ACTIVISM
March for Science goes MIA
The second Trump administration looks a lot like the first: attacks on institutions of science and political appointees who eschew scientific consensus. In 2017, those ingredients led to the historic March for Science, with more than a million people participating in 600 cities across the globe. But there are no plans for another march.
"We have retreated from the gains made immediately post the March for Science, but that's because of the concerted and structured attack on the academy and on scientific institutions and on scientific knowledge," said Agustín Fuentes, an anthropologist at Princeton University who recently wrote a piece in Science calling for more scientists to operate as political advocates.
Check out a great read from STAT's Anil Oza about why science advocacy and scientists' willingness to speak out look so different at the dawn of a second Trump administration.
TREATMENT
Anxiety and antidepressants
Researchers confirmed that antidepressants lead to a significant reduction in generalized anxiety disorder symptoms in the short term.
The long-awaited update, published by the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, considered by some to be the gold-standard of evidence-based health care, considered evidence from 37 unique randomized control trials with 12,226 participants and found that these drugs are effective compared to a placebo.
The drugs' long-term impacts are muddier, said Prof. Peter Tyrer, an emeritus psychiatry professor at Imperial College London who was not involved in the study. Some patients have difficulties stopping antidepressants because of withdrawal problems.
"The main reason why antidepressants were preferred to benzodiazepines (drugs that are equally effective in treating generalised anxiety) was the dependence risk, we just seem to have shifted the problem of adverse effects from one class of drugs to another," Tyrer said.
OUTBREAKS
Ebola case confirmed in Uganda
Ugandan health officials on Thursday confirmed a case of Ebola in the capital, Kampala, in a 32-year-old nurse. The man died Wednesday at the Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala. Officials identified 45 people who were in contact with the man; none have showed any signs of Ebola.
Any Ebola outbreak raises fears of transmission, but an outbreak of the disease in an urban setting like Kampala raises particular concerns. The man was also infected with the Sudan strain of Ebola, for which there are no licensed therapeutics or vaccines. The news arrives three years after the country had an outbreak caused by Ebola Sudan that led to 164 cases, including 55 deaths.
The confirmation of an Ebola case comes at a fragile time in global health. Under the new Trump administration, the U.S. is moving to withdraw from the World Health Organization and has already paused communications with WHO officials, steps that American and international health officials have widely decried and warned threaten global and U.S. health security. Read more here.
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