infectious disease
Pediatric flu deaths this season the highest in 15 years
This past flu season was a particularly difficult one, with influenza deaths surpassing those caused by Covid-19 at points in the season for the first time since the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged in 2020. Though flu's toll was hard on all ages, it was particularly tough on kids. The CDC reported on Friday that the death toll for children has reached 216, the highest regular season total since the CDC started counting pediatric flu deaths after the difficult 2003-2004 season. (Prior to that pediatric flu deaths were estimated, as adult flu deaths are.) The only time it was higher was in 2009-10, during the H1N1 pandemic, when 288 pediatric deaths were recorded.
The current year's total isn't likely the end of the story. It can sometimes take weeks or months for states to report a death to the CDC, so it's quite possible this tally will continue to climb. The CDC doesn't report on whether children who died were vaccinated against flu. But in the past it has estimated that about 80% of the children who succumbed to flu were not vaccinated. And flu vaccine uptake in kids has declined since the Covid pandemic. — Helen Branswell
maha
The nutrition experts to follow as food comes into focus at HHS
Photo illustration: STAT; Photos: Flickr, Wikimedia Commons
In his first months as health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has championed state efforts to make soda ineligible for food benefits, announced that the federal government had persuaded food and beverage manufacturers to voluntarily stop using eight petroleum-based dyes, and criticized a report meant to inform the next update of U.S. dietary guidelines. Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again movement aims to fix the problem of chronic disease in the U.S., and a focus on food and diet is a large part of that effort.
Nutrition experts who can separate the wheat from the chaff have become essential resources for understanding the impact that Kennedy's reforms might have on pressing chronic illnesses like obesity, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. Sarah Todd profiles five experts to follow to get a handle on what MAHA's food moves really mean for the future of health, and what targets the movement may turn to next.
Cutbacks
Women's Health Initiative — and its 42,000 volunteers — still in limbo
They're still waiting. Principal investigators leading regional centers contributing research to the long-running, practice-changing Women's Health Initiative still have no official confirmation that their funding will continue past September. The WHI stalemate persists despite health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calling the cuts "fake news" and funder National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute saying "the work of the WHI will not be terminated."
So what's the problem? Contract officers from the NHLBI's Office of Acquisition are operating on the April decision to cut off funding. "Nothing has changed contractually," a federal official told Garnet Anderson, who leads the WHI's coordinating center, last week. STAT has requested comment from NHLBI.
More than 42,000 participants are still active in more than 30 studies built on the original WHI infrastructure, which in 2002 famously halted hormone therapy for safety reasons. Over the years researchers have continued to collect annual health updates from participants, including medical record data that allow scientists to understand disease at a detailed level. If the studies end, Anderson told STAT, "Our personal connection to these remarkable women would be diluted." — Liz Cooney
Agnese Morganti for STAT
Courtesy of Centivax
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