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good morning. Many people responded to Lizzie’s story about the mystery patient who received Retatortide yesterday with reactions, comments, and theories. But what is undeniable is the strength of Lizzie’s reporting.
FDA finally analyzes its own youth tobacco data
7.2% of middle and high school students in the United States reported using some type of tobacco product last year, according to newly analyzed federal survey data. While this represents an overall decrease from 2022, interestingly, nicotine pouch use among young people increased from 1.4% to 1.7%. VAPE is the most popular tobacco product, with 5.2% of survey respondents reporting current use in 2025.
Among young e-cigarette users, nearly 90% use flavored products, with fruit, candy, dessert, and other sweet flavors being 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 the FDA to reverse its decision to authorize flavored e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches,” Thomas Carr, director of national policy for the American Lung Association, said in a statement. “And we call on the federal government to restore staffing to the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health to prevent tobacco use and help people quit for good.”
(As a reminder: The survey’s raw data was first released without analysis in March, but the unusual circumstances left room for tobacco giant Altria to air its own assessment before government consideration.)
Government cannot limit SNAP dollars to sweets and drinks
A federal judge ruled Monday that the government cannot prevent people receiving SNAP benefits from buying candy, soda and other sugary drinks with those benefits. Under the Trump administration, the USDA has so far authorized 23 states to implement these restrictions.
The judge made clear that the decision was not about whether such restrictions were a good idea. Rather, it had to do with the definition of “food” used when states seek permission from the Department of Agriculture to limit SNAP purchases. Read the Associated Press article for more information and what’s next.
Endless add-ons for IVF may not be worth it
Unless you’ve done IVF yourself, you may not know about all the additional procedures you can obtain (purchase) to increase your chances of conceiving. These include acupuncture, corticosteroids, intrauterine injections, endometrial biopsies, and something called EmbryoGlue. A new systematic review from Australia, published last night in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health, found that most of these options either have no fertility benefit or the data are inconclusive.
There was weak evidence supporting three options: EmbryoGlue, endometrial scratch, and physiological intracytoplasmic sperm injection. (To learn more about what this means, the study authors have created a website with evidence-based information about these options.) The authors also emphasize that robust clinical trials are needed to learn more about the benefits of these options. It’s unclear how often American patients choose these procedures, but they’re largely unregulated and some say they’re just a racket.
Lessons learned from abandoned heart failure clinical trials
Over the past decade, FDA’s Breakthrough Devices Program has helped bring approximately 200 innovative products to the American market. Even if it is the intended outcome of programs that seek to promote the development of certain promising technologies, it is still fairly rare. More than 1,000 devices with breakthrough designation have not yet received FDA clearance. In most cases, it is not possible to know exactly how the device failed.
That’s why it’s important for companies to be careful when explaining even a partial explanation of what went wrong, STAT’s Katie Palmer reports. Researchers recently announced the results of an unfinished trial of a vagus nerve stimulator to treat heart failure, three years after the company halted development. Read more about what this paper can tell us and how increased transparency can help this FDA program.
455
That’s the number of people the Justice Department has filed criminal charges with as part of its crackdown on health care fraud, according to yesterday’s announcement. Officials say the criminals, including nurses, mental health company owners, hospice managers and others, submitted more than $6.5 billion in false insurance claims to insurance companies. read more.
Ethical questions remain about CRISPR gene editing
Scientists and bioethicists have long expressed concerns about the effects of CRISPR gene editing on human embryos. Perhaps the most uncontroversial application of this technology is attempting to use it to prevent the transmission of genetic diseases. However, scientifically, we have not yet reached that point. And ethically, big questions remain about how, if at all, we should get there.
In his latest column, Paul Knoepfler comments on an exciting new preprint on base editing in human embryos from the lab of Columbia University geneticist Dieter Egli. He also addresses ethical issues. Knopfler has long advocated for a moratorium on human genetic gene editing until ethical guidelines are established. Read more about how his thinking evolved.
what we are reading
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Ebola symptoms in current outbreak may be milder than previous ones, New York Times
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CDC Director Blocks Research on Coronavirus Vaccine. Now it’s published in the leading medical journal, The Washington Post
- How we used public radio to recruit 20,000 participants for a peer-reviewed study on walking breaks, STAT
- What Science Knows About Grief, The New Yorker
- Ophthalmology venture attracts investor attention, raises $330 million, STAT
