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Good morning. A lot of people had reactions, comments, and theories regarding Lizzy’s story yesterday on the mystery patient who received retatrutide. What’s undeniable, though, is the strength of Lizzy’s reporting.
FDA finally analyzed its own youth tobacco data
Last year, 7.2% of middle and high schoolers in the U.S. reported using any sort of tobacco product, according to newly analyzed federal survey data. That represents an overall decline from 2022, though interestingly, use of nicotine pouches among young people increased to 1.7%, compared to 1.4%. Vapes were the most popular tobacco product, with 5.2% of survey respondents reporting current use in 2025.
Among young vape users, nearly 90% used flavored products, with fruit, candy, dessert, and other sweet flavors the most prominent. Despite the popularity of sweet flavors among young people, the FDA touted its recent approval of four flavored e-cigarette products as a mitigation strategy.
“We call on FDA to reverse its decision to authorize flavored e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches,” Thomas Carr, the director of national policy at the American Lung Association, said in a statement. “And on the federal government to restore staffing at CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health to help prevent tobacco use and help people quit for good.”
(As a reminder: The raw data from the survey was first released in March without analysis, an unusual circumstance that left an opening for the tobacco titan Altria to circulate its own assessment before the government weighed in.)
Government can’t restrict SNAP dollars on candy, drinks
A federal judge ruled Monday that the government cannot block people who receive SNAP benefits from buying candy, soda, and other sugary drinks with the money. Under the Trump administration, the Agriculture Department has given 23 states so far permission to implement these restrictions.
The decision didn’t come down to whether such restrictions are a good idea, the judge clarified. Rather, it had to do with the definition of “food” used when states asked the Agriculture Department for permission to restrict SNAP purchases. Read more from the AP on the details and what might come next.
Endless add-ons for IVF may not be worth it
Unless you’ve undertaken IVF yourself, you may not even know about all the add-on procedures that you can get (buy) to try improving your chance at pregnancy: There’s acupuncture, corticosteroids, intrauterine infusions, endometrial biopsies, something called EmbryoGlue, and more. A new systematic review out of Australia, published last night in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynaecology, & Women’s Health, found that most of these options either have no benefit for fertility, or the data is inconclusive.
There was weak evidence supporting three options: EmbryoGlue, endometrial scratching, and physiological intracytoplasmic sperm injection. (For information on what this all entails, the study authors created a website with evidence-based information about these options.) The authors also emphasize that robust clinical trials are needed to learn more about any benefit these options may have. It’s unclear how often American patients opt for these procedures, but they’re largely unregulated — and some say they’re just a racket.
Lessons from an abandoned heart failure trial
Over the last decade, the FDA’s breakthrough device program has helped nearly 200 innovative products to the American market. Even though that’s the intended outcome for the program, which tries to expedite development for certain promising technologies, it’s still rather rare. More than 1,000 devices that have received breakthrough designation have not yet gotten FDA authorization. In most cases, we’ll never know exactly how a device failed.
That’s why it’s important to pay attention when a company does explain, even partially, what went wrong, STAT’s Katie Palmer reports. Researchers recently published the results of an unfinished trial for a vagus nerve stimulator to treat heart failure, three years after the company pulled the plug on it. Read more on what that paper can tell us, and how more transparency can help this FDA program.
455
That’s how many people the Justice Department criminally charged as part of a crackdown on health care fraud, according to an announcement yesterday. Officials say the alleged offenders — including a nurse practitioner, a mental health company owner, and a hospice owner — submitted more than $6.5 billion in false claims to insurers. Read more.
Ethical questions remain on CRISPR gene editing
Scientists and bioethicists have long raised concerns about the implications of CRISPR gene editing in human embryos. Perhaps the least controversial application of this technology is to try using it to prevent transmission of genetic diseases. But scientifically, we aren’t there yet. And ethically, major questions remain on how, if ever, we should get there.
In his latest column, Paul Knoepfler comments on a new, exciting preprint on base editing of human embryos from geneticist Dieter Egli’s lab at Columbia. He also grapples with ethical questions. Knoepfler has long argued for a temporary moratorium on heritable human gene editing until ethical guidelines can be established. Read more on how his thinking has evolved.
What we’re reading
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Ebola symptoms in current outbreak may be milder than in previous ones, New York Times
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CDC’s chief blocked a Covid vaccine study. Now it’s in a top medical journal, Washington Post
- How I used public radio to recruit 20,000 participants for a peer-reviewed study on walking breaks, STAT
- What science knows about grief, New Yorker
- Ophthalmology venture grabs investors’ attention, raises $330 million, STAT