Red states report more Covid-19 vaccine side effects, the danger of a U.K. decision on an ALS drug, & a potential new treatment for complicated cancers

Covid-19 vaccine side effect reports appear to follow partisan lines.

April 1, 2024 Check out STAT+

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By Annalisa Merelli General Assignment Reporter

Buongiorno e buona Pasquetta (Easter Monday) to those who celebrate. This is not what they teach you at church, but Easter (Pasqua) for me will always be about dessert! My favorite is pastiera — a pie with wheat, ricotta, orange, and other delicious goodness. Do you have special spring holiday traditions? Do share! But first, some health news for you, co-curated with the one and only Liz Cooney.

drug pricing Critics worry U.K. decision on ALS drug could chill access to other rare disease treatments Biogen There's a dispute in the U.K. right now over access to an ALS treatment available in the U.S. and headed that way in the European Union that has been stalled by the U.K.'s cost-effectiveness agency. The medicine is Biogen's tofersen, which treats a rare genetic form of the neurodegenerative disease, one that affects about 100 people in the U.K. Instead of evaluating tofersen as a treatment for a rare disease, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, or NICE, is looking at it as a medicine for ALS as a whole.  That worries not only neurologists and patient advocates, but also other critics who note that more and more new medicines target subgroups of patients with a disease based on underlying genetic mutations. "This just completely flies in the face of what the biomedical community — academics and industry — are moving towards," said Brian Dickie of the Motor Neurone Disease Association. STAT's Andrew Joseph explains. health care What experts say about UnitedHealth Group's plan to buy Steward's doctors group UnitedHealth Group and Steward Health Care have been in the news a lot of late. For the Minnesota conglomerate, the focus has been coverage of its recent cyberattack and an earlier controversy over an algorithm to cut off care. For Steward, there have been revelations about deepening financial problems. Now the two entities are connected by word last week of UnitedHealth's proposed deal to acquire Stewardship Health, the physician arm of for-profit Steward Health Care, and roll it into its Optum subsidiary.  Neither of the two famously secretive companies would share details on the plan, including the purchase price, with STAT's Tara Bannow, but analysts shared their thoughts. Jeff Goldsmith of the consultancy Health Futures was surprised: "It's a signal that maybe they're running out of deals." Whit Mayo of Leerink Partners was not: "They'll buy anything not nailed down." More spicy takes here. covid-19 Covid-19 side effect reports mirror red-blue state divide, study finds Here's more evidence of the red-blue divide among Americans. People in Republican-voting states were more likely to report adverse events after receiving a Covid-19 vaccination than people living in Democratic-leaning states, a new analysis in JAMA Network Open finds, suggesting that how people view their post-vaccine side effects or decide whether to report them may be shaped by their political views. There's precedent. More people died of Covid-19 in states where more voters registered as Republicans and voted that way. Counties in Donald Trump's column in 2020 were much less likely to get Covid vaccinations than counties that voted for President Biden. "The anti-vaccine movement might have started out along libertarian lines like, 'Let's not have compulsory vaccination,' but it gradually moved into thinking that either the vaccines weren't effective or that they were unsafe," study author David Asch told STAT's Elizabeth Cooney. Read more.

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first opinion To help teens facing social media's potential harms, meet them where they are Adobe  Adolescents live with overwhelming mental health challenges, some from the public online spaces they dwell in. But seeing only social media's possible harms to teens, on which the science is quite mixed, may be shortsighted, Jessica Schleider of Northwestern University writes in a STAT First Opinion. Social media has the potential to support adolescent mental health, too, especially for teens who can't easily find treatment otherwise. The long-term solution starts with training more therapists and addressing stigma against seeking help. But to help the millions of teens suffering right now, Schleider suggests embedding safe, evidence-based digital interventions into online spaces that teens frequent, allowing them to access support when and where they need it. "The challenge here is finding interventions that actually work, rather than just offering platforms a way to pay lip service," she writes. "But there is good news on that front." Read about some examples. research "Stunned" scientists stumble upon a way to restore a broken tumor suppressor system It is common to think about cancers as diseases where a gene pushes cells to multiply rapidly, taking over an organ and eventually a whole organism. But 90% of cancers are caused by a tumor suppressor system that fails, allowing damaged cells to multiply in the first place. Figuring out a treatment for this latter type of cancer is much harder because breaking a system that is doing something it shouldn't is easier than fixing one that isn't functioning. But researchers at St. Jude were able to revert malignant cells into ordinary ones in cases of rhabdoid tumors, an aggressive childhood cancer.  The approach — which is still years away from clinical trials — could provide a roadmap for treating some of the peskiest tumors."I pretty much dismissed it," said Charles Roberts, director of the St. Jude's Comprehensive Cancer Center and senior author on the paper. "And then BAM! That's exactly what was going on." Read more.

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What we're reading The Texas judge who orders patients to take their meds, Wall Street Journal What's Congress going to do with WuXi? STAT Why are older Americans drinking so much? New York Times GLP-1 generics would be dramatically cheaper than U.S. price of Ozempic, study shows, but still profitable, STAT Most sudden infant deaths involved unsafe sleep habits, study finds, Washington Post

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Thanks for reading! More tomorrow — Nalis

annalisa.merelli@statnews.com

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