closer look
A year later, kids are still at risk from bad cancer drugs
Evangeline Gallagher/TBIJ
Last January, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, in partnership with STAT, revealed that at least a dozen brands of asparaginase, a key childhood chemotherapy drug, had failed quality tests, putting an estimated 70,000 children in more than 90 countries at risk. Update: A year later, almost nothing has changed. The WHO has issued no alert about the problematic cancer drug and national drug regulators around the world have not taken meaningful action, with both sides claiming communication breakdowns and a lack of evidence.
Researchers in the U.S. and Africa have begun developing cheap, simple tests allowing doctors to check the quality of asparaginase. "This issue is something that needs to be addressed urgently," said Gregory Reaman, a scientific director at the U.S. National Cancer Institute. "These are children who are already sick, and have the potential for being cured. And yet they are given substandard drugs." Read more.
in the lab
Chronic Covid study shows how risk varies
New research in Science Translational Medicine on how long it can take immunocompromised people to clear the SARS-Cov-2 virus reminded me how cancer patients felt left behind in 2021 by others who were protected by what were new vaccines back then. Now that so many more people have put the pandemic in the rear-view mirror, those patients' stories are also receding. I talked with two co-authors of the paper to ask what they learned.
What does your new study say about the spectrum of risk?
Jacob Lemieux: Patients with mild or moderate immunocompromise do seem to clear the virus quite well. In some severely immunocompromised patients, something very different is going on. Some patients harbor these persistent infections — basically the breeding grounds for future viral variants. So there's both a medical concern for patients and a public health concern.
What's life like now for immunocompromised people?
Jonathan Li: They tell me that they're still very careful. These are the patients who feel like all their friends or family have moved on. They're not as protected by the vaccines. They have a hard time moving on.
Read the full interview.
health
About 1 in 8 Americans have hearing loss, depending where they live and work
Hearing loss at any age can hurt your health. Children might miss developmental milestones, adults might struggle at work, and elders might suffer from social isolation. A new CDC-funded report in Lancet Regional Health — Americas tells us 38 million people in the U.S. have lost hearing in both ears, increasing with age but also differing by where people live and work. Bilateral hearing loss rates are higher among men, Hispanic people, and rural residents. After mining, working in retail or restaurants are the two occupations tied most closely to hearing loss.
West Virginia, Alaska, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Arizona had the highest rates of hearing loss; the District of Columbia, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and Connecticut had the lowest. Noise in big cities appeared to be less harmful than rural life spent working outdoors with heavy machinery, riding ATVs, or hunting with firearms, the researchers suggest. Prevention works best, as in avoiding noise or wearing protection, and hearing aids can help if people can overcome barriers to get them, both in cost and stigma.
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