Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Feb. 17, 2025

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Feb. 17, 2025–Feb. 21, 2025.

CBS News (2/15, Tin) reported, “Ohio’s health department confirmed Saturday that a farmer in the state was discharged from the hospital after being sickened by bird flu, marking the fourth American to have been hospitalized with the H5N1 virus.” A spokesperson for Ohio’s health department said, “The individual had respiratory symptoms. He was previously hospitalized and has since been released.” This news “comes a day after Wyoming announced the third U.S. hospitalization from bird flu, linked to exposure to an infected backyard flock.”

Editor’s note: Stay informed on highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5N1) with the latest updates from the AMA’s bird flu (H5N1) resource center.

Cardiovascular Business (2/14, Walter) reported the FDA “has announced that Abiomed, now known as Johnson & Johnson MedTech, is recalling its Impella RP with SmartAssist and Impella RP Flex with SmartAssist heart pumps over ongoing safety concerns.” This Class I “recall was put in place due to an increased risk that the tip of guide wires or other medical devices could come into contact with the heart pumps during insertion, adjustment or removal.’” However, “no heart pumps are being removed from the market for this recall; instead, the instructions have been updated to help clinicians avoid any issues.” 

CNN (2/18, Mukherjee) reports, “The number of measles cases linked to an outbreak in West Texas has grown to 58, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.” The majority “of the cases are centered in Gaines County, which is reporting 45 cases.” Other surrounding regions “are seeing spread of the illness too, with 9 cases in Terry County, two in Yoakum County, one in Lynn County and one in Lubbock County.” The measles “cases are mostly in children ages 5 to 17.” 

The AP (2/18, Shastri, Lee) reports “eight people in neighboring eastern New Mexico also have been diagnosed with measles.” On Tuesday, “New Mexico health department spokesman Robert Nott said...that the agency hadn’t ‘identified any direct contact’ between cases in its state and cases in Texas.”

ABC News (2/19, Jacobo) reports, “While both environmental exposures and genetics are known to play important roles in shaping human aging, living conditions and lifestyle choices impact human health much more than genetics, according to a new study.” Investigators “used data from nearly 500,000 participants in the U.K. to assess the influence of 164 environmental factors and genetic risk scores for 22 age-related diseases and premature death.” The research “showed that environmental factors accounted for 17% of the variation in risk of death, compared to less than 2% explained by genetic predisposition.” The data indicated that “smoking, socioeconomic status, physical activity and living conditions had the most impact on mortality and biological aging.” The findings were published in Nature Medicine.

USA Today (2/20, Cuevas) reports, “Bird flu may be spreading between people and cats more than previously thought, a new federal study said.” The research “looked at indoor cats who had severe illness and death in two Michigan households of two dairy workers around May where bird flu was circulating on farms.” The study referred to “one household where an adolescent developed a cough and other symptoms after a cat became sick, but the results were inconclusive since the teen also had additional exposure.” Both “cats that died, one in each household, appeared to have the same signs of respiratory and neurologic illness, according to the study.” Later, the cats “tested positive for bird flu.” The findings were published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The New York Times (2/20, Anthes, Mandavilli) reports, “How the cats might have become infected is unclear, but experts said that the farmworkers were likely to have become infected with H5N1 at their workplace and to have brought the virus home to their cats.”

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