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Good morning. For those who were curious, our turkey friend at STAT headquarters last week was indeed a wild turkey, not a turkey vulture. A number of images from different angles, checked with multiple amateur ornithologists, all made our neighbor’s species clear. She hung out for two days straight.
U.S. health agencies are coming unglued
When compounded across the $1.8 trillion enterprise that is the federal health department, something as ordinary-sounding as a downsizing can turn into chaos. Thousands of workers have been laid off, numerous programs have been shut down. Lab leaders at the NIH are scrambling to buy food for animals. Scientists are hoarding and rationing reagents. FDA employees are bracing for fewer inspections because, even though the inspectors still have their jobs, support staff do not.
A robust team of STAT reporters interviewed more than two dozen employees across HHS and its subagencies to describe what one person called an “existential” upheaval. While supporters of President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. say this sort of disruption is exactly what the country needs, many experts inside and out of HHS worry that the losses could fundamentally alter what science and public health will look like in the U.S. going forward.
“We are really trying to hold things together with our bare hands,” one agency employee said. Read more.
Pig kidney removed from third-ever recipient
When Towana Looney returned home to Alabama from New York after becoming the third person ever to receive a genetically-modified pig kidney, her condition seemed promising. “I’m full of energy, got an appetite I’ve never had in eight years,” she said. “I can put my hand on this kidney and feel it buzzing, it’s so strong.” But after living with her new kidney for months, her body began to reject the organ. On April 4, after a record 130 days, Looney had the kidney removed.
“Though the outcome is not what anyone wanted, I know a lot was learned from my 130 days,” Looney said in a press release. She’s recovering well from the removal, her doctors said, and is heading home once again. She’s back on dialysis.
(If you want a refresher, read STAT’s coverage of the xenotransplantation renaissance of the past few years and the first upcoming clinical trial.)
Who benefits from the cuts at CDC?
Amid the 10,000 job cuts so far this month at the U.S. health department, the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health — responsible for projects aimed at spotting trends in tobacco use and preventing it — is effectively shuttered. Tim McAfee, who headed the division from 2010 to 2017, called the move “the greatest gift to the tobacco industry in the last half century.”
Now, the future of the office’s many initiatives is unclear. OSH ran the annual National Youth Tobacco Survey, which helped spur federal action on the alarming uptake of Juul and other e-cigarettes among teenagers a few years back. States and U.S. territories received the bulk of OSH’s $240 million in funding, relying on its support to run quit hotlines and introduce other initiatives like cigarette taxes or restaurant smoking bans. Read more from STAT’s Sarah Todd about how well the past few months have gone for the tobacco industry.
On the other hand, Helen Branswell writes today about how the loss of the CDC’s viral hepatitis lab will leave the country with no good way to measure the scale of the problem it faces with these diseases, per the lab’s former employees. It will be harder for scientists to find the sources of — and put an end to — outbreaks that can be linked to contaminated food, in the case of hepatitis A, or poor infection control procedures in medical facilities, in the case of hepatitis B and C. Read more.
Autism and the gut-brain connection
Days after a Cabinet meeting where Kennedy said that HHS will determine the cause of autism by September, with Trump suggesting a long-disproved link to vaccines, researchers at USC have come one step closer to understanding the actual mechanisms behind some symptoms of the disorder. A study published today in Nature Communications found an association between levels of certain gut metabolites and autism symptoms among children.
Researchers analyzed brain images, stool samples, and collected behavioral data from 43 kids with autism and 41 neurotypical kids, all ages 8 to 17. They found that kids with autism had significantly lower levels of certain tryptophan-related metabolites (substances like serotonin created when tryptophan, an amino acid, is processed in the gut) in stool samples than neurotypical children. And the level of metabolites in the gut was associated with changes in cortical activity in parts of the brain involved with autism, as well as the severity of someone’s disorder and the symptoms they experience.
“We demonstrated that gut metabolites impact the brain, and the brain, in turn, affects behavior,” study author Lisa Aziz-Zadeh said in a press release. “Essentially, the brain acts as the intermediary between gut health and autism-related behaviors.”
‘The clinical significance of sleepiness’ (seriously)
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has released a new statement today emphasizing that sleepiness is “a critical patient-reported outcome that is associated with increased risk for adverse health effects and diminished quality of life.” Excessive sleepiness is reported by one-third of U.S. adults, according to the statement, and can be a symptom of anything from narcolepsy or obstructive sleep apnea to viral infections, brain injuries, hypothyroidism, neurodegenerative diseases, mood disorders, behavioral disorders, and more.
The statement calls for more research where sleepiness is measured as a primary outcome in order to improve treatment for sleep disorders. There should be “objectively measured and reliable biomarkers” of sleepiness, the authors write.
What we’re reading
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Trump is ‘fully fit’ to serve as commander in chief, his doctor says after recent physical, AP
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Fearing paper on evolution might get them deported, scientists withdrew it, Washington Post
- Las Vegas schools face alarming measles vaccination shortfall, Las Vegas Review-Journal
- ‘Slow pay, low pay or no pay,’ ProPublica
- Tech modernization at community health centers in limbo after federal workforce cuts, STAT