Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Oct. 2, 2023

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Oct. 2, 2023–Oct. 6, 2023.

NBC News (10/5, Lovelace) reports, “People who take” certain “popular drugs for weight loss” known as glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists, “may be at an increased risk of severe stomach problems,” researchers concluded in findings published in JAMA.

CNN (10/5, Goodman) reports, “The study found risks of these events happening to individual patients appears to be rare.” However, because “demand for the drugs has exploded, with tens of millions now taking them worldwide,” now investigators “say even rare risks like these may amount to hundreds of thousands of new cases.”

Healio (10/5, Burba) reports, “Use of” GLP-1 “agonists for weight loss compared with bupropion-naltrexone was associated with an increased risk for pancreatitis, gastroparesis and bowel obstruction but not biliary disease, researchers” concluded in a study that “evaluated gastrointestinal adverse events among new users of GLP-1 agonists liraglutide (n = 4,144) or semaglutide (n = 613) between 2006 and 2020,” then compared those “outcomes with users of another weight loss drug, bupropion-naltrexone (n = 654),” then “monitored all patients for development of biliary disease, pancreatitis, bowel obstruction or gastroparesis.”

HCPlive (10/4, Iapoce) reports, “Newly released data on heart failure risk in the United States” published online ahead of print in the Journal of Cardiac Failure “revealed that one in four individuals are projected to develop heart failure in their lifetime, an increase from the previous projection of one in five individuals.” The report from the Heart Failure Society of America suggests not only that “approximately 6.7 million people ≥20 years old in the U.S. have heart failure, with an expected rise in prevalence to 8.5 million in the next decade,” but also that “lifetime risk has...increased, up to 24%, suggesting nearly one in four people will develop heart failure over their lifetime.”

The AP (10/3, Neergaard) reports, “U.S. regulators on Tuesday authorized another option for fall COVID-19 vaccination, updated shots made by Novavax.” The FDA approved the “reformulated Novavax shots” for “anyone age 12 and older.” The CDC “already has urged most Americans to get a fall COVID-19 vaccination, shots tweaked to protect against a newer coronavirus strain. Novavax said shots will be available ‘in the coming days.’”

NBC News (10/3, Lovelace) reports, “Just like Pfizer and Moderna’s updated vaccines, Novavax’s new shot is tailored to fight the XBB.1.5 Omicron subvariant, a close relative of the currently circulating strains.” On Tuesday, the company “said it expects doses will be available in thousands of locations across the United States, including in pharmacies and physicians’ offices, sometime next week.”

The AP (10/2, Stobbe) reports, “U.S. health officials plan to endorse a common antibiotic as a morning-after pill that” can be taken to help prevent “some increasingly common sexually transmitted diseases.” The CDC on Monday released a new guideline, “and officials will move to finalize it after a 45-day public comment period.” It “comes after studies found some people who took the antibiotic doxycycline within three days of unprotected sex were far less likely to get chlamydia, syphilis or gonorrhea compared with people who did not take the pills after sex.”

STAT (10/2, Branswell, Subscription Publication) reports, “Studies have shown the so-called ‘doxy PEP’ regimen—a single, 200-milligram dose taken no later than 72 hours after unprotected sex—can reduce acquisition of chlamydia and syphilis by nearly 80%, and gonorrhea by about 50%.” Some studies into this use of the drug “were stopped early because they were so clearly effective.”

CNN (9/29, Goodman) reported that the FDA “is proposing to step up its oversight of a growing category of medical tests called laboratory-developed tests.” On Friday, the FDA “said that because of the growing use of these lab-developed tests and their importance in medical decision-making—some 70% of medical decisions depend on lab tests, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—it proposed a rule aimed at increasing its oversight.” The new rule “would treat laboratory-developed tests as medical devices and end the agency’s hands-off stance on them.”

MedPage Today (9/29, George) reported laboratory-developed tests (LDTs) currently “are regulated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which does not require the tests to show clinical validity.”

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