Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Feb. 6, 2023

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Feb. 6, 2023–Feb. 10, 2023.

CNN (2/9, Chavez) reports “COVID-19 shots are included in new schedules of routinely recommended vaccines released by the” CDC Thursday. These “immunization schedules summarize current vaccine recommendations for children, adolescents and adults, but do not set vaccine requirements for schools or workplaces.” Key updates “to the schedules, published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on Thursday, include the addition of COVID-19 primary vaccine series and recommendations on booster dose vaccination; updated guidance on influenza and pneumococcal vaccines; and new vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and for hepatitis B.”

Healio (2/8, Bascom) reports, “From 2006 to 2018, the proportion of primary care visits addressing mental health concerns jumped by almost 50%, highlighting the need for resources that support behavioral health integration into primary care,” researchers concluded in a study that “used nationally representative serial cross-sectional data from the 2006-2018 National Medical Surveys to characterize temporal trends in primary care visits that addressed a mental health concern.” The study “sample consisted of 109,898 visits representing 3,891,233,060 weighted visits.” The findings were published in the February issue of the journal Health Affairs.

According to HealthDay (2/8, Norton), while “the study cannot pinpoint the reasons” for the increased visits, they are “probably a combination of” factors, such as increased mental health screening and patients being more likely to bring up mental health problems.

The New York Times (2/7, Rabin) reports physicians and other “health care providers must check pregnant patients’ blood pressure regularly” to screen for hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, “starting early in pregnancy and continuing for at least six weeks after childbirth, according to new draft recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.” The USPSTF “called on health care providers to offer better support for pregnant women of color, and for physicians to be aware of their increased risks so they can ‘focus clinical energy and resources to those most likely to suffer morbidity or mortality.’”

CNN (2/7, Howard) reports, “This is the first time the task force has proposed expanding these screening recommendations to include all hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, which are on the rise in the United States.” This “draft recommendation statement and evidence review were posted online Tuesday for public comment.”

MedPage Today (2/6, Monaco) reports, “Daily higher-dose vitamin D supplementation may help stave off diabetes in an at-risk population, researchers” concluded. In a three-study meta-analysis totaling 4,190 individuals, researchers found that “vitamin D reduced the risk for type 2 diabetes” (T2D) “by 15% in people with prediabetes...in a model adjusted for age, gender, body mass index...race, and HbA1c,” translating “to a 3.3%...absolute risk reduction over the course of three years,” according to findings published online in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Healio (2/6, Bascom) reports, “In terms of safety, there were no significant differences in mortality, hypercalcemia, hypercalciuria, and kidney stones between the vitamin D and placebo groups.” However, the authors of a related editorial observed, “There are important differences between supplementation and therapy,” and “very high-dose vitamin D therapy might prevent type 2 diabetes in some patients but may also cause harm.”

The Washington Post (2/3, Reiley) reported that on Friday, the Biden Administration “announced more stringent nutrition standards for school meals, reviving efforts to improve the health of millions of public school students in the face of a staggering rise in childhood obesity and other diet-related diseases.” These “new rules, which will be rolled out gradually over the next few years, will limit added sugars” and “will also further reduce the allowable amounts of sodium, and emphasize whole grains.”

Reuters (2/3, Douglas) reported that under the Department of Agriculture’s “proposed standards, by fall 2024, 80% of the grains provided by schools would need to be whole grain.” By fall of “2025, there would be limits for high-sugar products like cereals and yogurts, added sugar in flavored milks, and sodium,” and “future years would see additional limits on added sugar and sodium.”

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