health tech
Could the GLP-1 party end for Hims & Hers?
Adobe
You probably know the brand Hims & Hers. Especially if you live in a city like New York, where the company's ads for weight loss drugs with "the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy" are plastered all over subway walls. It's one of the largest publicly traded telehealth companies in the country, offering compounded GLP-1s in more than 30 states and spending nearly $145 million in a single quarter on marketing.
For now, the company can legally sell these copycat versions of the drugs because there's a shortage of the originals. But "as the brand-name GLP-1 drugs come off of the shortage list, I would expect this to be a hot area for litigation," health law professor Anjali Deshmukh said to STAT's Katie Palmer and Nick Florko.
There are some legal maneuvers that could help the company continue selling compounded drugs even after the shortage. But challenges from manufacturers Lilly and Novo, or a crackdown by the FDA, could bring the party to an end. Read more from Katie and Nick about the company's plans moving forward and the obstacles that may stand in its way.
transplants
Kidney donor deaths are lower than ever
Between 1993 and 2022, more than 164,500 people donated kidneys. In all that time, only 36 donors died within three months of the procedure. The risks have always been low, but new research published yesterday in JAMA found that the risk for donors has drastically declined over the last three decades.
Analyzing national transplant registry data, researchers found that 13 donors died in the first 10 years of the study, 18 in the next decade, and just 5 people in the most recent decade. It's tough to measure relative risk with such a low number of deaths, but the researchers found no statistically significant differences when it came to age or race. Mortality was also consistent among people with different BMIs.
What spurred the improvement in survival? The study authors pointed to improvements in donor selection, better care pre- and post-operation, and improved surgical techniques as potential influencing factors.
first opinion
Trans and nonbinary people give birth, too
Gavin Fraser always dreamed of having children — so much so that they assumed they must be a cisgender woman. Who else would want so badly to carry and birth a child? But they aren't cisgender, something they only realized long after giving birth.
Now, Fraser wishes they could have experienced pregnancy and childbirth while living openly as a nonbinary transgender man, they write in a First Opinion essay. They're not alone in this desire, but it's often a difficult journey. Birthing trans and gender diverse people are almost always excluded from important conversations about access to high-quality, compassionate prenatal care.
Read more in Fraser's essay about bringing trans and gender diverse people into "maternal" health.
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