| |   By Elizabeth Cooney | Good morning. We've got another big STAT event to tell you about: the Health Tech Summit, where you'll hear about advances in AI, virtual care, and diagnostics — and what's coming next. It's happening Tuesday, May 24, in San Francisco; learn more and get early-bird tickets here. | | | Model predicts a continued Covid toll, with no ‘magic moment’ for lifting restrictions Researchers simulating different scenarios for dropping Covid restrictions conclude that the virus will continue to do its damage in the U.S. even as case counts decline. Highly transmissible variants such as Delta and Omicron mean lifting mask mandates or expanding social gatherings can pave the way for jumps in illness and deaths, the researchers say. But looking at each of the 50 states and their different responses, they also say there is no “magic moment” for when to lift restrictions without expecting to see a rebounding surge in deaths. “Even short delays in lifting could have a big impact, but … there is likely no amount of delay after which it would be completely safe to remove [nonpharmacologic interventions],” they write in JAMA Health Forum, saying states face "a trade-off between increased Covid-19 mortality and the freedoms of returning to a prepandemic norm." | Treating mild hypertension during pregnancy linked to better outcomes, study says Hypertension during pregnancy is a growing problem in the U.S., one that affects twice as many Black as white patients. A new randomized clinical trial of more than 2,400 women (48% of whom were Black) has found that those treated with medication for “mild” high blood pressure — above 140/90 — had fewer pregnancy problems than those who didn’t receive the treatment. There were fewer severe complications such as preeclampsia, where blood pressure spikes and organs suffer damage, in the treatment group and birth weights were no different. The study, published in the NEJM, should help guide treatment for patients whose blood pressure is elevated but not severe, an accompanying editorial says: “If the results are confirmed in subsequent studies, such outcomes would be a compelling reason to change the recommendations for clinical practice regarding the treatment of mild hypertension during pregnancy.” | New antibiotic venture fund makes its first investments One year after its splashy launch, the pharma-backed AMR Action Fund has made its first investments in two fledgling biotech companies, a key step toward its goal of generating badly needed medicines to combat antibiotic resistance. Venatorx Pharmaceuticals is developing a few novel compounds, including an intravenous medication to treat urinary tract infections and combat hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia. Adaptive Phage Therapeutics is growing a library of phages, naturally occurring viruses that infect and kill bacteria, providing broad coverage against many antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The company is matching phages with infections that affect joints in prosthetics and in the bones and lungs. “We’re trying to bookend a world of possibilities when it comes to fighting antimicrobial resistance,” Henry Skinner, who runs the AMR Action Fund, told STAT’s Ed Silverman. Read more. | “Color Code” Podcast: STAT’s podcast raising the alarm on racial inequities in American health care In this eight-episode podcast, award-winning journalist and host Nicholas St. Fleur weaves together stories and experiences of physicians, patients, historians, and other experts to illuminate the history of racism in the health care system and how it has — and continues to — impact people of color and underserved communities. Add “Color Code” to your STAT podcasts listening list and stream each episode on your preferred platform. Listen now. | Closer look: Research on mice that ‘sweat out’ fat wins STAT Madness  A team led by Taku Kambayashi of the University of Pennsylvania won this year's STAT Madness competition. (Hechler Photographers for STAT) Pizza rat, watch out: Pizza-faced mice are on their way to stealing your crown. A team of University of Pennsylvania researchers that discovered an unlikely potential weight loss solution — “sweating out” fat through the skin as sebum — has won the STAT Madness popular vote. The annual bracket-style competition that highlights some of the most notable biomedical research from the past year concluded yesterday after fierce competition among 64 entrants, with over 350,000 votes cast. In the final round the Penn researchers bested a University of California, Davis, team and its biosensor to detect hallucinogens. It’s a clean sweep for the Penn team, also the crowd favorite last week of the audience at the STAT Breakthrough Science Summit. STAT contributor Maddie Bender has more on the winning entry, fruit of a “serendipitous” finding in a type 2 diabetes experiment. | Post-surgery opioid prescriptions for kids plummet Once routinely ordered for children to relieve moderate pain after outpatient surgery from tonsillectomies to knee arthroscopy, a new study reports opioid prescriptions for children began dropping between 2014 and 2017, falling further from 2017. Writing in Pediatrics, researchers chart substantial declines in prescriptions written for teenagers (78% to 48%), school-age children (54% to 26%), and preschoolers (30% to 12%) over the five years, based on more than 124,000 children’s private-insurance records. They trace the trend to a growing body of research that linked opioids to harms such as respiratory depression, when the lungs can’t expel carbon dioxide properly, and the risk of continued opioid use when non-opioid painkillers work just as well. They study also found that when opioids were prescribed, the amount had fallen by half by 2019. | Before xenotransplantation moves ahead, it needs a reset on expectations Xenotransplantation — grafting animal organs into humans — is on the cusp of crossing over into human trials. But before research goes there, expectations need to change first, experts said last week at the 2022 STAT Breakthrough Science Summit. In January, surgeons transplanted a pig heart into a 57-year-old man, who survived two months. Last fall, doctors implanted pig kidneys into recently deceased individuals to show there wouldn’t be immediate rejection of the organs. Robert Montgomery, who performed the pig-to-human kidney transplantation and is himself a heart-transplant recipient, said metrics for success should also consider all who need a new organ. “Every patient that dies on the waitlist, we should be just as aware of that death as someone who dies in the ICU after they get a heart transplant or a kidney transplant,” he said. Read more. | | | | | What to read around the web today - Why so many women in middle age are on antidepressants. Wall Street Journal
- Covid and diabetes, colliding in a public health train wreck. New York Times
- Mark Cuban’s company is building a ‘parallel supply chain’ for prescription drugs. STAT+
- MIT professor accused of sexually harassing grad student resigns. Boston Globe
- The biotech scorecard for the second quarter: 21 stock-moving events to watch. STAT+
| Thanks for reading! More tomorrow,  | | | | Have a news tip or comment? Email Me | | | | | |
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