Our top news comes from Stockholm again. I think there should be a prize for first-time Nobel forecaster and STAT science writer Megan Molteni, who put her money on Carolyn Bertozzi, one of this year’s winners in chemistry.

Nobel in chemistry recognizes ‘click and bioorthogonal’ chemistry

(alex hogan/STAT)

This year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry honors three scientists who changed how chemists think about linking molecules together and how to do it in living cells, techniques useful for studying disease and developing new drugs. Carolyn R. Bertozzi of Stanford, Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, and K. Barry Sharpless of Scripps won “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced in Stockholm this morning. Bertozzi, who said in a call with the academy that she was shocked when she got word of her win, joins only seven other women awarded the prize since the first of 191 winners were honored in 1901.

“Dr. Bertozzi has given us the tools to understand and manipulate sugars, not just in a test tube but in living cells,” Eric Rubin, NEJM editor-in-chief, told me. “The tools she has made open up new avenues for understanding how cells interact with each other and their environments and offer up new avenues for intervening in diseases such as cancer and infections.” STAT’s Brittany Trang has more, in a story that will be updated.

Covid boosters could blunt a winter surge in Covid — if more people got them

The new Covid boosters are here, but fewer than half of Americans have gotten one after their primary series and only 36% of adults 50 and over have received the new bivalent shots. A new model out today from researchers at Yale and the Commonwealth Fund estimates that at current levels, a winter surge in Covid cases could mean around 16,000 hospitalizations and 1,200 deaths per day by the end of March.

But if Americans got boosters at the same rate as they got annual flu shots last year, more than 75,000 deaths and more than 745,000 hospitalizations could be prevented, saving $44 billion in medical costs, by the end of winter. If 80% of people got boosted, 90,000 deaths and 936,000 hospitalizations could be avoided over the winter, the model projects.

Why aren't ectopic pregnancies viable?

It’s more than an academic question now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. Many clinicians have become fearful and uncertain about how they are allowed to treat potentially life-threatening complications during pregnancy, including ectopic pregnancies — which can only be treated by termination. As STAT’s Olivia Goldhill reports, some providers are cautious about immediately providing treatment in states that have passed laws that criminalized abortion, as they can risk losing their license or face jail time if they disobey the law.

Watch this video from STAT’s Alex Hogan and Hyacinth Empinado about why ectopic pregnancies will never progress to birth, and what could happen if treatment is delayed.

Closer look: A sister’s offer of surrogacy brings new hope

(COURTESY LYDIA GATTON)

Lydia Gratton wanted nothing more in the world than to have a child. Even a brain tumor couldn’t stop her from pursuing fertility treatments after she and her husband tried to conceive naturally for years. After two brain surgeries, radiation treatment, chemotherapy, and an embryo transfer that failed, she was finally pregnant, but Jackson Dean Gatton was delivered stillborn in her 37th week of pregnancy.

That’s when Sarah Roed, her older sister, offered to help.“We knew we were gonna go through all sorts of emotional rollercoasters,” Roed told STAT contributor Hannah Baggenstoss. “We had no idea the kind of rollercoasters we were getting. We didn’t even know they were out there.” Read more about “Team Rowan” (pictured above).

Time-restricted eating might help shift workers, study suggests

Shift work is known for raising the risk of cardiovascular disease as circadian rhythms are disrupted. More than a quarter of Americans — including doctors, nurses, pilots, police officers, and firefighters — work outside 9-to-5, so their sleep and eating patterns can fall out of sync. A new study in Cell Metabolism tested time-restricted eating to see if it helped 137 firefighters working 24-hour shifts. All the firefighters followed a Mediterranean diet high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats but 70 ate only within a 10-hour window. All participants wore devices that tracked activity, sleep, and blood glucose levels.

After 12 weeks, the firefighters who restricted their eating said their quality of life improved and saw glucose levels and blood pressure decline, if high before; those with no prior risk factors saw “bad” cholesterol go down. While too short to draw stronger conclusions, the authors do say the study showed time-restricted eating is “feasible.”

Eyes could be a window to the heart

Cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and stroke are the major causes of disease and death around the world. A new study in the British Journal of Ophthalmology tested whether imaging of the retina’s network of blood vessels — enabled by AI — could become a screening test for people at risk for these diseases of blood circulation. The researchers applied their tool to retinal images from roughly 88,000 UK Biobank participants and later used it to study more than 7,400 people, comparing results to the Framingham Risk Scores framework.

The tool’s risk score, based on age, sex, smoking, and medical history as well as retinal vasculature, performed as well as the Framingham Risk Scores, without blood tests or blood pressure measurement. The software “potentially has greater community reach to identify individuals at medium-high risk requiring further clinical assessment,” the authors write.

On this week's episode of the "First Opinion Podcast," First Opinion editor Patrick Skerrett talks with two wheelchair users, Paul Amadeus Lane and Jim Meade, about how Medicare doesn’t cover the cost of wheelchairs equipped with game-changing standing technology. Listen here.

What were reading

Doctors urge U.S. FDA to add miscarriage management to abortion pill label, Reuters
Scientists have discovered a new set of blood groups, Wired
Most fentanyl is seized at border crossings — often from U.S. citizens, Washington Post
The Q4 health tech tracker: 17 key industry events and milestones to watch, STAT
Can smartphones help predict suicide? New York Times