PUBLIC HEALTH
What to know about China's surge in respiratory disease
ICYMI: The World Health Organization and Chinese health officials convened via a conference call on Thursday last week as the global health agency sought information about reports of increases in respiratory illnesses among children in China that have put disease watchers elsewhere on alert. The Chinese explanation — one that the WHO appears to have accepted — is that while respiratory disease activity in parts of the country is at high levels among young children, the illnesses are caused by known pathogens, STAT's Helen Branswell reported.
After the meeting Thursday, the WHO said it would continue to monitor the situation, and urged other countries not to impose travel restrictions on China. On Friday, Helen spoke with Maria Van Kerkhove, the acting director of the WHO's department of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, for more details. Here's a snippet of what she said:
WHO asked China for surveillance data but also for laboratory results. What kind of evidence did you get that what they're seeing is what they told you they were seeing?
What they were giving us was an overview of current trends in acute respiratory illnesses across the country. And they were giving us some readouts from that surveillance system based on age. They also gave us a readout on a new multiple pathogen surveillance system that started in mid-October looking at 13 pathogens.
Why do you think this sort of blew up in the last few days?
You hear "undiagnosed." People think, well, that means they must have ruled everything else out, and therefore it's probably new. You hear "clusters," which means there's some people linked in space and time. "Children" — which is always alarming — "with pneumonia," which indicates a level of severity. And you hear "China." So I think a lot of people were immediately drawn back to the beginning of the Covid pandemic and thought: Oh God. Not again.
Read the full conversation.
biotech
Biotech's upside-down job market
Christine Kao/STAT
As any listener (or producer) of The Readout LOUD knows, the biotech industry has gone from what some observers called a "sugar high" to a downturn that is making it difficult for both public and private companies to raise money. More than 100 companies laid off employees in the first half of 2023, according to the industry trade group BIO, which is double the pace of the prior year.
There's also a dramatic decline in the number of open positions. "A good candidate in 2021 had five or six offers in hand," Adam Kaner, a senior vice president at the life sciences recruitment firm PharmaLogics, told STAT's Jonathan Wosen and Damian Garde. "Now the market has flipped completely from a candidate-driven market to what is definitely more of an employer-driven one." One Ph.D. graduate told STAT that she has applied for more than 53 positions (and counting). Read more on the unexpected trials for biotech job applicants.
environmental health
What's the relationship between environmental toxins and chronic disease?
Nearly a decade on, the Flint water crisis still looms large in the minds of the public. It was — and continues to be — evidence that not all communities in the U.S. are equally affected by environmental pollutants. And the stakes are high: New research suggests a link between Black Americans' higher exposure to environmental toxins and advanced liver scarring, which can lead to disease and cancer.
Researchers looked at blood samples of 43,000 Americans included in the National Health and Nutrition Evaluation Survey, and compared the results to the pool of people who had metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (previously called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease). They found that African American participants' liver scarring was strongly associated with their blood level of lead. While the study, presented at The Liver Meeting earlier this month, doesn't prove low-level exposure to environmental toxins causes liver damage, it highlights a growing theory among some researchers: That our chronic disease epidemic might be driven at least in part by the very environments we inhabit. Read more about the research from STAT's Isabella Cueto.
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