closer look
Logic can't explain Wall Street panic on obesity drugs
Christine Kao/STAT
Meanwhile, Wall Street is freaking out about the runaway success of weight loss drugs. And they're worrying not just about the market implications for other drugs but other products, too. "The baseline thesis is a future in which everyone is skinny and has no appetite," Jared Holz of Mizuho Securities said. "And if that's the case, then you don't want to be owning some of these stocks."
Buy Bumble, sell McDonald's. Short Pepsi, go long Louis Vuitton, that thinking goes. The only problem, Holz and other analysts said, is the thesis makes little sense. "Some idealized GLP-1 user might indeed forgo fast food, sign up for Tinder, and finally pull the trigger on that Moncler coat, as so much analyst research suggests," as STAT'S Damian Garde puts it. But millions of people would need to do the same to justify the market's reaction, said Gary Taylor of TD Cowen. Read more.
insurance
Insurance rates are going up and abortion coverage isn't a sure thing, employer survey says
If you get your health insurance through your employer, your costs went up over the past year, a new KFF survey of health benefits says. Average annual premiums for families and individuals rose by 7% in 2023, a big jump over last year's slight increase over 2021. It looks like inflation and labor costs might be affecting premiums, but those two factors are expected to settle down over the next two years. Family premiums have grown 22% over the last five years, close to the rate of inflation (21%) and a 27% increase in wages over that period.
Also, nearly a third of large firms (those with at least 200 employees) cover legal abortions in most or all circumstances — but 1 in 10 of these employers said the largest plan they offered does not cover legal abortion under any circumstances. An additional nearly 1 in 5 large companies cover legal abortions under only limited circumstances such as rape, incest, or endangerment of health or life.
mental health
Adult ADHD linked to later dementia risk
It's not a new idea that adult ADHD and dementia might be connected, but research has been inconclusive, sometimes confounded by the stimulant drugs people take to manage their ADHD. Some of the symptoms overlap, such as memory problems, as do such risk factors as depression, midlife hypertension, smoking, type 2 diabetes, and low levels of education and physical activity. A new study in JAMA Network Open set out to answer this question by following more than 109,000 people born between 1933 and 1952 into old age.
The researchers conclude that adult ADHD was associated with a 2.77-fold higher risk of dementia. They offer this explanation: "It may be plausible that adult ADHD reflects a brain pathobiological process that reduces the ability to compensate for the effects of later-life neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular processes," they write. "Less cognitive and brain reserve may result in pathobiological processes of ADHD that, in turn, reduce compensatory abilities."
On this week's episode of the First Opinion Podcast, First Opinion Editor Torie Bosch speaks with Steven Phillips and Michelle Williams about "long Covid" being a new name for an old syndrome. Listen here.
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