Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Jan. 20, 2025

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Jan. 20, 2025–Jan. 24, 2025.

ABC News (1/20, Kekatos, Benadjaoud) reports, “Respiratory viruses are continuing to spread across the United States, sickening millions of Americans.” According to the CDC, “overall respiratory illness activity— including flu, COVID-19 and RSV—continues to be listed as ‘high’ nationwide and is causing people to seek health care ‘at a high level.’” As of January “17, two states—Hawaii and New Hampshire—are listed as having ‘very high’ activity while another 15 states are listed as having ‘high’ activity, CDC data shows.” The federal agency “said some indicators may suggest that illness activity has decreased or remained stable, but this may be due to reporting delays over the winter holidays and changes in whether people decided to seek out a health care professional or not.”

The Hill (1/17, Timotija) reported “viral sicknesses have risen in early 2025 amid the ongoing ‘quad-demic’ in the U.S., referring to three respiratory viruses and one gastrointestinal disease, according to” CDC data. The number of individuals “that have caught COVID-19, influenza or Respiratory syncytial virus, along with norovirus, has gone up, CDC said in the new Friday update.”

The Washington Post (1/20, Eunjung Cha) reports, “A study by the Department of Veterans Affairs on the relationship between GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and 175 diseases and conditions supports a lot of what scientists already suspected about potential benefits, but contains a few surprises, too.” The findings, “based on an analysis of medical records from about 2.5 million patients in the VA system, support the idea that the medications might be able to help patients with Alzheimer’s disease and who are suffering from substance abuse involving alcohol, cannabis and narcotics.” According to the Post, “the ‘discovery’ analysis of the drugs involves delving into data to look for connections and is not meant to establish causal relationships, but instead to generate hypotheses.” The findings were published in Nature Medicine.

CNN (1/20, Goodman) reports “popular GLP-1 medications...may have untapped potential to reduce the risks of substance abuse disorders, psychosis, infections, some kinds of cancer and dementia,” the “sweeping new study suggests.” The study “also points to important and perhaps underappreciated risks of these drugs.” Researchers found that “these risks primarily involved the digestive system and included nausea and vomiting, stomach pain, heartburn and gastroparesis, or stomach paralysis.” Additionally, “people who took GLP-1 medications were also more likely to be diagnosed with problems in their bones and joints, like arthritis and tendinitis, compared with people taking other medications to manage their blood sugar.”

USA Today (1/21, Snider) reports, “Nearly half of Americans (49%) say they plan to drink less [alcohol] in 2025—up from 41% who said that was their plan in 2024, according to a new survey, released Tuesday, commissioned by advertising and sales measurement technology firm NCSolutions.” The survey found that Generation Z, made up of “adults ages 18 to 28,” is “leading the way,” as almost two-thirds of them “(65%) say they plan to drink less in 2025.” Almost “four out of 10 in Gen Z (39%) said they will adopt a dry lifestyle in 2025.” Additionally, Gen Z and millennials “are more likely to try alternatives to alcohol such as THC drinks, marijuana and edibles.”

TCTMD (1/22, Neale) reports, “Patients who have hypertension while lying down, even if their blood pressure is normal while sitting up, have greater CVD and mortality risks in the decades to come, according to an analysis of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study.” Investigators found, “through more than 25 years of follow-up, supine hypertension was associated with greater risks of fatal and nonfatal coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke, and all-cause death.” The findings were published in JAMA Cardiology.

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The AP (1/22, Stobbe, Aleccia, Perrone) reports, “federal health agency communications with the public” have been put on a freeze “through at least the end of the month.” According to the Associated Press, agency staff leaders were told in a Tuesday memo that “an ‘immediate pause’ had been ordered.” In addition to public communications, the pause “also applies to anything intended to be published in the Federal Register, where the executive branch communicates rules and regulations, and the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientific publication.”

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