law enforcement
Study finds police have unfettered access to prescription drug info
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As more and more states pass bans on gender-affirming hormones for youth, researchers became interested in how easy it is for police to access records of who's taking drugs like testosterone. A study published yesterday in JAMA found that testosterone prescription data was accessible to law enforcement without safeguards like a warrant or subpoena in nearly half of U.S. states.
That's possible because, for controlled substances like testosterone, each state has a prescription drug monitoring program that tracks its dispensation. Some of these programs also track medical codes, potentially allowing law enforcement to infer from the data whether a person is receiving a drug like testosterone because they're cisgender with hypogonadism, or because they're a trans man.
Only 11 states require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before accessing prescription data, while 14 require a subpoena. (At the federal level, drug enforcement can always access this data without a warrant.) More research is needed to better understand the consequences of this access, the authors write — in particular, whether the data is being used to enforce bans on gender-affirming care.
weight loss
The latest news on GLP-1s
There were two important updates yesterday regarding the blockbuster weight loss drugs Ozempic (the diabetes version of semaglutide) and Wegovy (the weight loss version). Here's what you need to know:
- On the regulatory side: All doses of Ozempic and Wegovy are listed as available on the FDA's drug shortage list as of yesterday, STAT's Elaine Chen reported. This raises the possibility that the medications could soon be taken off the list entirely, which could pose challenges to patients who rely on compounded versions of the drugs (which are only legally available because of the shortage). Read more.
- On the science: In a 68-week trial, Wegovy reduced arthritic knee pain for people with high BMIs. Participants who took the drug lost almost 14% of their body weight on average — changes that were accompanied by reductions in pain. Read more from STAT's Isa Cueto on the research and what it could mean for patients.
mental health
Autism diagnoses increased in women, racial minorities through the 2010s
Men and boys are more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder than women and girls. But an analysis of electronic health records between 2011 and 2022, published yesterday in JAMA Network Open, found that diagnosis rates among girls and women increased significantly over the decade, narrowing the gap from a four-to-one to a three-to-one male-female ratio. Similar longstanding diagnostic disparities between white patients and racial/ethnic minorities also narrowed over time.
Kids ages 5 to 8 were diagnosed at the highest rate, seeing an increase from 2.3 per 1,000 kids in 2011 to 6.3 in 2022, the data showed. But the greatest increase was actually among 26-to-34-year-olds, a group that had 450% more annual diagnoses by the end of the time period.
It should be noted: None of these changes are necessarily caused by a sudden change in how many people have autism. Rather, the study authors point to changes in screening practices, diagnostic definitions, and policies, as well as increased advocacy and education including on social media.
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