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Articles by Jen Abbasi
Amid Health Misinformation, Most Trust Physicians for Truth
Although most people in the US are unsure whether false health claims are true or not, 93% of people said that they trusted their physician’s guidance, according to a recent KFF poll of 2007 adults.
Critical Care Physician Takes on Climate Change in New WHO Role
There’s no shortage these days of sobering climate statistics. The 10 warmest years on record have , according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This year’s June and July were the hottest of these months on record for both global land and ocean temperatures. In fact, July was likely the hottest of any month since global record keeping started in 1850.
What to Know About EG.5, the Latest SARS-CoV-2 “Variant of Interest”
The Omicron descendant EG.5 is the latest to be labeled a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization (WHO), joining the current ranks of XBB.1.16 and XBB.1.5. The new designation, made as part of an August 9 initial risk evaluation of the variant, reflects its “notable rise” in global prevalence during recent weeks.
A Genetic Explanation for Why Some People Had Asymptomatic COVID-19
It’s estimated that at least 1 in 5 people with a SARS-CoV-2 infection never develop symptoms. Genetics might explain some of these asymptomatic cases, it turns out. In a new study appearing in Nature, people with a particular gene variant appeared to have preexisting T cell immunity to the virus, likely a holdover from previous bouts of the common cold. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists have investigated the widely varying responses people can have to SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Vigilance Urged Against Bird Flu Amid Ongoing Outbreaks in Mammals
In one of the latest developments in the ongoing bird flu outbreaks, 28 domestic cats in Poland have tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) virus, which has decimated global poultry populations, caused mass deaths among wild birds, and infected . Guadalupe Pardo/AP Images How the felines were exposed to the virus is under investigation, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported.
Social media brings benefits as well as risks to young people
THERE is a scene in the 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma that has stayed with me. A tear rolls down a girl’s face as she appraises herself in the mirror, her sadness a result of harmful body image comparisons rife on social media. The dramatic recreation depicts just one of the potential harms highlighted in a recent US Surgeon General’s Advisory on social media use and youth mental health.
New Weight Loss Drugs Make Headlines at Diabetes Meeting
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New Weight Loss Drugs Make Headlines at Diabetes Meeting
Researchers presented data on a new crop of hormone analogues for weight loss—including an oral version of the blockbuster drug semaglutide—at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 83rd annual Scientific Sessions program, held in June in San Diego.
US Maternal Mortality Is Unacceptably High, Unequal, and Getting Worse-What Can Be Done About It?
A report released this spring by the National Center for Health Statistics summarized the strikingly high rates of maternal deaths in the US. In 2021, the US rate of maternal deaths that occurred while pregnant or within 42 days of being pregnant was 32.9 per 100 000 live births—more than 10 times the estimated rates for other high-income countries including Australia, Israel, and Spain, which all hover between 2 to 3 deaths per 100 000 live births.
Surgeon General Sounds the Alarm on Social Media Use and Youth Mental Health Crisis
A year and a half after US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, called attention to increasing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation among children and adolescents, the Nation’s Doctor is now sounding the alarm on a likely driver of the youth mental health crisis: social media use.
What a Study of Hibernating Bears Tells Us About Deep Vein Thrombosis
There’s a paradox that’s well known in vascular medicine. Patients who find themselves temporarily immobilized—after being placed on bed rest, for example, or while recovering from surgery or an injury—are at risk of a blood clot developing in a deep vein, typically in a leg. But people who are chronically immobilized after a spinal cord injury or a stroke don’t have the same heightened risk of deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, after the early phase.
RSV Vaccine, Monoclonal Antibody Safe, Effective in Phase 3 Trials
A vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) was effective at preventing RSV-associated illness among older adults and the children of vaccinated mothers, based on interim results from 2 phase 3 trials. If licensed, the vaccine, an intramuscular injection that contains a combination of from RSV A and B, would be the first available for RSV. None of the trials found evidence of safety concerns, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Former NIH Director Francis S. Collins on the New White House Plan to Eliminate Hepatitis C
In this issue of JAMA, Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, former director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), coauthors a Viewpoint describing a new White House plan to eliminate hepatitis C in the US. Editor in Chief Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, PhD, MD, MAS, recently spoke with Collins, now a special advisor to President Joe Biden for special projects, about the historic plan. The following is an edited version of their conversation.
Race-Based Equations Delayed Black Patients From Getting Onto Kidney Transplant Lists-An Unprecedented New Policy Seeks to Undo the Damage
In this issue of JAMA, the authors of a Viewpoint examine the recent decision of the US Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) to require transplant centers to modify the kidney transplant wait times for Black patients who might have been adversely affected by the race-based approach to the estimation of glomerular filtration rate.
