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Good morning! Lots of news today, starting with the chaos that took over the science world last week. So many STAT reporters contributed to the great stories published last week. Scroll down to catch up on the latest.
Chaos in science as Trump changes take effect
One week into the second Trump administration, the president’s restrictions have sparked chaos across federal health and science agencies. At academic conferences, mid-level health officials cancelled appearances or suddenly logged off virtual meetings that were already in progress. Committees tasked with deciding which scientific research to fund postponed key meetings. At the FDA, staff scrambled to remove information online about the agency’s diversity efforts — not just programs related to its workforce, but also those meant to ensure clinical trials enroll participants of all races and ethnicities. Researchers at institutions across the country told STAT that the chaos has left many early-career scientists in limbo, unsure if they’ll have money to pay lab members’ salaries or run experiments.
“People feel completely off-balance, especially in public health,” researcher Michael Osterholm told STAT. “Right now, I have no idea who’s driving the truck, or for that matter, if we even have gas in the tank.” Read more about how Trump’s moves are interrupting basic but critical work at health agencies. And if you’ve been affected by the Trump administration’s pause on communications, science meetings, and reviews, or by the executive orders to stop diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, we’d love to hear about your experience.
One more thing — even the private sector has been affected by the changes already. STAT’s Brittany Trang spoke with Maia Hightower, the CEO of Equality AI, about the company’s decision last week to shut down. Trump’s executive order was the “final nail,” Hightower told Brittany. Read more of their conversation.
More young people die of cancer in historically redlined areas, per study
Almost a century after people living in certain neighborhoods around Seattle and Tacoma, Washington were systemically denied financial services — a discriminatory, racist practice known as redlining — young cancer patients in those areas are dying at higher rates than those who live in unaffected areas.
An association between historic redlining and survival of adult-onset cancers has already been shown, but the data on adolescent and young-adult cancers come from a study published today in CANCER. Researchers analyzed data from 2000 to 2019 in those Washington cities on more than 4,300 patients aged 40 or younger, along with homeowners’ loan data and recent census tracts. They found that five years and 10 years after diagnosis, fewer people in previously redlined neighborhoods were still alive than those unaffected. (That’s about 85% vs. 90% five years out and 81% vs. 88% after ten years.)
The disparity in deaths remained even after adjusting for factors like poverty. It emphasizes the importance of contextualizing today’s health disparities, the authors write, as well as the impact discrimination can have generations down the line.
Long stays in immigration detention are especially harmful
People kept in immigration detention for six months or longer have significantly higher prevalence of mental health problems, PTSD, and poor or fair self-rated health than those kept for less time, according to a study published Friday in JAMA Network Open. Among 200 participants, there were high rates overall of these health problems, but lengthened stays exacerbated the problems.
About half of people detained for six months or longer had poor or fair self-rated health, compared to just 30% of those who stayed for less time. And 60% met screening standards for PTSD, as opposed to about 35% of those with shorter stays. The data published the same week that Trump re-entered the White House and made a number of policy changes to increase immigration enforcement and deportations. Such action could have wide-reaching health impacts for immigrant families all over the country, the health policy organization KFF noted.
Searching for patients during the LA fires
Ethan Swope/AP
Gabriel Waterman is a primary care physician who helps to run a Los Angeles-area program providing services to thousands of older adults in assisted-living facilities and nursing homes. Most of his patients are at least 80 years old, and half have dementia. So as fires spread across the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods, he worried about how his patients and traveling staff members were faring. When he saw news coverage of a Pasadena nursing home being evacuated, he wondered — “Were those our patients?”
In a new First Opinion essay, Waterman details three days of harrowing work to find and treat patients during the raging fires. Read his on-the-ground account.
Heart disease is still the biggest killer
In 2022, about 40% of deaths in the U.S. were caused by cardiovascular heart disease, including heart disease and stroke, which kill more people in the U.S. than the next two biggest killers — all forms of cancer and accidental deaths — combined. That’s according to an annual update from the American Heart Association on heart disease and stroke statistics, published today in Circulation.
Cardiovascular disease is “common, catastrophic, and costly,” an accompanying editorial notes. Despite its dominance, the overall number of deaths is leveling out after the pandemic shot numbers upwards. Yet contributing risk factors like high blood pressure and obesity continue to rise.
Here are some more interesting findings:
- The percentage of high schoolers who are physically active for over an hour every day decreased from almost 29% to just under 24% between 2011 to 2021.
- Nearly 47% of all Americans have high blood pressure. In 2022, the prevalence was worst in Mississippi at about 40% and best in Colorado, at just under 25%.
- The rate of gestational diabetes in the U.S. increased 38% from 2016 to 2021, to 8.3% of pregnancies.
Could bariatric surgery help treat liver disease?
For people with obesity and cirrhosis, a late stage of liver disease, one new, small study says that bariatric surgery might be an option. The study, published today in Nature Medicine, followed 168 patients, about a third of whom underwent bariatric surgery. After 15 years, fewer people in the surgical group developed one of the major complications of liver disease, which include cancer and death, than in the non-surgical group.
“We can change the trajectory of the disease,” Ali Aminian, a co-author on the study, told STAT’s Liz Cooney. Read more on the specifics.
What we’re reading
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The Naval scientist who wanted to know how football players would survive nuclear war, Defector
- ‘This is censorship’: Trump freeze on communications forces medical journal to pull HHS authors’ article, STAT
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Feds drop charges against Texas doctor accused of leaking transgender care data, Texas Tribune
- Veteran researcher who was critical of U.S. response to Covid named acting NIH head, STAT
- A program to close insurance gaps for Native Americans has gone largely unused, KFF Health News