U.S. life expectancy falls sharply

Life expectancy for Americans born in 2021 is just 76.1 years. That’s the lowest since 1966 and the steepest decline in almost 100 years. It’s astonishing to people who closely follow these data, prompting comparisons to the drop after another pandemic: the Spanish Flu of 1918. “It’s a ridiculous decline,” Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch of CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told STAT’s Kate Sheridan. “When I saw a 6.6 year decline over two years, my jaw dropped. … I made my staff re-run the numbers to make sure.”

Covid-19 took most of the blame, but drug overdoses and accidents also contributed. And American Indian and Alaskan Native people were the ones who experienced the precipitous drop in life expectancy that rivals the overall plunge after the Spanish Flu, going from 71.8 to 65.2 years since 2019. Read more.

Texas reports first U.S. monkeypox death

In what appears to be the first fatal case in the U.S. during the unprecedented global outbreak of the virus, Texas health officials yesterday reported the death of a person with monkeypox. The case is under investigation to determine how monkeypox may have factored into the person’s death, but state health officials did say the unidentified adult was a resident of Harris County (home to Houston) and was “severely immunocompromised.”

Monkeypox deaths have been rare during the current outbreak, with 15 fatalities reported globally prior to the Texas case out of some 47,000 reported cases. Deaths have been reported from countries including Spain and Brazil, where the virus has not historically spread, as well as countries in West and Central Africa, where the virus is endemic. STAT’s Andrew Joseph has more.

HHS outlines timeline of when government-owned Covid medicines will run out

HHS said yesterday that it will soon run out of government-owned Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics, and that products over the next year will transition to the commercial market. Officials expect the government-owned supplies of vaccines to run out as soon as January 2023, Evusheld as soon as early 2023, and Paxlovid in mid-2023. Here's a rundown of issues to watch during the transition, from my colleague Rachel Cohrs.

The government convened a meeting of more than 100 representatives from state and local government, health care providers and insurers, pharmaceutical companies and vaccine manufacturers, and patient advocates to discuss the off-ramp yesterday.

Closer look: The No Surprises Act is a Band-Aid for a bigger wound, policy experts say

(MISHA FRIEDMAN/GETTY IMAGES

Recent legislation to curb surprise billing — those unexpected, unavoidable medical charges that health insurance won’t cover — has been welcomed. But Marc Rodwin of Suffolk University Law School and Alan Sager of the Boston University School of Public Health say it falls far short of correcting the problem. They argue that surprise bills are a predictable outcome of American insurers trying to control costs by narrowing caregiver networks and requiring high patient copays.

Those tools, intended to reduce patients’ use of services, especially from high-priced providers, just don’t work, nor does the law to undo their by-product. “The act is a Band-Aid that’s too small to cover a large wound,” they write in a STAT First Opinion. “The No Surprises Act incorporates key toxic ingredients of U.S. health care recipes: complexity, costly administration, and ongoing financial warfare.” Read more.

For colon cancer surgery, study notes racial and urban/rural divides

A multitude of factors influence how a patient with non-metastatic colon cancer fares. A new study in JAMA Network Open looks at where Medicare beneficiaries live and how that related to their health care access and quality, focusing on surgery. Among more than 57,000 colon cancer patients, those who lived in micropolitan, small town, or rural areas were more likely to undergo surgery than their metropolitan counterparts, and more likely to have emergent surgery but less likely to have minimally invasive surgery.

Outcomes were different in rural areas depending on race: White patients were less likely to die but Black patients were more likely to die than people in metropolitan areas. Black patients in rural areas were more likely to be eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid, which could indicate socioeconomic deprivation or disability, the authors note.

Steroids linked to changes in brain structure

Steroids, like many medications, have their downsides. While valuable for their immunosuppressive properties, many studies have linked them to troubling metabolic, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and neuropsychiatric side effects. A new study in BMJ Open, one the authors believe is the largest of its kind, zeroes in on changes in mood, cognition, and brain structure among people taking steroids through an inhaler or systemically via pills or injections.

Drawing from the U.K. Biobank, the researchers compared MRI brain scans of 222 people on systemic steroids and 557 on inhaled steroids to scans of 24,106 non-users. Participants answered questions about mood and were tested on processing speed. The people taking steroids reported more depressive symptoms, performed worse on the test, and had structural abnormalities in their brains compared to the control group. The study can’t prove cause and effect, but the researchers say it highlights the need to hunt for treatment alternatives.

What to read around the web today

One Medical founder Tom Lee on the Amazon deal and striking the right balance with virtual care, STAT
How two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply, Wall Street Journal
In a new lawsuit, pharma-backed patient groups fight federal rule around copay coupons, STAT
What I learned from the word's last smallpox patient, The Atlantic
Once a small player among biotech VCs, Mubadala Capital Ventures is punching above its weight, STAT