Bird Flu Has Begun to Spread in Mammals-Here’s What’s Important to Know
As bird flu continues to circle the globe, a recent report suggests that the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5N1) virus spread between farmed mink in Spain last October. The virus also may have been transmitted between seals in coastal New England last summer. The events mark the first large H5N1 outbreaks potentially driven by mammal-to-mammal transmission.
More Medical News Clinicians Can Use
For more than a century, JAMA’s Medical News department has illuminated timely topics in clinical medicine, biomedical research, public health, and health policy from across the spectrum of scientific publishing and the landscape of health and medicine.1 As a new year begins—year 4 of the COVID-19 pandemic—the news team will continue to produce its signature Medical News & Perspectives stories, along with regular audio and video features.2,3 Starting with this issue, the Medical News team...
From Thought to Text: How an Endovascular Brain-Computer Interface Could Help Patients With Severe Paralysis Communicate
Severe paralysis not only means being unable to move, but in many cases, being unable to speak as well. Scientists are working to develop brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that allow individuals with paralysis to operate electronic communication tools with their thoughts.
Amid Ohio Measles Outbreak, New Global Report Warns of Decreased Vaccination During COVID-19 Pandemic
A measles outbreak is underway this winter in central Ohio, where 73 known cases and 26 hospitalizations have occurred since late October, according to health department data updated on December 12. The Columbus-area outbreak comes on the heels of an unrelated cluster of 22 cases in Minnesota this year.
Highlights From the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2022-COVID-19’s Ripple Effects, a Triglyceride Disappointment, Gene Editing Advances, and More | Cardiology | JAMA | JAMA Network
After 2 years of virtual sessions, the American Heart Association’s flagship meeting returned to an in-person format in Chicago this November—with livestreamed offerings, of course. JAMA spoke with Scientific Sessions conference chair Manesh Patel, MD, who is the Richard S. Stack Distinguished Professor and chief of cardiology at Duke University School of Medicine.
“This Is Our COVID”-What Physicians Need to Know About the Pediatric RSV Surge
On November 4, experts from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that an earlier-than-usual outbreak of respiratory infections—particularly respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and in more recent weeks influenza—were stretching thin pediatric hospital capacity. In interviews with JAMA, clinicians from around the country and across the spectrum of pediatric medicine shared how an unprecedented surge of RSV over the past months has affected patient care.
White House Advisor Nahid Bhadelia, MD, MALD, on COVID-19 in Resource-Limited Nations-Undercounted Deaths, Vaccine Inequity, and More
This July, Nahid Bhadelia, MD, MALD, joined the White House COVID-19 Response Team as senior policy advisor for Global COVID Response. The infectious disease physician is on sabbatical from Boston University, where she is a School of Medicine associate professor, founding director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research, and an associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories.
Reports of Asymptomatic Monkeypox Suggest That, at the Very Least, Some Infections Go Unnoticed
Medical News & Perspectives JAMA. 2022;328(11):1023-1025. doi:10.1001/jama.2022.15426 Two recent case reports from Europe have raised the possibility that some monkeypox virus infections may be asymptomatic. Whether or not these infections were truly symptom free, the studies suggest that clinicians and individuals at high risk should be aware that monkeypox can go unnoticed—possibly even when it’s transmissible.
The US Now Has a Research Plan for Long COVID-Is It Enough?
More than 2 years after patients with lingering health problems coined the term Long COVID, the US government has unveiled a research plan to understand, prevent, and treat the broad range of persistent and sometimes debilitating disease symptoms that are now known to affect many people after initial SARS-CoV-2 infection. The National Research Action Plan on Long COVID, released this August 3, has been met with a mixture of enthusiasm and disappointment.
MASALA Study Probes Why People With South Asian Ancestry Have Increased Cardiovascular Disease Risks
Studies dating back to the late 1950s have shown that people with South Asian ancestry have higher cardiovascular disease risk than people of other racial and ethnic groups, and the heightened risks have been observed in the US over the past 2 decades. To better understand why, in 2010 two Indian American internists, Alka Kanaya, MD, and Namratha Kandula, MD, MPH, launched the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America, or MASALA, prospective cohort study.
COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Booster During Pregnancy Increases Maternal and Fetal Antibodies
Pregnant individuals who received a booster dose of the BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) COVID-19 mRNA vaccine during their second trimester developed higher antibody levels than those who received the second shot in their primary vaccine series during the same trimester, researchers in Israel recently reported in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Infants in the booster group also had higher antibody levels at birth than those in the 2-dose group.
