Why some never-smokers with lung cancer may have worse outcomes

Plus: Whose idea was $35 insulin anyway?

June 13, 2024 Check out STAT+

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By Theresa Gaffney Morning Rounds Writer and Podcast Producer

Good morning! A story from Rachel Cohrs Zhang today answers the question: Who came up with the idea for a $35 insulin price cap anyway? Real STAT-heads and alt-text sleuths will be able to use the image as a clue.

in the lab It's practically impossible to study a placenta during pregnancy. So scientists are building their own KC McGinnis for STAT When Nicole Hashemi was pregnant, she worried, like many do, about how much caffeine was safe for her to consume. But unlike most other people, she's one of a handful of biomedical researchers in the world exploring how the placenta — a notoriously understudied and uniquely complex organ — can be modeled outside the body.  So she built something that could help her track how much caffeine from her coffee would be transported to her baby: the placenta-on-a-chip. It's a simplified model of the organ that uses microfluidic technology to show how blood and other fluids move through its barriers and affect its tissues. Read more from STAT's Debbie Balthazar on the experimental technology and its potential to revolutionize pregnancy research. cancer A potential explanation for bad outcomes among never-smokers with lung cancer It's a mystery for oncologists, and a devastating discovery for certain lung cancer patients: People with non-small cell lung cancer who have never smoked can face worse outcomes than those who have. But in a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers in the U.K. have found a potential explanation. Among patients who never smoked, it's particularly common to have genetic mutation in the epidermal growth factor gene. The cancer treatment that targets this mutation, EGFR inhibitors, seem not to work as well for people who have a mutation in a gene called p53 in addition to the one in EGFR. The researchers found that the mutation combination enables genome doubling, which in turn increases the risk of developing drug-resistant cells.   It's probably impossible for anyone at STAT to see this study without thinking of our inimitable science reporter, Sharon Begley. Sharon, who didn't smoke, died from lung cancer in January 2021, just days before publishing her last story. In that piece, she wrote about the growing share of lung cancer cases among never-smokers, the need for more information on how the disease differs between never-smokers and smokers, and whether screening guidelines should be changed. If you haven't read the piece, I highly recommend it. mental health Anorexia is deadly — and doubly so with psychiatric comorbidities Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. And that mortality rate nearly doubles for people who have coexisting psychiatric disorders, according to a new study published yesterday in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. Researchers analyzed data on every person in Denmark who was diagnosed with anorexia between 1977 and 2018. Each of the nearly 15,000 people (mostly women) were then matched with 10 of the same age and sex in the general population. People with anorexia had four and a half times the risk of dying during follow-up compared to the matched group. Almost half had other psychiatric conditions — including mood or personality disorders, anxiety, and autism — and they experienced almost two times the risk of death compared to those with anorexia alone. The results emphasize the importance of early intervention and specialized treatment, the authors wrote.

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policy Who came up with a $35 insulin price cap? Evan Vucci/AP  The idea of a $35 monthly cap on insulin has popped up in nearly every corner of the American health care system. It was codified in Medicare, has been reflected in multiple state laws, and is the basis for proposals in Congress to extend cost protections to people with insurance through their jobs. Even pharmaceutical companies have adopted similar limits in their copay assistance programs.  But the origin story of that oddly specific dollar amount has not been previously reported. Both President Biden and former President Trump love to claim credit for getting more people $35 insulin. STAT's Rachel Cohrs Zhang reports that the credit should actually go to one giant pharmaceutical company — just the type that both men claim to have challenged. Read her exclusive story in STAT+ to learn more. (And look at the featured image above for a hint.)  drugs Federal health agencies issue warning on a shroom company's edibles The CDC and FDA are investigating Diamond Shruumz brand chocolate bars, cones, and gummies for a potential connection with severe acute illnesses experienced by 12 people around the U.S., 10 of whom were hospitalized. Patients experienced symptoms including seizures, tremors, muscle rigidity, abnormal heart rate and blood pressure, and slowed neurological function, the agencies announced yesterday. None have died. Most "magic mushroom" products like these don't actually contain psilocybin. Those that are available in smoke shops around the country can be sold because they're made from a different mushroom that's legal — but still hallucinogenic, STAT's Nick Florko reported in a short video earlier this year. "It's just the latest example of how public health policy has been impacted by entrepreneurs finding loopholes in our federal drug policy," he says.  one big number $4.8 trillion That's the estimated amount of money that was spent on hospital care, clinical services, drugs, and all other health spending in 2023, according to data from the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. And projections based on the data, published yesterday in Health Affairs, show that number is expected to rise to $7.7 trillion by 2032. awards Three scientists win the 2024 Kavli nanoscience prize Three scientists won the 2024 Kavli nanoscience prize for their seminal work in biomedicine, the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters announced yesterday. Only awarded once every two years, the prize recognizes scientists for significant contributions to astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience. Ten out of 65 past winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. You may know winner Robert Langer as the co-founder of Moderna, who was recognized for his research to improve drug delivery. Paul Alivisatos, a physical chemist and currently the president of the University of Chicago, won for his application of "quantum dots" in medicine. And Chad Mirkin, a chemist at Northwestern University, won for pioneering the construction of spherical nucleic acids. To learn about the scientists and their work, read more from STAT's Rohan Rajeev.

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What we're reading Meth-addict fish, aggro starlings: How human drugs are harming animals, Mother Jones Hope, despair and CRISPR — the race to save one woman's life, Nature World Trade Center responders exposed to more dust saw higher risk of early dementia, STAT Keeping up with fakery, Science To make public housing healthier, electric stoves and ovens should be the standard, STAT

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Thanks for reading! More tomorrow,

theresa.gaffney@statnews.com

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