Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Oct. 3, 2022

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Oct. 3, 2022–Oct. 7, 2022.

The Washington Post (10/6, McGinley) reports that “more than 2.5 million adolescents were current e-cigarette users in 2022, with the majority choosing flavored, disposable products, according to a” federal study. These “findings, from the National Youth Tobacco Survey conducted by the” FDA and CDC, and published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, “show more than 14% of high-schoolers and 3.3% of middle-schoolers were current users, defined as those who used e-cigarettes at least one day in the past month.”

The New York Times (10/6, Jewett) reports the study “showed that 85% of adolescent e-cigarette users favored vapes in fruit, dessert and candy flavors.” The findings also revealed that “one in four of the high school students who were e-cigarette users reported vaping every day.”

CNN (10/5, Howard) reports, “COVID-19 vaccinations could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars this winter.” An analysis by The Commonwealth Fund found that “if 80% of eligible people receive their booster dose...it would prevent about 90,000 deaths and more than 936,000 hospitalizations and prevent $56 billion in medical costs in the next six months compared with the baseline scenario.” But, “if booster vaccinations remain at their current pace, the researchers found, a potential COVID-19 winter surge could bring a peak of about 16,000 hospitalizations and 1,200 deaths per day by March.”

The Hill (10/4, Gans) reports that “half of U.S. adults plan to get the flu shot this year as scientists warn of a potentially severe upcoming flu season, according to a survey” from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID). The results revealed that “49% of respondents said they plan to get a flu shot during the 2022-23 flu season, although almost 7 in 10 said they recognized that a flu vaccine is the best measure to take against flu-related hospitalization and death.”

Healio (10/4, Stulpin) reports those “who said they did not plan on getting vaccinated cited not thinking influenza vaccines work very well (41%), concerns over side effects (39%), never getting influenza (28%) and concerns over getting influenza from the vaccine (24%) as their top reasons.”

CNN (10/3, LaMotte) reports, “A diagnosis of dementia more than doubles the risk of suicide in the first three months after a patient is told the news,” investigators concluded in a study that “followed nearly 600,000 English people for 18 years.”

MedPage Today (10/3, George) reports, “Suicide risk was higher in people recently diagnosed with dementia, especially younger patients,” investigators concluded in a study revealing that “compared with people who didn’t have dementia, suicides rose in people who received a dementia diagnosis in the past three months.” Also, “for people under age 65, suicide risk within three months of diagnosis was 6.69 times...higher than in patients without dementia.” The findings were published online Oct. 3 in JAMA Neurology.

The New York Times (9/30, Hoffman) reported federal authorities authorized the updated bivalent COVID-19 boosters “at the end of August, but by mid- to late September, nearly half of adults had heard little or nothing about it, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, based on the latest of its monthly surveys about attitudes toward the COVID vaccines.” People aged 65 and older “displayed the broadest awareness of the new booster, the survey found, with almost half reporting either having already received the new dose or aiming to get it ‘as soon as possible.’”

Reuters (9/30, Erman) reported that “around two-thirds of adults in the United States do not plan to get” the updated boosters, while “only a third of adults polled said they either already received the updated shots or plan to get the booster as soon as possible, the poll found.”

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