Closer Look
Collecting data on maternal mortality is in jeopardy
The numbers are horrifying: U.S. maternal deaths during pregnancy or in the year after childbirth are on average 10 times higher than in similar countries. The rate is more than 20 times higher for Black and Native people. And a recent JAMA study said maternal mortality more than doubled from 1999 to 2019. So it's alarming to see that data collection is inconsistent and under political attack, experts told STAT's Annalisa Merelli.
"Maternal mortality review committees run by states [...] are able to review far more data, including hospital records and other information to correctly adjudicate a death as a maternal death, and more importantly, understand what were the drivers," said Greg Roth, a co-author of the JAMA study. But not all states have maternal mortality review committees. "Increasingly, the reporting of those findings have become a political issue, and there have been efforts to suppress their findings." Read more.
science
NIH fellows are seeking a union and a raise. Where will the money come from?
Several thousand research fellows at the country's leading scientific agency are mobilizing to form a union, mirroring discontent among postbacs and postdocs at the beginning of their careers who've chosen academia over industry. Working at agency headquarters in Bethesda, Md., likely means a struggle to make ends meet: In 2022, NIH postbacs made between $34,750 and $40,700 — up to 25% less than the $46,405 that living wage calculators said is required to live there.
Federal agencies like NIH can't just give raises. Congress sets the agency's budget, most of which goes out in external grants. If the union is voted in and negotiates a raise, more money for salaries means less money for something else, unless the NIH can convince Congress to raise its budget. That seems unlikely in the current climate of suspicion over the NIH's research and a debt ceiling deal. STAT's Brittany Trang tells us more.
in the lab
Not the rainbow, but a glow: Colorblind patients perceive some color after gene therapy
Did you know people who are completely colorblind are called achromats? Neither did I until reading this study in Current Biology about what four patients could see after gene therapy for congenital achromatopsia, in which patients are born with just rod vision so can see only shades of gray. After gene therapy in one eye, these patients could perceive color attributes, like lightness, but in a different, more limited way than people with both rods and cones.
After receiving a copy of a gene that promotes a certain cone-specific protein in just one of their eyes, the patients noticed color in linens, traffic lights, and flags, but, no, they couldn't suddenly see all colors of the rainbow, the researchers report. They could distinguish red from a black background, for example, saying it glows differently. This falls short of completely restored color vision, but the authors call it "a necessary first step."
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