Good morning and happy Monday! This is multimedia producer Theresa Gaffney, filling in for Liz. Don’t worry though, she’ll be back tomorrow.

Researchers try new viruses, old tricks to overcome gene therapy’s limitations

Here’s a fun thought for a Monday morning, from STAT’s Jason Mast: Right now, millions of bugs, called anelloviruses, are swimming backstroke through your blood and lounging in the hotsprings of your cells, harmless as a housecat. They have been found in astonishing variety on every continent and nearly every age group but somehow never seem to cause disease. Accordingly, few virologists study them. But at Ring Therapeutics, the hope is that these benign anelloviruses could be the key to new potential gene therapies.

“It was kind of like a dandelion,” Nathan Yozwiak, who runs viral genomics at Ring, told Jason. “It’s innocuous, but it can also spread easily and it can spread everywhere.” But scientists have a long way to go — having chosen to work on a virus virtually ignored by the research world for decades, they could scarcely have chosen a harder target. Read more.

‘Disaster to disaster’: Walensky speaks on underinvestment in public health systems

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky spoke Friday to a group of reporters including STAT’s Isabella Cueto about a review of the agency’s Covid response, the challenges that undergirded it, and what forces continue to restrict the CDC’s ability to be nimble in the face of public health emergencies, like monkeypox. A major issue, Walensky said, is infrastructure — the money states and cities have not spent on beefing up their public health departments, data systems, and other essential services.

Despite the giant infusions of cash that states and local jurisdictions got to stay afloat during the pandemic, that is money that cannot be used to address monkeypox. “It has been waxing and waning, disaster to disaster,” she said. “I can tell you, states do not have any money dedicated to monkeypox. Period.” Read more.

Teens with childhood trauma are more likely to be stopped by police

Teens who have experienced trauma or abuse in childhood are more likely to be stopped by police, according to a new study in Pediatrics. Researchers followed over 11,000 children who participated in a large U.K. cohort study. By age 7, over half of the kids reported at least one adverse childhood experience — meaning an instance of abuse, neglect, or stressful family dysfunction — but only 3% reported three or more such experiences.

By age 14, about 13% of teens who had not experienced any such events had been stopped, questioned, or arrested by police, compared to 27% of teens who had reported three or more adverse experiences. The authors say this correlation can partially be explained by the way that teens react behaviorally to trauma. These interactions also don’t happen in a vacuum: Older teens, men, and Black teens were more likely to be stopped by police, similar to in the U.S.

Closer look: The new hazards of conducting clinical research in the Dobbs era

Molly Ferguson for STAT

The repercussions to the Supreme Court’s recent decision on abortion seem to be limitless. In a STAT First Opinion, Synlogic CEO Aoife Brennan writes that the ruling gave her a new perspective on the standard practice of pregnancy tests in certain clinical trials, and the danger they might now pose.

For example, she recalls: A 32-year-old woman participating in a Phase 1 clinical trial was not pregnant when she enrolled and agreed to use contraception during the course of the trial, as specified in the protocol. She checked in for the second phase, at which time the required pregnancy test was positive. During a visit to her obstetrician, she was found to have had a miscarriage or spontaneous abortion, which is extremely common — and impossible to distinguish from medically induced abortion. “This participant’s pregnancy disqualified her from continuing to be part of our trial,” Brennan wrote. “Post-Dobbs, and in a different state, she might now be suspected of a criminal act. Read more.

Health insurers are misleading on Medicare Advantage savings, experts say

The health insurance industry is continuing its campaign to convince the public that Medicare Advantage saves taxpayers money, but experts say federal data still concludes the exact opposite — and that the program as currently designed is a drain on Medicare’s trust fund. The industry’s primary lobbying group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, funded a new report on the controversial, private alternative to original Medicare. AHIP claims that MA is “saving Americans billions of dollars every year.”

The actuaries who wrote the report, however, never use that language. Nobody involved with the report responded to interview requests, but STAT’s Bob Herman did speak with several independent Medicare policy experts, all of whom said AHIP’s report was incomplete at best and refuted by other studies that analyzed the same data. Analysts also stressed the federal government certainly isn’t reaping any savings from Medicare Advantage. Read more.

Puff, puff, pedal: Biking under the influence leads to thousands of ER visits

I ride my bike to work at STAT headquarters — an activity that’s dangerous without any substances involved. A new report from the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs builds on previous research showing bikers in crashes that involve drug use tend to be more seriously injured than those not intoxicated.

Researchers reviewed hospital data from 2019-2020 to analyze trends in emergency department visits. Out of over 480,000 cyclists who visited the ER, about 11,300 were related to drug use — mostly methamphetamine and marijuana. For those patients, who were largely male, fractures and internal organ injuries were the most common. Like my mother has always warned me, the head and neck area was the most common place for injuries. Wear your helmets, folks, and don’t puff and pedal.

What to read around the web today

Why the nursing shortage isn’t going away anytime soon, The 19th
Some European regulators are starting to take steps to ensure clinical trial results are reported, STAT
Therapy Ghostbusters, Invisibilia
Health insurers are painting a misleading picture of Medicare Advantage savings, experts say, STAT
They were entitled to free care. Hospitals hounded them to pay, New York Times