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good morning. Are you following Odyssey? Things are going well. I read 6 books. Athena works hard for her sons.
Cruise ship moves ports amid hantavirus outbreak
A cruise ship anchored off the coast of Cape Verde due to a hantavirus outbreak could soon depart. Spanish authorities told the BBC on Tuesday that the ship was heading to the Canary Islands, which is part of Spain. Earlier, WHO’s head of epidemics and pandemic management, Maria van Kerkhove, suggested plans were underway with the goal of moving the ship to a location where there would be more scientific support for efforts to determine whether there was any transmission on board and how the outbreak started. Van Kerkhove said the three suspected infected people on board will be evacuated to the cruise ship’s owner’s home country of the Netherlands before the ship leaves Cape Verde.
Hantavirus, which is transmitted by rodents, is not a bug typically seen causing outbreaks on cruise ships. Van Kerkhove said the working hypothesis was that the first two patients were infected in Argentina before boarding the ship. Both of those people are already dead, and so is the third person. To date, only two of the seven people in this cluster have been confirmed to have hantavirus infection. Test results for some of the other suspected cases are pending. — Helen Branswell
HHS tackles “overdrug therapy”
Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long criticized what he sees as overprescription of antidepressants. Speaking at the MAHA Institute this week, he announced that the department would take action to curb the “addiction crisis”.
Some of the actions HHS is planning include introducing billing guidance to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid to encourage health care providers to gradually taper off certain types of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), issuing a “Dear Colleague Letter” to physicians directing them to “enhance informed consent” when prescribing the drugs, and releasing an upcoming report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Service management for prescribing trends.
SAMHSA is also planning an educational webinar this summer about side effects and deprescribing of psychiatric drugs, and the Health Resources and Services Administration will host a webinar on “holistic care” for community health centers. HHS also plans to convene an expert panel in July to discuss drug dose reductions.
Kennedy has long linked SSRI use to violence such as mass shootings (contrary to existing evidence) and has argued that trying to get off SSRIs is worse than quitting heroin.
According to data from the CDC, just over 13% of adults report using antidepressants. Last year, HHS released a report that found that the percentage of U.S. children and teens using SSRIs increased from 1.5% to 3.6% from 2006 to 2023, and the report’s authors said that while the percentage remains low, it reflects changing mental health needs. — Chelsea Silzzo
AI companies consider health AI policies
Artificial intelligence company OpenAI is gradually moving into healthcare. In January, it asked users to upload their medical records to ChatGPT. Later, a version of the chatbot aimed at hospitals and clinicians debuted. In addition to these, the company has published a wishlist that it describes as a blueprint for unlocking the potential of AI to transform healthcare. STAT’s Brittany Tran spoke with experts about their policy proposals.
“They’re trying to have their cake and eat it too,” said David Blumenthal, former national health IT coordinator and professor of health policy at Harvard University. Learn more about how streamlined your company blueprint really is here.
Body temperature test during gene therapy
The past few years have been difficult in the field of gene therapy. As the biotech industry broadly experiences a post-pandemic downturn, sentiment has been particularly tilted towards cell and gene therapies. Under the Trump administration, drug rejections and reversals at the FDA further destabilized an already shaky industry. The agency’s drug regulator, Vinay Prasad, resigned from the agency last week. The move was seen as reason for optimism by some scientists at a gene therapy conference in Italy last week.
While many in the industry are hoping for a friendlier replacement for Mr. Prasad, concerns about continued turmoil within the FDA were repeatedly raised at the meeting, even though Rome and Silver Springs, Maryland, are 4,500 miles apart. Read more about what’s hottest in the global gene therapy field from STAT’s Andrew Joseph, who attended the gathering.
988 Lifeline staffing issues
After the start of 988, suicide mortality rates among adolescents and young adults decreased significantly compared to predicted rates. This is a positive sign for the National Suicide and Crisis Response Line’s new shortened phone number. But according to a new study from JAMA Network Open, 71% of call center leaders nationwide report being understaffed, and 89% report difficulty obtaining funding to increase staffing.
Researchers surveyed leaders at 159 of the 206 call center locations. Approximately 60% of centers allowed remote work on a full-time or hybrid schedule. These leaders were more likely to report having difficulty raising funds for their staff, but less likely to report having problems recruiting employees. Underscoring all of this are questions about long-term funding for lifelines at the state and national level. Click here for more information.
“Nancy is alive, but in a sense she is also dead.”
This is one way neurologist Jason Kalawish explains a phenomenon called ambiguous loss. For spouses of people with dementia, it can be difficult to understand how their loved one experiences the world due to memory, language, and other barriers. Nancy has dementia and is unable to recognize her husband, Brian. But even before her illness progressed to that point, there was still a vague sense of loss. “I’m the activities director on the cruise ship Nancy,” Brian once said.
Read Jason’s latest column about the pain of watching your spouse become someone else and what structural changes are needed to deal with it.
what we are reading
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What happens when you add race to BMI, The Atlantic
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Inside the Carnivore Convention, where meat is considered medicine, New York Times
- President Trump’s executive order on psychedelics is the right thing to do. But is my field ready for that?Status
- State eye care aid to help distressed hospitals amid federal Medicaid cuts, KFF Health News
- Listen: Dr. Glaucomflecken wants to stink, STAT
