closer look
Texas board pushed to define 'emergency' exemption of abortion ban
Eric Gay/AP
The two sides of the abortion divide in Texas agree on one thing: The state's medical board should define what constitutes a medical emergency allowing an exemption to the ban on abortion. Two high-profile abortion supporters filed a petition in January asking the board to say what would be grounds for a legal abortion. And Joe Pojman, executive director of the anti-abortion group Texas Alliance for Life, said, "We think that timing is overdue for the Texas Medical Board to act."
The petition requires a response by mid-March. Without specific guidance on what exactly constitutes an emergency, doctors and hospitals now fear prosecution. Pregnant patients whose lives are at risk have had to leave the state for abortions. "The cost of making that judgment and being deemed wrong are huge," said Dallas OB-GYN Damla Karsan, who unsuccessfully sought a court's permission to perform an abortion for her patient Sarah Cox in December. STAT's Olivia Goldhill has more.
health
Optometrist waves a caution flag on myopia treatment gaining popularity in China
Helping near-sighted children see better has gone way beyond glasses. There are special eye drops and contact lenses to stop myopia from progressing. More recently, reports from China have said low-level red-light therapy delivered directly to the eye brings far better results. Seeing that some children's myopia even regressed caught the attention of Lisa Ostrin of the University of Houston College of Optometry.
After looking more deeply into the clinical trials of the treatment, Ostrin urges caution in a new paper published in the College of Optometrists' journal, Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics. Low-level red-light devices may actually cause more harm than good. "We see from the clinical trials that it absolutely is slowing myopia," she said. "But there's no explanation right now for the mechanism of how that's happening." For example, it could prevent the retina from growing normally, damaging it even as it treats the myopia. STAT's Annalisa Merelli has more.
health
High school football players have brain changes
High school football players already have differences in their brains compared to swimmers, cross-country runners, and tennis players, a new study in JAMA Network Open says, contrary to thinking that says it takes years of head impacts to change brain structure. Researchers studied 205 male football players and 70 other male athletes at five Midwestern high schools. Using advanced neuroimaging techniques, they found structural and physiological differences in brain regions that have been linked to mental health and well-being.
Football players had cortical thinning and changes in brain folding as well as lower brain signaling and coherence in frontal and medial parts of the brain, but increased signaling and coherence in the occipital lobe. "These findings suggest playing football may be associated with a different trajectory of cortical maturations and aging processes," the authors write, recommending a longer study to track "subtle yet cumulative changes in brain structure and neurophysiological effects due to repetitive head impacts."
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