Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Oct. 21, 2024

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Oct. 21, 2024–Oct. 25, 2024.

The Washington Post (10/19, A1, Gilbert) reported the FDA, “after intense public pressure and a lawsuit, is reconsidering its declaration barely two weeks ago that a shortage of the appetite-suppressing drugs Mounjaro [tirzepatide] and Zepbound [tirzepatide] is over, a temporary about-face that will allow pharmacies to keep selling unbranded copies.” The “turn of events has caused confusion for patients who rely on the cheaper, off-brand versions and for the compounding pharmacies that have been allowed to make them as long as the official shortage continued.” The federal agency’s “sudden shift highlights challenges regulators and the pharmaceutical industry have faced amid unprecedented demand for the blockbuster weight-loss drugs.”

You may also be interested in: Stay informed and up to date on ongoing national drug shortages.

Forbes (10/21, Japsen) reports, “More than a year after Amazon bought One Medical, the provider of physician-staffed clinics and virtual care is partnering with the prestigious Cleveland Clinic and its specialized network of medical care providers.” According to Forbes, “the first Amazon One Medical primary care office affiliated with Cleveland Clinic will open next year, ‘offering same and next-day appointment availability, onsite lab services and wrap-around virtual care support for members,’ the two partners said Monday.” The goal “is to provide ‘seamless coordinated care’ through Amazon One Medical’s offices and Cleveland Clinic’s network of specialists, hospitals and health facilities.”

Modern Healthcare (10/21, E.W. Turner, Subscription Publication) reports, “Facilities will be staffed by One Medical clinicians.” Even though “walk-in care will be publicly available, only One Medical members will be able to make appointments online or access telehealth, among other services.”

The New York Times (10/22, Caryn Rabin) reports, “New guidelines for preventing strokes spell out for the first time the risks faced by women, noting that pre-term births and conditions like endometriosis and early menopause can raise the risk.” The focus of the American Stroke Association’s recommendations “is primary prevention—the effort to prevent strokes in individuals who have never had one.” The guidelines warned that some patients “who take the hormone estrogen … may face a higher stroke risk and should be screened for related risk factors by their” physicians. The new “report also called attention to the role played by poverty, limited access to healthy food, difficulty obtaining health care, and exposure to racism, discrimination and stress.” The guidelines were published in Stroke.

ABC News (10/23, Kindelan) reports, “Thousands of bottles of a popular antidepressant medication are being recalled due to the presence of what the National Library of Medicine describes as a toxic chemical, according to a notice from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.” The recall impacts “the medication duloxetine, which is sold under the brand name Cymbalta, according to the FDA’s notice of the voluntary recall, which began Oct. 10.” The recalled “capsules were found to contain a higher level of N-nitroso-duloxetine than is permitted, according to the recall notice.”

USA Today (10/23, Ardrey) reports the FDA “announced a Class II recall for more than 7,000 bottles of” the antidepressant. The drug “was distributed across the country and manufactured by Towa Pharmaceutical Europe.”

ABC News (10/24, Kekatos, Omorodion, Cobern) reports semaglutide, “the active ingredient found in popular medications for Type 2 diabetes and weight loss, including Ozempic and Wegovy, may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, a new study published Thursday finds.” Researchers “looked at three years of electronic medical records of almost over 1 million patients with type 2 diabetes, including those prescribed semaglutide, who had never been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and had at least one other cardiometabolic risk factor.” Investigators “found that compared to seven other anti-diabetic drugs, semaglutide helped significantly lower the risk for Alzheimer’s disease, including other types of GLP-1s.” The findings were published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

NBC News (10/24, Lovelace) reports, “The results were consistent across gender, age and weight.” The largest “difference was seen when comparing patients who took semaglutide to those who took insulin.” Patients who took semaglutide “had a 70% lower risk of Alzheimer’s, the study found.”

STAT (10/24, Chen, Subscription Publication) reports researchers found that semaglutide “was associated with a 40% to 70% lower risk of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis over three years compared with other diabetes treatments such as insulin, metformin, SGLT2 inhibitors, and older GLP-1 drugs.” Investigators “also found that semaglutide was linked to a lower rate of prescriptions for Alzheimer’s drugs, according to the study.”

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