Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of June 24, 2024

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

HealthDay (6/27, Mundell) reports, “Just 25% of people battling opioid use disorder are getting medications aimed at helping them quit and potentially avoid an overdose, new data shows.” A survey found that “in 2022 a total of 3.7% of U.S. adults...were having problems with oxycodone, Vicodin, heroin or any other form of opioid. That’s nearly 9.4 million people.” However, “according to the new data, only a bit more than half (55.1%) received any kind of treatment to help them kick their opioid overuse, and only 25.1% accessed medications that doctors know can help folks wean themselves off opioids.”

MedPage Today (6/27, Firth) reports, “Many adults who needed OUD treatment by clinical criteria didn’t perceive the need for it (42.7%) or obtained treatment that did not include medication (30%), the authors noted.” Additionally, “a higher share of white adults received any OUD treatment than Black/African American or Latino adults (60.3%, 43.8%, and 45.7%, respectively). Women were less likely to receive medication (51.0% vs 39.5% among men). More adults ages 35-49 years (68.4%) received medication than those ages 18-34 or ≥50 (range 19.9%-44.1%).” The findings were published in the CDC’s MMWR.

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HealthDay (6/26, Mundell) reports, “A full third of American adults take multivitamins, despite prior studies suggesting they do little to boost health.” And a new “study involving almost 400,000 people finds zero benefit from multivitamin use in helping folks live longer.” The researchers said they “did not find evidence to support improved longevity among healthy adults who regularly take multivitamins” in JAMA Network Open.

MedPage Today (6/26, Fiore) reports that in fact, “daily multivitamin use was actually associated with a slightly increased risk of death in the first half of follow-up compared with taking no multivitamin (HR 1.04, 95% CI 1.02-1.07), according to” researchers. Additionally, there was “no mortality benefit in the second half of follow-up (HR 1.04, 95% CI 0.99-1.08), nor for any individual cause of death including heart disease, cancer, and cerebrovascular disease, the researchers reported.”

The Washington Post (6/25, Sun) reports, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned clinicians, health authorities and the public Tuesday about an increased risk for dengue virus infections in the United States because of the record-breaking global incidence of the mosquito-borne viral disease.” So far in 2024, “countries in the Americas have reported more than 9.7 million dengue cases, twice as many as in all of 2023, exceeding the highest number ever recorded in a single year, the CDC said in a health advisory.” In the U.S., “Puerto Rico declared a public health emergency because of the unusually high number of cases reported in the winter and spring, the dry season, when dengue cases are typically low.” However, “there is no evidence of a dengue outbreak in the continental United States.”

The AP (6/25, Stobbe) reports that nonetheless, “in the 50 states so far this year there have been three times more cases than at the same point last year. Most were infections that travelers got abroad, and officials note there is no evidence of a current outbreak. But they also warn that local mosquitoes pose a threat.” The virus is “spread by a type of warm weather mosquito that is expanding its geographic reach because of climate change, experts say.”

Healthcare Finance News (6/24, Eddy) reports, “The global health care sector experienced a staggering 1,613 cyberattacks per week in the first three quarters of 2023, nearly four times the global average, and a significant increase from the same period the previous year, according to a KnowBe4 report.” Additionally, “this surge has contributed to a steep rise in cyberattack costs for health care organizations, with the average breach cost nearing $11 million—more than three times the global average—making health care the costliest sector for cyberattacks.”

Editor’s note: Get the AMA’s updates on ongoing cybersecurity concerns and resources to protect patient health records and other data from cyberattacks.

The AP (6/21, Aleccia) reported, “Tirzepatide, the medication in the weight-loss drug Zepbound and also the diabetes treatment Mounjaro, appeared to reduce the severity of sleep apnea along with reducing weight and improving blood pressure and other health measures in patients with obesity who took the drug for a year.” The drug’s manufacturer, Lilly, “has asked the Food and Drug Administration to expand use of the drug to treat moderate to severe sleep apnea, in which people stop and start breathing during sleep, a spokesperson said Friday. A decision is expected by the end of the year.” The results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Reuters (6/21, Wingrove) reported tirzepatide “helped resolve moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in up to 52% of patients in two late-stage trials.” Specifically, data “showed Zepbound helped resolve sleep apnea in 43% of patients taking the drug alone and in 51.5% of those also using PAP.”

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