Testing a lab-made version of Covid virus prompts government scrutiny

Research at Boston University testing a lab-made hybrid version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is garnering heated headlines alleging the scientists involved could have unleashed a new pathogen. There is no evidence the work, under biosecurity level 3 precautions in BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, was conducted improperly or unsafely. But because the research team did not clear it with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a funder of the project, the agency will ask why it first learned of the work through media reports.

“I think we’re going to have conversations over upcoming days,” Emily Erbelding, director of NIAID’s division of microbiology and infectious diseases, told STAT’s Helen Branswell last night. The research has been posted online as a preprint, meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed. Senior author Mohsan Saeed had not responded to a request for comment before this story was published.

The testing showed that the hybrid virus — fusing the spike protein of an Omicron variant to a virus of the Wuhan strain — was more lethal to lab mice than Omicron itself, killing 80% of the mice infected. Importantly, the Wuhan strain alone killed 100% of mice it was tested in. Read more.

U.S. lags behind Europe in return to pre-Covid life expectancy

The Covid-19 pandemic slammed the brakes on gains in life expectancy in 2020 around the world, but the U.S. finds itself on the wrong side of countries that did or didn’t bounce back in 2021. A new study in Nature Human Behaviour paints an East-West divide among 29 nations, showing a continuing decline in life expectancy in the U.S., Chile, and Eastern Europe, likely due to differences in vaccination rates and pandemic precautions. Other data points:

Only four countries — Belgium, France, Sweden, and Switzerland – have returned to prepademic levels, while seven are close.
Eastern Europe’s losses look like the mortality crises after the Soviet Union dissolved.
More Covid deaths across all 29 countries occurred at younger ages (under 60) in 2021 than in 2020.

“It is plausible that countries with ineffective public health responses will see a protracted health crisis induced by the pandemic with medium-term stalls in life expectancy improvements,” the authors write.

Women's and children's health moving backward, global report finds

In more fallout from the coronavirus pandemic as well as armed conflict and climate change, women’s and children’s health have suffered dramatic setbacks, a U.N. analysis out today reports. Since the last Every Woman Every Child Progress Report in 2020, food insecurity, hunger, child marriage, intimate partner violence, and adolescent depression and anxiety have all gone up. Approximately 25 million children receive too few vaccinations or none at all. An estimated 10.5 million children have lost a parent or caregiver to Covid.

Health, including life expectancy (see item above), depends on where you are: More than 45 million children — three-quarters of whom live in lower-middle-income countries — suffered acute malnutrition in 2020, making them vulnerable to death, developmental delays, and disease. And a woman in sub-Saharan Africa has around a 130 times higher risk of dying from pregnancy or childbirth than a woman in Europe or North America.

Closer look: After Dobbs, some U.S. medical students head overseas to seek abortion training

(MOLLY FERGUSON FOR STAT)

It’s another repercussion from the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade: As restrictions on abortion sweep through the U.S., medical schools and residency programs are struggling to ensure future doctors are adequately prepared. Some are pairing up with training programs in other states that allow abortions, but slots are few at clinics already overwhelmed with patients.

Medical Students for Choice, a grassroots organization that helps students get in-person abortion training, realized as states began changing abortion laws that some students would have to go overseas. “I’d do my patients a great disservice if I’m not trained in abortion,” Tema, who is planning to become a family planning doctor and asked that she be identified only by her first name, told STAT’s Olivia Goldhill about her plans to learn in London. Read more.

More than 1 million Americans with diabetes ration their insulin

Recent legislation to bring soaring insulin costs back to Earth can help only a subset of people who depend on the medicine. The Inflation Reduction Act caps co-pays at $35 a month, but only for people on Medicare. That will leave other people living with diabetes, especially older adults, the uninsured, and those whose insurance requires hefty cost sharing, to fend for themselves. Roughly 1.3 million people already cope by rationing their insulin, a new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine says.

Delaying the purchase of insulin was the most common form of rationing. People with type 1 diabetes (whose insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells have been destroyed) were more likely than people with type 2 (who make less and grow insensitive to insulin) to take less insulin than needed. For both types, “cost-related nonadherence to insulin can have serious, even fatal outcomes,” the authors write.

Study ties hair straighteners to uterine cancer

Anyone who’s ever used permanent hair dyes or straighteners is aware of the strong, sometimes burning chemicals involved. A new study has found an association between hair straighteners and a higher risk of uterine cancer, a link that grew stronger the more often they were applied. Writing in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, NIH scientists report that among more than 33,000 U.S. women followed for nearly 11 years, those who used hair straighteners more than four times per year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer compared to those who didn’t use the products. The same group studying chemicals in hair products has linked permanent hair dye and straighteners to increased breast and ovarian cancer risk.

Uterine cancer is relatively rare, so the numbers are small: 1.64% of women who never used straighteners and 4.05% of frequent users developed the cancer. The association didn’t differ by race, but risks could be greater for Black women who use such products more.

What we're reading

Biden officials scramble for a backup as Covid variants threaten a key therapy for immunocompromised people, STAT
Don’t pay for cord-blood banking, The Atlantic
CDC officials describe intense pressure, job threats from Trump White House, Washington Pos t
Josh Bilenker's last biotech sold for $8 billion. His next one is cloaked in mystery but loaded with money, STAT
Justice Department sues Cigna for allegedly exaggerating conditions of Medicare Advantage members, STAT