Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of March 17, 2025

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of March 17, 2025–March 21, 2025.

The Hill (3/14, Weixel) reported, “The U.S. has recorded more than 300 cases of measles in just the first three months of this year, according to data published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the most infections recorded in a single year since 2019.” Over “90% of those cases are linked to a growing outbreak that began in western Texas and has now spread to New Mexico.” According to The Hill, “the Texas Department of State Health Services recorded 259 cases Friday, and an additional 35 in New Mexico.” According to the “CDC, at least 50 people have been hospitalized.”

Reuters (3/14, Satija, Sunny) said the U.S. “reported 285 total infections last year, based on data from the” CDC. Cases in Texas and New Mexico “increased by 38” over a three-day period, “data from the health departments of the two states showed on Friday.” According to Reuters, “there were 174 cases from Gaines County in Texas, the center of the outbreak, compared with 156 cases on March 11.”

HealthDay (3/17, Thompson) reports, “Young American women are greeting the prospect of pregnancy with a decided ‘meh,’ driving down U.S. fertility rates, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study says.” Researchers found that “the actual number of U.S. births declined by 14% between 1990 and 2023, and the fertility rate went down by 23%.” Data show “this drop in fertility occurred mainly among women younger than 30.” The findings were published in the CDC’s National Vital Statistics Reports.

CNN (3/18, Mukherjee) says a Tuesday update indicates 321 measles cases have been reported across Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, an increase of 25 cases since Friday. Texas has “reported 279 outbreak-associated cases, New Mexico has reported 38 cases, and Oklahoma had previously reported four cases. Thirty-eight patients have been hospitalized, an increase of two over last week. Ninety-five cases are in children up to age 4, and 130 are among young people ages 5 to 17. Cases have been identified in 11 Texas counties and two New Mexico counties.”

Reuters (3/18, Satija, Santhosh) reports that cases in Gaines County, Texas, “the center of the outbreak, rose to 191 on Tuesday, compared with 174 cases on March 14. So far 36 patients have been hospitalized across the state.” Meanwhile, cases in New Mexico “rose to 38 from 35 on Tuesday, including two cases in Eddy County and the rest in Lea County, which borders Gaines County.”

Bloomberg (3/18, Nix, Subscription Publication) reports that the “smaller number of confirmed cases, and the fact they remain concentrated in Gaines County in the western part of the state, suggests that Texas’ immunization effort is paying off.”

The Hill (3/18, Choi) reports that “in all of 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed 285 cases nationally.”

NBC News (3/19, Carroll) reports a study found that “prescriptions for ADHD medications have been spiking in recent years, with the sharpest increase among middle-aged and older women,” who are “also the least likely to misuse the prescription stimulants.” At the end of 2022, 1.7 million women ages 35 to 64 “were prescribed stimulants such as Adderall [amphetamine/dextroamphetamine salts] and Ritalin [methylphenidate] for ADHD, compared to 1.2 million prescriptions in 2019.” Researchers also concluded “that the prevalence of misuse of prescription stimulants among women aged 35 to 64 was significantly lower than it was among men of the same age (13.7% versus 22.0%),” and also “less than younger women (13.7% versus 36.8%).” The study was published in JAMA Psychiatry.

The AP (3/20, Johnson) reports, “A common blood test may miss ovarian cancer in some Black and Native American patients, delaying their treatment, a new study finds.” Investigators “analyzed data from more than 200,000 women with ovarian cancer from 2004 through 2020 who’d had a CA-125 blood test.” The data indicated that “Black and Native American patients were 23% less likely to have an elevated CA-125 level at ovarian cancer diagnosis compared with white patients, suggesting the current thresholds are set too high.” The investigators “also found that patients with false negative results started chemotherapy on average nine days later than patients with elevated levels.” The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

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