Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of June 3, 2024

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of June 3, 2024–June 7, 2024.

The Washington Post (6/6, Ovalle) reports the FDA “on Thursday reversed a ban on e-cigarette products made by Juul Labs, the company widely identified as making the product that ignited the youth vaping craze.” The agency “said Thursday the move to rescind the ban was made in light of court cases involving the vaping industry and because the agency has since ‘gained more experience’ with scientific issues involving e-cigarette products.” The move “will not immediately affect consumers – Juul products have remained on store shelves as the company appealed the FDA’s initial June 2022 decision to banish the products.”

CNN (6/6, Hassan, Christensen) reports the FDA “has not yet decided whether the products will ultimately stay on the market.” The decision comes after the agency in 2022 “issued a marketing ban on Juul products, including devices and tobacco and menthol-flavored pods. The marketing denial order was stayed weeks later as ‘scientific issues warranted additional review,’ but had not been rescinded.” Rolling back “the marketing ban ‘is not an authorization or a denial and does not indicate whether the applications are likely to be authorized or denied,’ the FDA said Thursday.”

The New York Times (6/5, Belluck) says, “One of the nation’s premier medical advisory organizations has weighed in on long COVID with a 265-page report that recognizes the seriousness and persistence of the condition for millions of Americans.” The chronic condition “continues to damage many people’s ability to function, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a nongovernmental institution that advises federal agencies on science and medicine.” The report found that, according to 2022 data, “nearly 18 million adults and nearly a million children in the United States have had long COVID at some point. At the time of that survey, about 8.9 million adults and 362,000 children had the condition.”

The Hill (6/4, Suter) says, “More than 6 in 10 Americans will have a cardiovascular disease by 2050, according to a new report from the American Heart Association (AHA).” The study, “published Tuesday in the journal Circulation, found that cardiovascular disease, including hypertension, ‘will affect more than 184 million adults by 2050,’ or about 61% of Americans.” The report also “estimates the prevalence of coronary disease among U.S. adults will increase from 7.8% in 2020 to 9.2% in 2050, while heart failure will increase from 2.7% to 3.8% in the same period.”

CNN (6/4, Christensen) reports the study also “predicts that 45 million adults will have some form of cardiovascular disease – excluding high blood pressure – or will have a stroke in 2050, up from 28 million in 2020.” The article adds, “Despite innovations in treatments, heart disease has been the leading killer of Americans for decades, responsible for more than 800,000 deaths every year.”

The Hill (6/3, Delandro) reports, “People with certain genetic traits are at a higher risk of heart attack during stressful events, such as a presidential election and holidays, a new study” presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session shows. The study found “people with specific genetic traits like anxiety or depression are at a ‘significantly higher heart attack risk.’” In the study, “stressful periods included the five days after presidential elections, 10 days after Christmas Day, and the five days after major sports events like the Super Bowl or NBA playoffs.”

You may also be interested in: Top health tips your cardiologist wants you to know

STAT (5/31, Trang, Subscription Publication) reported, “Change Healthcare can notify patients whose sensitive health information has been exposed as a result of the massive security breach at the health care payments clearinghouse in February, the Department of Health and Human Services said Friday.” HHS’ update “answers questions from hospitals and doctors around the country, who were worried they would have to track down the roughly 30% of Americans whose data may have been stolen. Federal law requires health care providers to inform patients when their data has been exposed.”

Modern Healthcare (5/31, Berryman) reported, “Under HIPAA, UnitedHealth Group must provide affected individuals with descriptions of the incident, what data were compromised, how the company responded to the attack, how the company can be reached and what individuals can do to protect themselves.”

You may also be interested in: How to prevent data breaches, medical device hacking, and improve cybersecurity in health care

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