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Good morning. Are you keeping up with “The Odyssey”? I’m right on track, six books in. Athena’s working hard for her boys.
Amid hantavirus outbreak, cruise ship will move ports
The cruise ship moored off the coast of Cabo Verde because of a hantavirus outbreak may soon be on the move. Spanish authorities told the BBC on Tuesday that the ship will go to the Canary Islands, which are part of Spain. Earlier in the day Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s director of epidemic and pandemic management, signaled that a move was in the works, with the goal being to get the ship to a location where there is more scientific support for the effort to determine whether there was transmission aboard the ship, and how the outbreak started. Three people from the ship who are suspected of being infected will be evacuated to the Netherlands, home base of the cruise liner’s owner, before the ship departs Cabo Verde, Van Kerkhove said.
Hantavirus, which is spread by rodents, is not a bug that is typically seen to cause outbreaks on cruise ships. Van Kerkhove said the working hypothesis is that the first two patients were infected before boarding the ship in Argentina. Both those individuals are now dead, as is a third person. To date only two of the seven people in this cluster are confirmed to have been infected with hantavirus; test results are pending for some of the other suspected cases. — Helen Branswell
HHS tackles ‘overmedication’
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been critical of what he sees as overprescribing of anti-depressants. Speaking at the MAHA Institute this week, he announced that his department would take action to curb the “dependency crisis.”
Among the actions HHS is planning: Introducing Centers for Medicare and Medicaid billing guidance that would incentivize providers to taper their patients off of a specific class of anti-depressants, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, and releasing a “Dear Colleague” letter to doctors directing them to “strengthen informed consent” in prescribing medication, and releasing a forthcoming report by the the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration on prescribing trends.
SAMHSA is also planning educational webinars on side effects of psychiatric medications and deprescribing this summer while the Health Resources and Services Administration will host webinars on “holistic care” for community health centers. HHS is also planning to convene an expert panel this July to discuss tapering off of medications.
Kennedy has (against existing evidence) long linked SSRI use to violence, including mass shootings, and has argued that trying to come off of an SSRI is worse than quitting heroin.
According to CDC data, just over 13% of adults have reported using an anti-depressant. Last year, HHS released a report finding that, from 2006 to 2023, U.S. children and teens using SSRIs increased from 1.5% to 3.6%, which the report’s authors said remains low, but reflects changing mental health needs. — Chelsea Cirruzzo
An AI company has health AI policy recs
Artificial intelligence company OpenAI has been easing its way into health care. In January, it invited users to upload medical records to ChatGPT. Later, it debuted versions of the chatbot for hospitals and for clinicians. Alongside those, the company published a wish list that it describes as a blueprint for unlocking AI’s potential to change health care. STAT’s Brittany Trang spoke with experts about the policy proposals.
“They’re trying to have their cake and eat it too,” said David Blumenthal, a former National Coordinator for Health IT and a health policy professor at Harvard University. Read more on how reasonable the company’s blueprint actually is.
A temperature check on gene therapy
It’s been a tough few years in the gene therapy field. As the biotech industry broadly experienced a post-pandemic downturn, sentiment turned specifically against cell and gene therapies. Under the Trump administration, drug rejections and decision reversals at the FDA further destabilized the industry’s already shaky footing. Vinay Prasad, the agency’s top drug regulator, left the agency last week — a move that was seen as a reason for optimism by some scientists at a gene therapy conference held last week in Italy.
While many in the industry hope to see a friendlier replacement for Prasad, worries about ongoing turmoil at the FDA cropped up numerous times at the conference, despite the 4,500 miles separating Rome from Silver Springs, Maryland. Read more from STAT’s Andrew Joseph, who attended the gathering, on what’s top of mind for the global gene therapy field.
Staffing problems at the 988 lifeline
After 988 launched, suicide deaths among adolescents and young adults dropped significantly compared to projected rates. It’s a promising sign for the national suicide and crisis line’s new, shortened phone number. But 71% of call center leaders around the country report that they’re understaffed, and 89% report difficulty acquiring the funds to hire more people, according to a new study in JAMA Network Open.
Researchers surveyed leaders at 159 out of 206 total call centers that operate the line. About 60% of the centers allowed remote work either full-time or on a hybrid schedule. Those leaders were more likely to report difficulty with funding for staff, but less likely to report trouble recruiting workers. Underscoring all of this are questions around long-term funding for the lifeline at the state and national level. More on that here.
‘Nancy is alive, but in a sense, she is also dead’
That’s one way that neurologist Jason Karlawish describes a phenomenon called ambiguous loss. For the spouses of people with dementia, it can be difficult to understand how their loved one is experiencing the world, impaired by memory, language, and other barriers. Nancy is a dementia patient who doesn’t recognize her own husband, Brian. But even before her disease was that advanced, there was still a level of ambiguous loss. “I’m the activities director on the cruise ship Nancy,” Brian once said.
Read Jason’s latest column on the grief of watching one’s spouse become a stranger, along with what sort of structural changes are needed to address it.
What we’re reading
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What adding race to BMI can do, The Atlantic
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Inside a carnivore convention where meat is considered medicine, New York Times
- Trump’s executive order on psychedelics is the right move. But is my field ready for it? STAT
- States eye aid to prop up distressed hospitals amid federal Medicaid cuts, KFF Health News
- Listen: Dr. Glaucomflecken wants to make a stink, STAT