the likelihood that people in their mid-50s will still be mentally sharp,” according to “an analysis of data from more than 7,000 U.S. adults” who “were 54 to 65 years old in 1996 and then 20 years later.” The results published in PLOS One “showed that these factors could explain nearly 40% of the differences in the amount of cognitive ability people had lost by age 54.” According to researchers, “education, in particular whether a person had finished college, made the biggest difference in cognitive abilities such as memory, judgment and focus.”

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