Closer Look
Community baby showers can be prenatal care — and save lives
Monique Jaques for STAT
Community baby showers bring together families, health care providers, city officials, and others. Growing more popular in New York City and across the country, they offer a valuable connection to public resources such as WIC, which provides formula for children, and SNAP, the food stamp program, that are available during pregnancy and after childbirth. At some showers in the city, patients can talk to their health care providers about birth plans and childbirth classes.
That's critical in New York, where the maternal mortality rate for Black people is eight times the rate of non-Hispanic white people. As of 2018, nearly 40% of pregnant people in the Bronx were getting inadequate prenatal care — a higher share than the city overall. And then there are the daily needs: Nearly 1 in 3 people in the Bronx live in poverty, making baby essentials difficult to obtain. STAT contributor Monique Jaques has photos and reporting here.
vaccines
Study offers clues to a rare heart condition in young men after Covid vaccination
It's a very rare side effect, but a troubling one. Some people, especially teen boys, develop the heart inflammation known as myocarditis after receiving an mRNA vaccine. A new study in Science Immunology rules out three causes — an allergic response to the vaccine, antibodies induced by the vaccine, and an autoimmune response in which the body attacks its own healthy cells. Instead, looking at blood samples from 23 patients, the researchers discerned evidence of inflammatory proteins driving an overactive immune system."We were a little relieved that what we found was the inflammation-induced myocarditis" because it's easier to treat than an autoimmune condition, Yale virologist and study co-author Akiko Iwasaki told STAT's Elaine Chen. Most of these myocarditis cases, which tend to resolve quickly, occur after a second vaccine dose, suggesting a longer delay between doses might help. Read more.
covid-19
People with brain fog during an infection more likely to have long Covid, study finds
Among myriad unanswered questions surrounding long Covid, one of the most vexing is why some people but not others recover from their infections only to have long-lasting symptoms harming their mental and physical health. A small new study in JAMA Network Open found that people who said they had trouble thinking clearly, remembering, or concentrating in the first four weeks of their illness and a history of depression and anxiety were more likely to say they had brain fog up to three months later.
Michael Zandi, a neurologist at University College London, takes a cautious view. "Correlation is not causation, and while psychological factors are important to address where present in patients after Covid, we cannot assume that cognitive symptoms are caused by these factors alone," he said. "There is an urgent need to understand the biology underlying these symptoms to allow selection of patients for treatments in drug trials in parallel with appropriate rehabilitation."
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