Closer Look
'This is the short straw': Living with Graves', and then thyroid eye disease
Photo illustration: Casey Shenery for STAT
When she was 7, Annie Larsson (above) began the regimented life of managing her type 1 diabetes. So when she was diagnosed with the thyroid condition Graves' disease, she was prepared to take the medication she needed every day. But a painful thyroid eye disease followed, swelling her eyes shut and changing her appearance, too. She talked recently with STAT's Isabella Cueto.
How did you deal with the feelings of dissociation from your physical appearance?
I was 38 at the time, and I have always looked pretty young. And it aged me overnight. It was hard to look in the mirror sometimes and see a person you've never seen.
Do you have any words of wisdom for people going through a similar experience?
This is the short straw they've drawn and it sucks and it's not fun. I think the worst thing you can do is try to put on a brave face and say, well, there are people suffering much worse in this world.
Read the full interview.
stat future summit
'I would do it again': Jerome Adams on serving as surgeon general
We know medicine, for better or worse, doesn't happen in isolation. Culture, politics, and economics shape how it does and doesn't work. As former Surgeon General Jerome Adams reflected on his role in the pandemic's early days, "I was saying the same things that other public health advocates were saying, but I was saying them while standing next to Donald J. Trump. And by doing so people perceived what I was saying very differently. I had to learn that lesson the hard way that sometimes it's not what you say, but it's where you say it from and who you say it next to, and you just don't have any control over that." he said.
And yet, he said, "Yes, I would do it again. Yes, I have PTSD from having done it." STAT's Sarah Owermohle has more from Adams, now Purdue University's executive director of health equity initiatives. Also from the summit: Isabella Cueto reports on biotechs vying for a place in the obesity drug boom.
health
Deaths from being bitten or struck by a dog are up
CDC
This week's MMWR report from the CDC contains data on recent locally acquired malaria cases in Florida and Texas, norovirus among hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail, and information on vaccination against pneumonia, measles, and mpox. Tucked at the end and noted by STAT's Helen Branswell is a chart that surprised us both, and maybe you, too: Deaths from being bitten or struck by a dog.
The stats, which exclude rabies bites, show an average of 43 deaths per year from 2011 through 2021. The deaths after being struck might include fatal falls after a dog jumps on someone. As you can see in the chart above, higher death rates moved back and forth between men and women, but from 2018 to 2021, deaths more than doubled for both men (from 15 to 37) and women (from 20 to 44). The quick look doesn't explore why.
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