Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of March 31, 2025

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of March 31, 2025–April 4, 2025.

The AP (3/28, Shastri) reported that at least five states “have active measles outbreaks as of Friday, and Texas’ is the largest with 400 cases.” Already, the U.S. has “more measles cases this year than in all of 2024, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said. Other states with outbreaks—defined as three or more cases—include New Mexico, Kansas, Ohio and Oklahoma.” The new outbreaks “confirm health experts’ fears that the virus will take hold in other U.S. communities with low vaccination rates and that the spread could stretch on for a year.” The World Health Organization also “said...cases in Mexico are linked to the Texas outbreak.”

Reuters (3/28, Roy, Sunny, Singh, Steenhuysen, Beasley) reported that experts have “warned that declining U.S. vaccination rates can make the population vulnerable to highly contagious measles.” The disease, “which can be especially serious in young children, was considered eradicated in the U.S. in 2000. But vaccination rates have since fallen, and just 80% of those in the Texas county where the outbreak began were inoculated against measles, well below the 95% needed for so-called herd immunity.”

Overall, ABC News (3/29, Kekatos, Benadjaoud, Salzman) reported the CDC “has so far confirmed 483 measles cases this year in at least 19 states: Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Washington. This is likely an undercount due to delays in states reporting cases to the federal health agency.”

The Washington Post (3/31) reports a recent study published in JAMA found that “from 2009 to 2019, avoidable mortality increased by an average of 33 deaths per 100,000 people across the United States.” In contrast, avoidable deaths “dropped by an average of nearly 23 deaths per 100,000 across all other countries in the study” during the same period, with European Union countries reducing avoidable deaths by an average of 25 per 100,000. The study noted significant state-by-state variations within the U.S., “ranging from five avoidable deaths in New York to 100 per 100,000 in West Virginia.” The rise in U.S. deaths was primarily attributed to “external causes such as traffic accidents, homicides, suicides, and drugs and alcohol. Among external causes, drug-related deaths were responsible for 71% of the increase in avoidable deaths.” The study also observed a spike in avoidable mortality numbers from 2019 to 2021 across all examined regions, largely due to COVID-19.

You may also be interested in: What else must be done to end the drug-overdose epidemic.

HealthDay (4/1, Gotkine) reports that a study found that “the prevalence of prescription stimulant misuse and prescription stimulant use disorder (PSUD) is high among U.S. adults aged 18 to 64 years.” Researchers from the NIH observed “that 25.3% of those using prescription stimulants reported misuse and 9.0% had PSUD. Among those with PSUD, 72.9, 87.1, 42.5, and 63.6% solely used their own prescribed stimulants, used amphetamines, reported no misuse, and had mild PSUD, respectively.” Additionally, the study shows “women aged 35 to 64 years had the largest increase in the number of individuals dispensed prescription stimulants, from 1.2 million in quarter 1 of 2019 to 1.7 million in quarter 4 of 2022.” However, the “prevalence of prescription stimulant misuse was lower among women aged 35 to 64 years using these medications.” The study was published in JAMA Psychiatry.

The New York Times (4/2, Belluck) reports a study published in Nature “found that people who received the shingles vaccine were 20% less likely to develop dementia in the seven years afterward than those who were not vaccinated.” Compared to prior studies suggesting that shingles vaccinations might reduce dementia risk, this study was able to rule out “other dementia-protective characteristics, like healthier lifestyles, better diets or more years of education.” Overall, the results “provide some of the strongest evidence yet that some viral infections can have effects on brain function years later and that preventing them can help stave off cognitive decline.”

The AP (4/2, Neergaard) reports the study “tracked people in Wales who were around 80 when receiving the world’s first-generation shingles vaccine over a decade ago.”

HealthDay (4/3, Thompson) reports a study found that hospitalizations due to “strokes caused by an artery tear” have “increased nearly fivefold,” according to health data from 2005 to 2019. Researchers found that the “number of artery tears increased about 10% a year on average, rising from 11 cases per million people in 2005 to 46 cases per million in 2019.” Men and women “were equally at risk for suffering an artery tear,” and researchers noted average annual stroke risk increases were particularly high among people over 65 (12%) and Hispanic people (16%). They concluded, “Given the rising incidence of cervical artery dissection, our study underscores the importance of finding prevention strategies as well as new treatments to reduce the risk of stroke.” The study was published in Neurology.

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