closer look
The fight for better alcohol risk labels
Courtesy Tim Stockwell
You might be surprised to learn that most alcohol products are not regulated by a health-related agency like the FDA. Instead, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau — a section of the Department of the Treasury — is in charge of labels on alcohol. But it doesn't have a public health charge, such as warning consumers about health risks of alcohol or mandating nutrition facts. Its main function is as a tax collection agency.
As such, the TTB hasn't taken a huge interest in changing the fine-print warnings on alcohol bottles to something like the colorful "Alcohol can cause cancer" labels that a Canadian study showed were effective in changing consumers' alcohol buying habits. But that may be changing soon.
STAT's Isa Cueto takes us on a journey through consumer and public interest groups' two-decade-long fight to get stronger warning labels on alcohol, the science supporting alcohol warning labels, and how the alcohol industry is fighting back. Read the story here.
Infectious Disease
Happy summer — watch out for rabies
Another from STAT's Helen Branswell: Campers waking up with bats in their tents. Cattle in Minnesota succumbing to rabies, likely transmitted by skunks. A local health department warning of a rabies-infected raccoon. Seeing these kinds of stories at this time of year isn't a surprise; the risk of being exposed to rabies increases in the summer, Ryan Wallace, rabies program lead at the CDC, told STAT. That risk extends both to people and pets, which underscores the importance of vaccinating dogs and cats. Of more than 7,000 rabid dogs and cats detected in the U.S. over the past 20 years, 99% were unvaccinated, Wallace said.
Some parts of the country are seeing an increase in rabies detections this year — skunks in Minnesota and Iowa, and gray foxes in Arizona, New Mexico, and California. Wallace said that every year about 60,000 people in the U.S. are deemed to need post-exposure rabies vaccination. The country's effort to reduce rabies risk is massive and expensive, but has real impact. There hasn't been a detected human case of rabies in the past 2.5 years, Wallace said. "I'm knocking on wood."
science
Helping stem cells come out of their bone homes
For anyone donating stem cells for a bone marrow transplant (or becoming their own donor, as recipients of the new gene therapies for sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia do), it's necessary to undergo stem cell collection.
However, convincing enough stem cells to exit their niches in the bone marrow and enter the bloodstream, where they can be collected, is difficult. New research in Science looking at mouse and human cells explains one way blood cells resist entering the bloodstream. The study found that cells with certain macrophage markers on their surface were better at staying in the bone marrow and that cells could use a process called trogocytosis to attach these sticky markers to themselves. However, drugs used to push stem cells out of the bone marrow help turn off trogocytosis, and this new understanding gives a new target for future drugs that might improve stem cell collection efficiency.
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