Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of July 1, 2024

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of June 24, 2024–June 28, 2024.

Reuters (7/3, Lapid) reported, “Patients using Novo Nordisk’s wildly popular weigh-loss drug Wegovy and its similar medicines for type 2 diabetes may be at increased risk for a sight-threatening eye condition, according to data from a study published on Wednesday.” Among patients taking drugs containing semaglutide, “the rate of the eye problem known as nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, was 8.9% for those taking semaglutide for type 2 diabetes, compared with 1.8% for patients taking non-GLP-1 diabetes medications, researchers reported in JAMA Ophthalmology.”

NBC News (7/3, Lovelace) reported, “Nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy...is a condition that affects the optic nerve, a bundle of fibers that connects to the back of the eye and carries signals to the brain so a person can see.” Among patients “with NAION, blood flow to the optic nerve gets reduced or blocked, leading to sudden vision loss.” The condition is “one of the most common causes of sudden blindness.” It “is permanent with no known treatment.”

The Hill (7/3, Nazzaro) reported, “Researchers noted the study suggests an association between semaglutide and NAION, but since it was an observation study based on data already existent, future research is needed to determine if semaglutide causes the eye condition.”

You may also be interested in: How to find reliable health information, weight loss drug research and GLP-1 side effects

The AP (7/2) reports, “The U.S. government will pay the vaccine maker Moderna $176 million to accelerate development of a pandemic influenza vaccine that could be used to treat bird flu in people, as concern grows about cases in dairy cows across the country, federal officials announced Tuesday.” The company “already has a bird flu vaccine in very early-stage testing that uses the same mRNA technology that allowed rapid development and rollout of vaccines to protect against COVID-19.” The HHS funding will go to “continued development of the vaccine, including a late-stage trial next year if those early study results are positive.” However, “the project can be quickly redirected to target another form of influenza if a different threat than the H5N1 form of bird flu emerges, HHS officials stressed.”

You may also be interested in: How to answer patients' top questions about H5N1 bird flu

The Washington Post (7/1, Ortega) reports, “People with leg amputations were able to control their prosthetic limbs with their brains in a significant scientific advance that allows for a smoother gait and enhanced ability to navigate obstacles, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.” With the creation of “a connection between a person’s nervous system and their prosthetic leg, researchers at the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women’s Hospital paved the way for the next generation of prostheses.”

CNN (7/1, Davis) reports, “The neuroprosthesis uses sensors placed between the reconstructed amputation site and the bionic leg to transmit electrical signals from the brain. This allows the prosthetic to sense its position and movement and to send this information back to the patient, enabling a sense of proprioception: the brain’s ability to sense self-movement and location in space.”

STAT (7/1, Broderick, Subscription Publication) reports study findings “showed that trial participants who received the procedure could walk faster, were more stable on uneven terrain, and had an increased spatial awareness, or proprioception, in their residual limb. Phantom pain in their limbs lessened, too.” 

CNN (7/1, Goodman) reports, “With another pricey Alzheimer’s disease treatment expected to receive an approval decision soon, the nonprofit Alzheimer’s Association has published the final version of its new diagnostic criteria for the disease.” Now, “for the first time, the criteria call on doctors diagnosing the disease to rely on biomarkers – pieces of beta amyloid and tau proteins picked up by lab tests or on brain scans – rather than pen-and-paper tests of memory and thinking.” The thinking “behind the change, the authors say, is to catch the condition in its earliest and most treatable stages, even before symptoms develop. However, it also means people could be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s based on a blood test alone, even if they don’t have any memory difficulties.” The criteria were published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

MedPage Today (7/1, George) reports, “The new criteria do not constitute clinical practice guidelines. They are intended to help evaluate symptomatic adults, not those who are cognitively unimpaired, the workgroup committee emphasized. Testing cognitively unimpaired individuals outside of research studies is not recommended at this time.”

Infectious Disease Advisor (6/28, Nye) reported, “A single dose of the Ad26. RSV.preF–RSV prefusion (pre-F) protein vaccine was found to sustain high protective efficacy across 3 respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) seasons among older adults, according to study results published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.” In the study, “over seasons 2 and 3 combined, RSV-associated LRTI was observed in 4 (0.2%) vaccine recipients and 17 (0.8%) placebo recipients, translating to a vaccine efficacy of 71.6% (95% CI, 26.9-94.2). Across all 3 seasons, RSV-associated LRTI was observed in 10 (0.4%) vaccine recipients and 47 (1.7%) placebo recipients, translating to a vaccine efficacy of 78.7% (95% CI, 57.3-90.4).”

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