As meth crisis accelerates, the hunt for the first treatment continues

Despite the skyrocketing rates of methamphetamine use, there’s no medication currently approved to treat meth overdose or help people achieve long-term recovery. Doctors who want to help have few available options. Patients in trouble often leave hospitals little better than when they arrived. “I’d offer a turkey sandwich and some resources, and send them on their way,” emergency medicine physician Thomas Robey of Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Wash., told STAT’s Lev Facher. Now three options are being tested:

A monoclonal antibody that binds to methamphetamine molecules and helps prevent them from entering the brain. (Robey’s giving that to patients in a trial.)
Another trial combines naltrexone, used to treat alcohol or opioid addiction, and bupropion, an antidepressant and aid for quitting smoking.
A "contingency management" pilot offers gift cards or cash to people who stop using meth.

Read more on how they work — and their chances for success.

Lupus patients helped by a CAR-T therapy borrowed from oncology

CAR-T therapy, known for removing, retraining, and re-infusing a patient’s immune cells to better attack cancer, now has a new target: the vicious cycle of inflammation and immune attacks that define the autoimmune disease lupus. It’s a disease without many answers, including its cause or why it affects mostly women, with Black girls and women and Latinas at the highest risk. Now new research in Nature Medicine shows CAR-T was able to rid five lupus patients of autoantibodies linked to their disease — essentially granting the patients a new immune system, STAT’s Isabella Cueto reports.

It’s too early to say the five patients are cured, but results are encouraging, according to Georg Schett and his study co-authors at Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg. “We were really surprised how effective it was,” he told Isa. “I have to say that blew us away.” Read more.

Suicide rates and circumstances differ for American Indian and Alaska Native people

Suicide disproportionately affects American Indian and Alaska Native people, climbing nearly 20% from to 2015 to 2020 compared with a less than 1% increase among the general population, a new CDC report says. There are other differences beyond the scale of the problem. Compared with non-AI/AN people, before their deaths, AI/AN people had:

Higher odds of relationship problems with family or friends
Higher odds of substance use problems
Lower odds of physical, job, and financial problems
Lower odds of known mental health conditions or history of mental health or substance use treatment

The researchers say mental health diagnoses may have been lower because mental health services are less available or accessible, especially in rural areas. “Culturally relevant comprehensive public health approaches to suicide prevention are needed to address systemic and long-standing inequities among AI/AN persons,” they write.

Closer look: Mental health tech’s momentum may be stalled by employers’ tighter budgets

Back when the pandemic first beamed a harsh light on woeful access to mental health care, companies were eager to snap up apps and virtual services for their employees. Now, with the economy slowing and corporate wallets shrinking, sales growth may slow down, even if better access to care remains important to employers. “We’ve been in this reactionary mode in 2020 and 2021,” Erin Boyd, chief growth officer in charge of enterprise sales for telemental health company Talkspace, told STAT’s Mario Aguilar. “And now that the waters have calmed, we’re back to a normal sell cycle.”

Talkspace isn’t the only company seeing clients taking longer to close a deal. Russell Glass, the CEO of Headspace Health, said a few potential customers have paused decisions but he expects come close to sales targets. Providers like Teladoc, which offer a broader set of virtual services, may do better in a leaner environment. Read more.

Models with spinal muscular atrophy take back their own stories at a fashion show

(Courtesy IMAXTree for Genentech)

It was Fashion Week in New York and the show was unlike any other. The models were students, writers, an artist, and social media influencers, many using motorized wheelchairs. The event, covered in Vogue, was intended to raise awareness about the lives and needs of people with spinal muscular atrophy, a condition in which damaged or destroyed motor neurons lead to disability. It was sponsored by Genentech (which sells an SMA treatment) but not obviously so, STAT’s Matthew Herper reports.

First down the non-elevated catwalk was singer-songwriter James Ian (above), whose pink suit featured a magnetic closure to create the look of buttons without imposing the challenge of fastening them. “I feel like with media, oftentimes, non-disabled people are telling our stories, and they’re not telling it correctly,” Ian said, calling for more disabled actors, models, writers, CEOs, and CFOs. Matt has more.

Race, ethnicity, and income make a difference in vision for adolescents, too

It’s already known that Black, Hispanic, and low-income adults are more likely to have vision problems than other groups, but when does that disparity develop? Researchers studying a nationally representative sample of adolescents age 12 to 18 found that Black and Mexican American children were three times as likely to say they had poor vision and twice as likely to test with less than 20/40 acuity compared to non-Hispanic white children, after adjusting for socioeconomic status. Adolescents from low-income families were twice as likely as those from high-income families to say they couldn’t see well and to do worse on tests.

The results likely reflect social and economic barriers to equitable vision care services, the researchers say, but that can be corrected. “Children from disadvantaged backgrounds may have fewer ocular diagnoses, lower vision care utilization, and a higher chance of being lost to follow-up,” they write in JAMA Ophthalmology. “Underdiagnosis and undertreatment may contribute to the observed differences.”

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. For TTY users: Use your preferred relay service or dial 711 then 988.

What to read around the web today

Will the monkeypox virus become more dangerous? Science
How four private groups used their clout to control the global Covid response — with little oversight, Politico
Lawmaker requests investigation into HCA over billing practices, STAT
Opinion: Feminist science is not an oxymoron, Undark
Sexual assault nurses asked the AG's office if Plan B is legal. They never got a response, Mississippi Today
Swiss authorities raid Novartis offices seeking info on patents used to block rivals, STAT