Senate race shows how hard it is to campaign on abortion in the heartland

(Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

In many people’s minds, the midterm elections are a referendum on abortion. But even in a state where the candidates are on opposite sides, the issue may not be decisive, STAT’s Nicholas Florko reports from Kansas City, Mo. Eric Schmitt, Missouri’s attorney general and a Republican running for Senate, banned all abortions, even after rape and incest, immediately after Roe v. Wade was overturned. His Democratic challenger, Trudy Busch-Valentine (above), is a nurse who has made Schmitt’s attacks on abortion central to her campaign.

Schmitt is leading Busch-Valentine by more than 10 points in most polls, even though roughly 75% of Missourians believe women should be able to obtain abortions after rape or incest. But another poll found that most voters rank the economy, not health care, as their top priority. “Abortion is an important issue — but it’s not the only issue,” said polling expert Steven Rogers. Read more.

‘We wouldn’t tolerate that for a medicine’: FDA panel urges more rigor for pulse oximeters

An FDA advisory panel suggested yesterday that the agency improve how it regulates pulse oximeters, calling for clearer labeling and more rigorous testing of the devices. The widely used instruments that monitor blood oxygen levels work less well on patients with darker skin, STAT’s Usha Lee McFarling has reported. Panelists expressed concern that the devices have been validated in small studies using a handful of healthy patients. The FDA has requested new studies to assess pulse oximeter accuracy in hospital settings. Many panel members said all future studies should contain far more patients with dark skin and their data should be analyzed separately so issues are not lost.

Panel chair Steven Nathan noted that Covid medicines like remdesevir had much stricter standards for approval than the device physicians used to decide whether to give the drug. “We wouldn’t tolerate that for a medicine, so I’m not sure we should tolerate that in a device either,” said Eric Gartman of the American College of Chest Physicians. Read more.

After Dobbs, online requests for medication abortions soared

In the months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, demand for abortion pills through telemedicine spiked, a new analysis in JAMA says. Not surprisingly, the largest increases in medication abortion requests came from states with the most severe restrictions, including Louisiana and Arkansas. But even in states unlikely to ban abortion, there was a noticeable increase, coming in two waves: first after the Supreme Court’s draft decision leaked to the public, and an even more dramatic increase after the actual decision.

Before the Dobbs draft surfaced, Aid Access — based in Austria — got about 83 requests each day on average, but that rate jumped to 214 requests a day after the Supreme Court issued its decision. Another new report, from the Society of Family Planning, found legal abortions nationwide dropped by 6%, meaning 10,000 fewer people who had abortions in July and August following the Dobbs decision. STAT's Jayne Williamson-Lee has more.

Closer look: What will Musk’s takeover of Twitter mean for health misinformation?

(SAMUEL CORUM/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Health professionals on Twitter have delivered dire predictions about Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform and his plan to remove content moderation, given his history of downplaying and making false statements about the pandemic. Some prominent voices:

WHO’s Mike Ryan warned about the dangers of misinformation.
FDA commissioner Robert Califf condemned a surge of “divisive and hateful language.”
Scripps cardiologist Eric Topol said medical professionals should stay on Twitter to share facts and counter disinformation.

Misinformation experts told STAT’s Brittany Trang that Twitter has done a better job than most social-media platforms in combating misinformation. How that will change is unclear from what Musk has said about the “de facto public square.” Vincent Hendricks of the University of Copenhagen sees a problem: “A pillar of the entire idea of the public spaces [is] that no one person is able to decide what goes on in this place.” Read more.

Study finds a link between glaucoma and sleep problems

When glaucoma is undetected and untreated, it causes blindness from the progressive loss of retinal cells. A new study in BMJ Open found an association between sleep problems and glaucoma, potentially identifying more people who could benefit from screening for increased intraocular pressure, a hallmark of the disease. The researchers followed more than 400,000 people in the U.K. Biobank for just over 10 years. The ones who developed glaucoma were more likely to have troubled sleep, including snoring, daytime sleepiness, insomnia, or sleeping too long or too little.

It’s an observational study, so it can’t establish cause and effect, but the authors did advance some biological explanations based on when internal eye pressure rises: when lying down, when sleep hormones are out of sync in insomnia, or when cortisol is dysregulated in depression and anxiety. And sleep apnea might damage the optic nerve directly. More research is needed, as the authors concede glaucoma might also influence sleep.

‘Grandfamilies’ more likely to face food insecurity

“Grandfamilies” is one of those terms I’d never heard before but got immediately. It’s the name used for not just grandparents but other family members or friends who step in as caregivers when a child’s parents are unable to. Motivated by a desire to keep these children — who number 2.5 million in the U.S. — out of the foster care system, these adults face challenges, including financial barriers. A new report from Generations United singles out hunger.

Their data show that 25% of these households had food insecurity in 2019 and 2020, compared to 15% of other families with children. When looking at grandparents over 60, the rate of food insecurity is 22%, compared to 7% for people of that age with no children. It’s not always easy to transfer benefits like SNAP, WIC, or school meals, the report says, calling for better coordination of these programs.

On this week's episode of the "First Opinion Podcast," First Opinion editor Patrick Skerrett talks with Linda Richter of the Partnership to End Addiction about where the money from opioid settlements should go. Listen here.

What we're reading

The fading art of preserving the dead, New York Times
This urban mosquito threatens to derail the fight against malaria in Africa, NPR
Even more dry shampoos found to have cancer-causing agent, Bloomberg
Why does chronic pain hurt so much? The Atlantic
Opinion: Exclude race from medical school admissions and students, patients, and the entire health care system lose out, STAT