Closer Look
Climate change is pushing vector-borne diseases to new highs, but preparation lags behind
Thumy Phan for STAT
An outbreak you likely never have heard of hit Arizona in the summer and fall of 2021, when the world was otherwise understandably fixated on Covid-19. But in Maricopa County and elsewhere in the state, there were more than 1,700 reported cases and 127 deaths from West Nile virus, whose emergence in 1999 was a harbinger of vector-borne disease to come in greater numbers, pushed by climate change and brought to humans here by mosquitoes, ticks, and other animals.
It's not just West Nile virus. There's also dengue, which resurfaced in the U.S. in 2009 and in 2022 infected 57 people in Florida via local transmission. Experts worry that both research and surveillance of vector-borne diseases is underfunded at the local and national level, leaving us vulnerable to illnesses local clinicians may not recognize and for which there may not be vaccines. STAT contributor Sara Van Note has more.
science
National Academies urges change in how genetics research applies racial and ethnic labels
Reaffirming that race is a social not biological construct, a new report calls out genetics researchers for inconsistently and inappropriately using racial and ethnic labels and calls for better ways to capture the complex patterns of human genetic variation: "It is time for us to reshape how genetics studies are conceptualized, conducted, and interpreted," the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine authors wrote, noting that outdated methods of grouping people may result in poor scientific results and misguided interpretations.
Census-style categories such as Black, Asian, or Hispanic aren't appropriate to study genetic variation because such groups aren't homogenous to begin with and genetic variation within them shifts over time. The report's authors didn't offer a new list, but said racial descriptors should be avoided, except in health disparities studies that may need such categories to study harms occurring to certain populations. STAT's Usha Lee McFarling has more.
health
Mediterranean diet cuts women's heart disease risk by 25%, study says
At first glance, research affirming the Mediterranean diet's heart benefits doesn't seem surprising, but the authors of this study in Heart believe it's the first meta-analysis to show that it's true in women. Pooling 16 female-only studies, they found that women who most closely followed the diet rich in whole grains, vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts, and extra-virgin olive oil had a 24% lower risk of heart disease and a 23% lower risk of dying over the study's 12 years.
That's striking because sex differences in heart disease have only recently been explored. There are caveats: Like many other nutrition studies, this one is observational and relies on women's recall of what they ate. How the Mediterranean diet works isn't known, but its antioxidant and gut microbiome effects on inflammation and other risk factors may play a role. The authors call for more research on women, including the effects of premature menopause, preeclampsia, and gestational diabetes.
Correction: In an item yesterday about how getting more sleep might mean better vaccine response, I incorrectly described which hepatitis vaccines were used in the study. In addition to flu, they were hepatitis A or B vaccines. (There is no vaccine for hepatitis C.)
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