closer look
Opinion: Why the mammography wars aren't over
If you've been watching the guidelines for the age when breast cancer screening should begin, you might have a case of mild whiplash over the years. The most recent recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force have returned to beginning mammograms age 40, instead of age 50 as guidance had said since 2009. Age 40 is also what the American College of Radiology says, but frequency after that is another point of contention.
And when to start is hardly a settled question, Asia Friedman of the University of Delaware writes in a STAT First Opinion. That's because experts still disagree on defining the benefits (early diagnosis) and harms (overdiagnosis) of screening mammography, falling into camps of interventionism and skepticism. "More data alone will not change the fundamental fault lines of this disagreement," she writes. Read more on what she thinks might.
drug safety
Another drug supply issue: suspected contamination at compounder
There has been no shortage of news about gaping holes in the medication supply chain. Drugs to treat ADHD are scarce, diabetes drugs that also induce weight loss are in high demand, and cancer patients have to hope they can survive when their treatments vanish. This crisis may overshadow another problem: possible contamination at compound pharmacy operations. The FDA recently recalled injectable medicines used by hospitals after its inspection of a Pennsylvania plant run by Central Admixture Pharmacy Services.
Medicines intended to be sterile but don't meet that threshold can cause life-threatening infections, the California Board of Pharmacy wrote in a notice about the company, which has also had quality control issues at plants in Phoenix and San Diego. This history brings to mind a scandal in 2012 when a fungal meningitis outbreak killed 64 people who got injectable drugs made by a fast-growing compounding pharmacy. STAT's Ed Silverman explains.
research
Pocket protectors? Study says young women fall down stairs more often as they talk and carry things
Going down stairs can be risky business. Perusing this PLOS One paper, I learned falls actually have three peaks: in kids under 3, 20-somethings, and adults over 85. The current study focused on young adults on a university campus, videotaping 2,400 of them and comparing men to women because women have an 80% higher injury rate than men. The researchers concluded that not holding the handrails, talking (women are more social), wearing sandals or high heels (none on men's feet), and holding things (like phones or to-go coffee) in their hands was more common in women than men, even if they didn't skip stairs as much.
With all due respect to the researchers, want to know what we at STAT unscientifically concluded? Pockets. As a rule women's clothes do not contain nearly enough of them beyond the merely decorative, thus the things they carried. We do have one citation: Usha Lee McFarling's 2019 op-ed in the LA Times that declared pockets "the ultimate feminist issue."
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