Even before Covid, life expectancy plateaued for Native Americans

(MARK RALSTON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGE)

It’s been a long time coming, and it’s still imperfect, but a more granular look at life expectancy shows Native American and Alaska Native populations were the only Americans to see no increase whatsoever in life expectancy in the two decades preceding the Covid pandemic. That zero improvement means they are living 73.1 years on average in 2019 — nearly six years less than white Americans, a new study says.

Overall, life expectancy for Americans rose slightly, to 79.1 years in 2019, but persistent and widespread disparities remain. It’s the first national analysis at the county level to include American Indian/Alaska Native and Asian/Pacific Islander life expectancies over such a long period, but experts told STAT’s Usha Lee McFarling that Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations should be separated from Asian populations. Read more about the detailed data.

With Covid funds diverted and demand falling, test makers expect layoffs

It’s another odd moment in the pandemic. In what may seem like spring 2021, when virus cases in the U.S. plummeted and fewer Covid tests were sold, declining demand for tests is causing some companies to scale back production and contemplate layoffs. This time around domestic Covid test manufacturers are wrestling with the federal government’s decision to shift dwindling Covid-19 funding toward vaccines and treatments like Paxlovid and away from testing. Labcorp, one of the biggest U.S. test makers, said government support was crucial for the company to maintain its capacity to address demand for PCR tests. And health experts warn of the need to have testing capacity that won’t need to be rebuilt if we have another surge in cases this fall. STAT’s Akila Muthukumar has more.

Romney lashes out at White House for ‘patently false’ info on Covid funds

Last month STAT’s Rachel Cohrs told us about White House budget documents sent to Congress predicting the government could run out of Covid-19 vaccines if it moved forward with plans to encourage all adults to get a second Covid-19 vaccine booster dose by roughly Sept. 1. Now she reports Sen. Mitt Romney has accused the Biden administration of misleading Congress about the urgency of the situation.

During a congressional hearing yesterday, the prominent Republican called the administration’s claims “patently false,” saying he “wouldn’t have worked as hard” to secure a bipartisan deal for a $10 billion funding package if he had known that other funds could be repurposed. The White House declined to comment on Romney’s statements. Read more.

Closer look: 3 questions about the first brain reference charts

(adobe)

Now that scientists have created the first reference charts for the human brain mapping its growth from infancy to 100 years old, it’s time for them to grapple with difficult ethical questions about how they should — and perhaps shouldn’t — be used. Right now, the tool is designed purely for research and comes with caveats, including that it’s limited by a lack of age and geographic diversity in the datasets used to build it. Here are three burning questions:

What do scientists mean by "benchmark"?
How do you avoid creating or exacerbating stereotypes?
What risks could research carry?

“It’s an absolutely spectacular advancement in neuroscience and neuroimaging,” Judy Illes, professor of neurology and neuroethics at the University of British Columbia, told STAT contributor Kasra Zarei. But, “There are always challenges when you aggregate or consolidate data. Invariably people who represent the tails become underrepresented.” For three answers, read more.

Long Covid less likely after Omicron than Delta

The odds of developing long Covid were 24% to 50% lower after infection with the Omicron than the Delta strain, depending on age and time since vaccination, a new analysis reports. But because so many more people fell sick with Omicron, the absolute numbers are concerningly high. The U.K. study in the Lancet drew data from a smartphone app through which people report symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, brain fog, and joint pain four weeks after infection.

Their strain was assumed by the time period: Omicron for 56,003 patients from December 2021 to March 2022 and Delta for 41,361 from June to November 2021. The results: 4.4% of Omicron cases were followed by long Covid, compared to 10.8% of Delta cases. U.K. long Covid cases hit 2 million as of May 1, a figure expected to rise.

Opinion: Medical schools need to step up to prevent gun violence

U.S. medical students, like other Americans, have watched with horror as mass shootings erupt again and again. Unlike most Americans, they can detail the injuries they might see in those bodies torn apart by bullets. They are taught how to manage the medical consequences but not how to prevent gun violence that causes them.

“In our own experience, we have not had any education in medical school on how to discuss or even counsel patients on safe gun ownership, unlike the education we have received on counseling patients on substance use and even safe driving practices,” David Velasquez, a fourth-year student at Harvard Medical School, and Jesper Ke, a third-year medical student at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, write in a STAT First Opinion. Only about 15% of U.S. medical schools include gun-related content in their curricula, a figure that must change, they note. Read more.

What to read around the web today

The mental health crisis facing Black mothers in the South, The Fuller Project
Facebook and anti-abortion clinics are collecting highly sensitive info on would-be patients, Reveal
A Roche treatment fails to slow cognitive decline in patients with inherited form of Alzheimer’s disease, STAT
Why haven't we figured out how to make IUDs less excruciating? Mother Jones
Dogs trained to sniff out Covid in schools are getting a lot of love for their efforts, NPR