Abortion, heat and sudden cardiac arrest

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Good morning! See how I write these newsletter items? Very subdued, very thoughtful. (If you don’t understand what I am referring Consider yourself blessed to be more offline here than I and many of my colleagues.)

Can scientists increase the chances of surviving sudden cardiac arrest?

It’s the ‘sudden’ sudden cardiac arrest that makes it so frightening: an apparently healthy person can simply collapse. If they’re lucky, medical help is nearby and their heart can restart before it’s too late. But for decades, only about 10% of people who suffer sudden cardiac arrest outside a hospital have been lucky enough to survive.

There is bystander CPR and automated external defibrillators. There are implantable cardioverter defibrillators that can return the heart to normal within eight to ten seconds. And of course there are medications for people with heart failure. But none of it is enough.

“It affects a thousand Americans a day,” cardiologist Sumit Chugh told STAT’s Liz Cooney. “But if you look in the community, it’s still rare. It’s not like high blood pressure or diabetes. It is 50 people per 100,000 people.” Read Liz’s deep dive into the confusing condition and how scientists are working to better understand the risk factors involved and create better interventions like cell-based therapies.

According to the survey, most women of reproductive age are concerned about access to abortion

One in seven women of childbearing age in the U.S. report having had an abortion, according to new data from KFF National Representative Women’s Health Survey. Nearly 4,000 women ages 18 to 49 responded to the Abortion and Reproductive Health Survey after the fall of Roe v. Wade. Here are a few takeaways that caught my attention:

• Most women of reproductive age (74%) believe abortion policy should not be determined at the state level. This applies across all political affiliations: 54% of Republicans, 86% of Democrats and 73% of independent women agree.
• More than six in ten respondents are concerned that they or someone close to them would not be able to have an abortion if necessary to save someone’s life or maintain their health.
• The report also specifically looks at this Florida And Arizonawhere voters may soon see abortion on the ballot. In Florida, only one in five respondents knew that medication abortion is still legal in the state until the sixth week of pregnancy. In Arizona, just over one in 10 knew that medication abortion is legal and available online.
• 17% of respondents in the US reported that they had changed their contraceptive practices as a result of the reversal of Roe. This included starting or changing birth control, undergoing a sterilization procedure, or purchasing emergency pills to have on hand.

How to restore American confidence in vaccines

Just two hours after receiving the second dose of the Covid vaccine, virologist Gregory A. Poland heard a sudden ringing in his ear while driving. “The shock of a sudden loud, high-pitched whistle almost sent me off the road,” he writes in a First Opinion essay. He had suffered from intermittent tinnitus before, but never this bad. It got worse after his third dose later that year, and the noise continues to this day.

As someone who has studied vaccines for 40 years, Poland knows that vaccines of all types have saved millions of lives. But some people like him have also suffered unexpected consequences to their health and well-being. Poland argues that understanding how this happens would not only be a first step toward reducing these rare risks, but would also help combat vaccine hesitancy. Read more.

Is ultra-processed food the tobacco of the 21st century?

Oncologist Nicholas DeVito says yes. Ultra-processed foods – including packaged meals, snacks, sweets, soft drinks and more – are more relevant to his work treating cancer than you might think. An estimated 40% of cancer cases in the US are caused by risk factors that can be changed, such as the use of tobacco products, a sedentary lifestyle and the consumption of ultra-processed foods.

In a First Opinion essay, DeVito argues that, like tobacco before it, ultra-processed foods have ended up on our shelves due to a lack of regulation. And just as increased tobacco use was linked to lung cancer in the 20th century, these foods have emerged as a possible cause of gastrointestinal cancer. Read more.

Airport workers gather to protest the dangerous heat

Airport workers in Charlotte, NC and Phoenix held rallies yesterday to demand better workplace protections against extreme heat, including easy access to water, cool break rooms and training on heat illness. Last summer was the hottest the Northern Hemisphere has seen in 2,000 years, and this is already predicted to happen this year. breaking records again.

“Workers like me risk our lives every day in brutal conditions, and we are literally sick and tired,” Cecilia Ortiz, a passenger services agent at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, said in a news release.

Extreme heat can have serious adverse health effects, especially when it comes to cardiovascular health. Earlier this summer, the Biden administration proposed a new rule for the nation’s first-ever federal regulations around workplace heat safety. The rule would require employers to evaluate heat risk, develop prevention plans for excessive heat and ensure workers have access to cool water and paid rest breaks.

Research: Getting shingles can increase the risk of cognitive decline

It’s likely that you and virtually everyone you know has had chickenpox before or received the vaccine. Shingles is a reactivation of the same virus that causes chickenpox, which remains in your body and can cause a painful rash. But the infection can be more than an unpleasant experience. A study published yesterday in Research and therapy for Alzheimer’s found that getting shingles was associated with an approximately 20% higher long-term risk of subjective cognitive decline (when a person’s memory worsens or they become confused more often).

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital analyzed survey data from nearly 150,000 people to assess the link. It is the first major study to look at shingles and the risk of subjective cognitive decline, the authors note. Although previous research has found mixed evidence about a link between shingles and dementia, the authors write that this may be due to study designs that used insurance claims or administrative diagnostic data, involving only people who received medical care for their shingles.

The authors don’t know exactly how the virus is linked to cognition. The study also found that men (not women) who had developed shingles and were carriers of the APOE4 gene, a risk factor for dementia, were at even greater risk.

The Biden Cancer Moonshot’s next goal is surgery

The president and first lady spoke yesterday in New Orleans at Tulane University in New Orleans: announcing $150 million dollars in ARPA-H awards to develop technologies that will improve cancer surgeries. Tulane University is one of the first eight grantees to receive one of these awards, and the funding will go toward creating methods that allow surgeons to determine whether a cancer surgery has successfully removed the entire tumor in real time.

“There are no good technologies that can help determine during the operation whether it has been successful, but rather days later when it is already too late to change the operation,” said J. Quincy Brown, a biomedical engineer at Tulane University , in the moonshot announcement in New Orleans. “At the very least, we must be able to offer surgeons and patients the peace of mind and positive health benefits of a successful operation every time. That is the goal our team is working towards.”

This program also requires the new technology to be deployed in rural hospitals at the end of the project, Brown added during his remarks. “So we can’t build a million-dollar device,” he said.

— Angus Chen

What we read

• Hot summer threatens the effectiveness of mail-order drugs New York Times

• California’s bill would require a state review of health care private equity deals. KFF Health News

• The Politics of Mifepristone in the 2024 Elections, STAT
• Her son died of an overdose in his dorm room. Where was the Narcan? NPR
• Illumina is drawing up a plan to fuel growth by helping scientists interpret sequence data, STAT
• After national budget cuts, ‘July was hell’ for abortion funds, Newsgroup rewiring