Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Jan. 6, 2020

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Jan. 6, 2020 – Jan. 10, 2020.

CNN (1/3, Cohen, Bonifield) reported that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, said this current flu season may be one of the worst in decades, and added, “Hopefully this turns around and comes down, but if it continues on the trajectory it’s on, it’s not going to be good.” The article said that “the season so far is on track to be as severe as the 2017-2018 flu season, which was the deadliest in more than four decades, according to the” CDC. At least 2,900 people have died from the flu so far this season, according to CDC data, and the agency “estimates there have been at least 6.4 million flu illnesses and 55,000 hospitalizations.”

NBC News (1/6, Williams) reports that the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the administration and states challenging the Affordable Care Act “to respond by Friday to an appeal filed by defenders of the health care law.” A coalition of states appealed the Fifth Circuit Court’s decision that the ACA’s individual mandate is now unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court has directed those challenging the law to respond quickly so the court has “the option to take up the case during its current term, which would mean a ruling on a contentious issue this spring.”

The AP (1/7, Tanner) reports, “U.S. government-led research found no strong evidence linking baby powder with ovarian cancer in the largest analysis to look at the question.” The analysis published in JAMA included over 250,000 women and showed “during 11 years of follow-up, 2,168 women developed ovarian cancer, with roughly similar numbers in those who used powders and those who didn’t.” Meanwhile, the authors of an accompanying editorial said that “more conclusive research probably isn’t feasible because a dwindling number of women use powder for personal hygiene.”

Reuters (1/7, Steenhuysen) reports that while “overall, the study did not find a significantly increased risk of ovarian cancer...there appeared to be a heightened risk among certain women who used the products,” including “women with an intact reproductive tract.” Women “who never had a hysterectomy” and “reported using baby powder had a 13% higher risk of developing ovarian cancer compared to women who never used the product,” while the “risk rose to 19% among women who used baby powders at least once a week.”

CNN (1/7, Christensen) reports among study participants, “38% said that they used powder in their genital area, 10% said they had been doing so for at least 20 years and 22% reported using it at least once a week.” The researchers said the finding suggesting elevated risk among women without hysterectomy or tubal ligation history “should be considered only exploratory and hypothesis generating.” The study may be limited by methodology for assessing baby powder use and because the “data included mostly white, well-educated women, half of whom had BMI less than 25...so it’s it’s not clear if this result can be generalized to other demographics.”

The New York Times (1/8, Sheikh) reports research from the American Cancer Society found “the cancer death rate in the United States has dropped 29 percent since 1991,” which “translates to approximately 2.9 million fewer cancer deaths than would have occurred if the mortality rate had remained constant.” Moreover, the U.S. saw “an accelerated drop in the cancer death rate of 2.2 percent from 2016 to 2017 – the largest single-year decline in cancer mortality ever reported,” according to the research published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.

Reuters (1/9, Carroll) reports that research suggests that “lack of insurance may be a major cause of delayed breast cancer detection in racial and ethnic minority women in the U.S.” In the “analysis of data from nearly 200,000 women, researchers found that racial and ethnic minority women are more often diagnosed at a later stage of the disease than white women, and that lack of insurance was a major contributing factor.” The findings were published in JAMA Oncology.

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