Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Oct. 28, 2024

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Oct. 28, 2024–Nov. 1, 2024.

The Washington Post (10/25, H. Sun) said, “More illnesses have been reported in the E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s, with a total of 75 people infected in 13 states as of Friday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” The majority of “people interviewed by state and local health officials reported eating Quarter Pounder hamburgers from McDonald’s before falling ill.” It is unknown “which specific food ingredient is contaminated, but the Food and Drug Administration said” last “week that slivered onions are a likely source of contamination, citing preliminary information reviewed by the agency.” 

MedPage Today (10/28, Henderson) reports, “Elevated body mass index (BMI) in children and young adults was associated with an increased risk of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, or long COVID, a large retrospective cohort study suggested.” Researchers found that “those with obesity had a 25.4% increased risk of long COVID...and those with severe obesity had a 42.1% increased risk...compared with children and young adults who had healthy weight.” The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

CNN (10/29, McPhillips) reports that according to an analysis of health records by Truveta Research, in the wake of Hurricane Helen’s disruptions to the supply chain, “patients visiting emergency departments for dehydration or nausea are half as likely to receive IV fluids now. ... When the storm hit western North Carolina last month, flooding and other damage halted production at Baxter’s North Cove manufacturing facility. The site typically provides about 60% of IV fluids to hospitals across the U.S., and the disruptions have led to multiple new shortages.” The CDC “said earlier this month that ‘supply disruption may impact patient care and require adjustments to the clinical management of patients.’”

HealthDay (10/30, Mundell) says, “Big surges in new autism diagnoses among young adults, as well [as] a rise in diagnoses for girls and young women, have driven a near-tripling of U.S. autism cases in just over a decade, researchers report.” Data on more than “12 million patients enrolled in major U.S. health care systems found that between 2011 and 2022 the number of people diagnosed with autism climbed by 175%, according to a study.” The increase “in diagnoses was especially dramatic among young adults ages 26 to 34 – this group experienced a 450% increase (equivalent to more than a 5.5 times rise) in autism diagnoses between 2011 and 2022, the report found.” The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

ABC News (10/31, Kekatos) reports, “The total number of dengue fever cases in the U.S. is now more than double the number recorded all of last year, federal data shows.” Over “6,800 cases of dengue have been reported nationally so far this year, according to data from the” CDC. Of those cases, over “4,400 were locally acquired and more than 2,300 are travel associated.” CDC data show that “the 6,800 figure is more than double the 3,352 dengue cases reported during all of 2023.” Recently, two “locally acquired cases of dengue fever were confirmed by the” Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

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