How Caring for Patients Could Change in a Post-Roe v Wade US
The driving distance between Dallas or Houston and Baltimore, Maryland, is roughly 1400 miles. And yet, since Texas’ Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) banned abortion of fetuses with a detectable heartbeat last September, a couple of individuals each week, on average, travel from that state to one of Planned Parenthood of Maryland’s 7 clinics for an abortion.
National Academies: US Nursing Home System Needs Fundamental Overhaul
The COVID-19 crisis publicly exposed systemic problems within the US nursing home system, where about 40% of deaths from SARS-CoV-2 infection occurred during the pandemic’s first year. Now, a major report provides a blueprint for overhauling what the authors concluded is an “ineffective, inefficient, fragmented, and unsustainable” approach to long-term and postacute care.
Highlights From the American College of Cardiology’s Scientific Sessions-New Heart Failure Management Guidelines, Alirocumab After a Myocardial Infarction, and Treating Mild Chronic Hypertension in Pregnancy | Acute Coronary Syndromes | JAMA | JAMA Networ
Shortly after the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Sessions wrapped in early April, JAMA sat down with the conference chair to talk about research presented during the meeting. Pamela Morris, MD, a preventive cardiologist and a professor of medicine in cardiology at the Medical University of South Carolina, discussed new heart failure management guidelines—the first comprehensive update since 2013—and results from several important clinical trials.
Vaccine Booster Dose Appears to Reduce Omicron Hospitalizations
The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines’ 2-dose primary series appeared to provide less protection against hospitalization from Omicron variant infections than Alpha and Delta infections, according to a recent study. A booster dose, however, was associated with increased effectiveness against Omicron hospitalizations at the same high levels achieved against earlier variants with 2 doses.
Scientists Convert Blood Type A Donor Lungs Into Neutral Lungs
Scientists treated human donor lungs with enzymes that converted them from blood type A into universal blood type lungs. The technique removed the A antigen that distinguishes blood type A red blood cells, leaving behind neutral lungs. When paired, the enzymes convert group A (ABO1) red blood cells to group O (ABO3). In a study described in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers used normothermic ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) to treat 8 ABO1 human lungs with the enzymes.
Large US Study Examines First 6 Months of COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Data
During the first 6 months of the US COVID-19 vaccination campaign, most adverse events reported to surveillance systems were mild and short-lived, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The study examined safety data collected through the new v-safe surveillance system and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
Pushed to Their Limits, 1 in 5 Physicians Intends to Leave Practice
On the same day in March 2020 that President Donald Trump declared the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency, researchers at the Larry A. Green Center in Virginia launched an ongoing survey of COVID-19’s effects on primary care practices. Over the past 2 years, more than 36 000 survey responses from clinicians across the country have painted an alarming picture of a workforce that’s increasingly burned out, traumatized, anxious, and depressed. As Green Center codirector Rebecca S.
Even Mild COVID-19 May Change the Brain
A large study comparing brain scans from the same individuals before and after SARS-CoV-2 infection suggests that brain changes could be a lingering outcome of even mild COVID-19.
Decade-Long CLL Remission After CAR T-Cell Therapy Reported
More than 10 years after 2 patients with end-stage chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) received tisagenlecleucel, an anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, a group of highly activated CAR T cells were still proliferating in their blood, keeping the cancer at bay. Researchers reported the finding—the longest known CLL remission after CAR T-cell therapy—in Nature.
First mRNA HIV Vaccine Clinical Trial Launches
Moderna Inc is setting its sights on HIV. The biotech firm, along with nonprofit partner IAVI, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, announced in late January that researchers had administered the first doses of an investigational mRNA HIV vaccine to volunteers in a phase 1 clinical trial. The vaccine candidate uses prime and boost antigens to induce specific B-cell responses that ideally will lead to the development of broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies.
Patients With Complete Paralysis Walk With Spinal Cord Implant
A newly developed epidural electrical stimulation (EES) system described in Nature Medicine helped 3 individuals with severe spinal cord injuries regain trunk and leg motor function in an ongoing clinical trial. The patients with complete sensorimotor paralysis were able to perform activities such as stepping on a treadmill independently the first day of treatment, although they did not regain natural movements. The system includes an electrode paddle lead implanted directly on the spinal cord.
The COVID Heart-One Year After SARS-CoV-2 Infection, Patients Have an Array of Increased Cardiovascular Risks
An analysis of data from nearly 154 000 US veterans with SARS-CoV-2 infection provides a grim preliminary answer to the question: What are COVID-19’s long-term cardiovascular outcomes?
