Medicare finalizes limits on new Alzheimer’s drug

Medicare made final its plan to restrict coverage for the controversial, pricey Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm to patients participating in clinical trials. Yesterday’s decision marks the end of an intense pressure campaign from drugmakers and some patient groups that wanted Medicare to reverse its initial proposal and pay for the drug for more patients. Since the FDA approved the drug last summer, doctors and scientists have raised questions about whether it actually works and policy experts have questioned whether the drug is effective enough to justify its hefty price tag. Government watchdogs have begun investigating whether the FDA followed proper procedure to approve it, following STAT’s report that Biogen had an extensive back-channel relationship with the FDA. STAT’s Rachel Cohrs has more on the unprecedented policy limiting Aduhelm’s coverage.

The race is on: Where will a new research agency call home?

(alex hogan/stat)

The Biden administration’s new high-stakes research office has a name, an official place within government, and a billion dollars in funding. But ARPA-H still lacks a home. Now, with a bonanza of federal cash at stake — and lawmakers making clear they want the new agency’s headquarters located far from the Beltway — cities and states across the country find themselves in a bidding war. The rumored candidates represent, in large part, the country’s leading research or biotechnology hubs, including Boston, Silicon Valley, San Diego, Maryland, and North Carolina. Easily the most advanced effort to win the new agency, however, has come from Texas, where dozens of universities, research institutions, and local business groups have teamed up in an effort to sell the Lone Star State as the obvious choice. STAT’S Lev Facher has more on the early-stage feeding frenzy.

Lessons from a case of imported monkeypox

There were two cases of monkeypox in the U.S. last year, both arriving with travelers returning from Nigeria. One in Texas was serious enough to send a man to the hospital for treatment of the dangerous illness. A new CDC report details the Texas case — from which the patient recovered — and steps health investigators took to diagnose the illness, trace, and monitor more than 200 contacts, and decontaminate surfaces in planes, cars, airports, and homes. The researchers say the continued spread of monkeypox in Nigeria following deforestation increases the chance of sporadic cases around the world. Smallpox vaccination provides some protection against the related virus, but those shots haven’t been given since that disease’s eradication. A bright spot: Mask use during the Covid pandemic likely reduced spread of the highly contagious virus. For more on monkeypox, here’s Helen Branswell’s 2021 explainer.

Closer look: The full genome is finally sequenced. Now what?

(adobe)

In the last two decades, genomics has made significant inroads into mainstream medicine — DNA data are now routinely used to tailor cancer treatments, for example. But the reference genome created by the Human Genome Project was never really finished. Technology at the time couldn’t resolve the last 8% — vast gaps spread across the genome that mean if a patient has a disease-causing mutation in portions of the reference genome that are missing or contain errors, there’s no way to test for it. Which is why there was so much excitement last summer when a team of almost 100 scientists unveiled the first ever, truly complete human genome. It will likely be years before these improvements actually make their way into clinical practice, scientists told STAT’s Megan Molteni, but the Telomere 2 Telomere Consortium is on it. Read more.

Report challenges 'raised without antibiotics' labels on beef

Raising livestock on antibiotics has become the target of campaigns to reduce superbugs resistant to current antibiotics. Consumers who care about how their meat is produced can look for USDA labels saying RWA, or “raised without antibiotics,” but a new paper in Science says there’s little assurance behind what’s printed on those stickers. While more than 9 billion animals are slaughtered in the U.S. for meat each year, the USDA tests fewer than 7,000 for antibiotics. In a test of their own, the researchers found that in the feedlots they sampled, 15% of cattle being slaughtered for a program called the “No Antibiotics Ever” meat market had been treated with antibiotics. “The USDA should establish a rigorous verification system to ensure that RWA claims are truthful and accurate, or they should cease approving these labels,” the authors write.

Disparities in sleep duration have grown

Sleeping too much or too little can be bad for health, raising the risk of depression, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and death. A new study in JAMA Network Open reports that long-documented racial and ethnic differences in sleep duration widened for Black people over a 15-year survey of almost 430,000 Americans through 2018. The disparities in short sleep, defined as fewer than seven hours, were highest for Black women, Black people with middle or high income, and young and middle-aged Black adults compared to other groups. Long sleep — more than nine hours — was also more prevalent among Black individuals, particularly among Black women. “These persistent disparities may contribute to other persistent racial and ethnic disparities in health," the authors write.

What to read around the web today

People are developing trauma-like symptoms as the pandemic wears on. NPR
Their 2-year-old daughter died in surgery. They had no idea the hospital was warned it couldn’t handle her case. San Francisco Chronicle
Advocacy group’s advisory board members defect over Biogen Alzheimer’s drug. STAT+
Is this what endemic disease looks like? New York Times
Opinion: Averting the looming purge of people from Medicaid. STAT