Widespread Misinformation About Infertility Continues to Create COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy
Around the time that COVID-19 vaccines were first rolling out, Alice Lu-Culligan felt compelled to help set the record straight. Baseless rumors were sowing confusion and vaccine hesitancy. Physicians can help to stop the spread of misinformation about fertility and pregnancy harm from COVID-19 vaccines.
Reducing Graft-vs-Host Disease in Blood Stem Cell Transplants
About 30% to 60% of patients with leukemia who receive donor hematopoietic stem cell transplants develop chronic graft-vs-host disease (GVHD). A composite analysis of phase 2 clinical trials suggests that depleting 1 type of T cell in donor stem cells has the potential to substantially reduce chronic GVHD without increasing cancer recurrence and death.
Cell-Free RNA in Maternal Plasma Predicts Preeclampsia
Preeclampsia is a major cause of severe maternal and fetal illness and death. Although the condition originates when the placenta is established, clinical signs and symptoms—maternal high blood pressure, swelling, and protein in the urine—usually don’t appear until much later in pregnancy. Scientists are developing a way to predict who will go on to develop preeclampsia with a single blood draw.
Fourth COVID-19 Vaccine Dose Increases Antibodies in Transplant Recipients
Last June, health authorities in France authorized a fourth COVID-19 mRNA vaccine dose for solid organ transplant recipients who had not adequately responded to 3 doses. A study involving kidney transplants demonstrated that antibody levels increased for some poor responders after a fourth dose of either the BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) or the mRNA-1273 (Moderna) vaccines.
COVID-19 and the Common Cold-Preexisting Coronavirus Antibodies May Hinder SARS-CoV-2 Immunity
Four seasonal coronaviruses—2 of which are betacoronaviruses, like SARS-CoV-2—cause about 30% of common colds. Instead of helping to fight off COVID-19, antibodies to these pathogens may interfere with the SARS-CoV-2 immune response, a recent study of health care workers suggests.
How the Supreme Court’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Rulings Could Shape the Pandemic’s Next Phase
In the wake of the US Supreme Court’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate rulings, medical groups and public health organizations expressed a mixture of relief and disappointment. On one hand, the nation’s highest court had upheld the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regulation regarding vaccination requirements for health care workers.
Former Biden-Harris Transition Advisors Propose a New National Strategy for COVID-19
Even as COVID-19 efforts focus on the current Omicron surge, most public health experts finally can foresee a near future when SARS-CoV-2 is endemic, not pandemic. That vision for a new normal—the idea that, while transmission eventually will decline, COVID-19 is not going away—was woven through recent Viewpoints in JAMA coauthored by former members of the Biden-Harris COVID-19 Advisory Board.
COVID-19 Vaccine Focused on T-Cell Response Promising in Early Trial
Investigators reported the first clinical trial results for CoVac-1, a COVID-19 vaccine candidate designed to induce T-cell immunity, in Nature. The multipeptide-based vaccine had a favorable safety profile and induced a broad and potent T-cell response. Developed at the University of Tübingen in Germany, CoVac-1 is an adjuvanted vaccine candidate that includes 6 SARS-CoV-2 peptides recognized by recovering patients’ T cells.
Homing In On a SARS-CoV-2 Correlate of Protection
An analysis of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies from participants in an mRNA-1273 (Moderna) vaccine efficacy trial has brought scientists closer to identifying a correlate of protection against COVID-19. The surrogate immunological markers are needed to accelerate the path to modified or new vaccines and to quickly expand existing vaccines into new groups.
Studies Suggest COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters Save Lives
The results of 2 large studies comparing severe disease and death among individuals vaccinated against COVID-19 support a benefit of booster doses. Both studies were conducted in Israel, where BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) boosters were introduced in July 2021. One analysis included data from more than 840 000 vaccinated people aged 50 years or older, 90% of whom received a booster dose.
Highlights From the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions—ApoB as a Risk Marker, an Oral PCSK9 Inhibitor, Aspirin and Dementia, and More
For the second year in a row, the American Heart Association’s flagship scientific meeting took place virtually this past November. Just after it wrapped, JAMA caught up with conference chair Manesh Patel, MD, who also is the Richard S. Stack, MD, Distinguished Professor and chief of cardiology and clinical pharmacology at Duke University School of Medicine.
RSV Vaccines, Finally Within Reach, Could Prevent Tens of Thousands of Yearly Deaths
[Skip to Navigation] Medical News & Perspectives JAMA. 2022;327(3):204-206. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.23772 Full Text Starting in December of 1965, thirty-one infants, most of them African American, from Washington, DC, received an investigational respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine as part of a series of clinical trials.
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