{"id":380496,"date":"2026-04-08T00:47:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T00:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/380496\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T00:47:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T00:47:12","slug":"aerobic-exercise-otc-abortion-meds-insulin-morning-rounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/380496\/","title":{"rendered":"Aerobic exercise, OTC abortion meds, insulin: Morning Rounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT\u2019s free newsletter Morning Rounds.\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Good morning. Amid all\u00a0the tasks that demand to be addressed each day, are you having trouble finding your sense of wonder and awe re: the moon mission? I am too. Reading this<\/a> and this<\/a> yesterday helped me access it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A new target for aneurysm drugs wins STAT Madness\u00a0<\/p>\n

An abdominal aortic aneurysm occurs when part of the lower wall of the body\u2019s main artery weakens, creating a bulging, enlarged area in the blood vessel. Most of these aneurysms are asymptomatic, but they become deadly if they rupture. Treatment options are limited, with no available medications. But researchers from the University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center have identified a driving force behind the condition, opening up a potential target for new therapies.<\/p>\n

That study is the 2026 STAT Madness winner. The competition stacked 64 teams against each other in a month-long, bracket-style tournament and celebration of biomedical research.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a> from STAT contributor Brianna Abbott on the popular vote winner. And STAT\u2019s Amanda Erickson, who edits this very newsletter, has a dispatch on the research<\/a> our editors chose as\u00a0the best discovery of 2025. Hint: It has to do with how the brain flushes waste.<\/p>\n

If you cap insulin at $35 a month, people with type 2 diabetes stick to treatment<\/p>\n

Looks like capping monthly spending on insulin at $35 has been a win, win, win, and almost a draw five years after it was first rolled out for Medicare patients with type 2 diabetes. A new study out Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine<\/a> tracked 4.8 million people\u2019s records before and after the ceiling was put in place. The researchers found that out-of-pocket spending fell significantly, while insulin use went up. Blood sugar levels averaged over two to three months also declined, but there was a small increase in severe hypoglycemia events when blood sugar dropped too low.<\/p>\n

Those results were clearer than what\u2019s happened with some state programs, the study\u2019s authors noted. And they didn\u2019t look at spending on other drugs, like GLP-1s.<\/p>\n

The impetus for the monthly spending limit was a tripling of insulin\u2019s price from 2002 to 2013, an editorial<\/a> in JAMA Internal Medicine reminds us. But there\u2019s more: Our former colleague Rachel Cohrs Zhang traced how President Biden and then-former President Trump were fighting over who deserved credit for making insulin more affordable. Turns out it was a pharma giant\u2019s idea. Here\u2019s her origin story<\/a> from June 2024. \u2014 Elizabeth Cooney<\/p>\n

More evidence abortion meds are safe OTC<\/p>\n

While some Republicans in Congress push to ban<\/a> the abortion drug mifepristone and investigate<\/a> pill manufacturers, evidence that it\u2019s safe to dispense the medications (mifepristone and misoprostol combined) over-the-counter continues to grow. After 20 years of an in-person dispensing requirement, the drugs have been available through virtual doctors\u2019 appointments since the pandemic began. In a study published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine<\/a>, researchers went in-person to clinics and tested people\u2019s ability to self-assess their eligibility to take abortion meds.<\/p>\n

Nearly 170 people at clinics in three states were shown a prototype over-the-counter package and drug facts label. Most (88%) correctly assessed their eligibility for the medication. Among those who didn\u2019t, excluding oneself from eligibility was more common than inappropriately opting in. Still, larger studies will likely be needed to satisfy the FDA\u2019s standards for making a drug over-the-counter, physician Sonya Borrero argued in an accompanying commentary<\/a>, adding that the evaluation process could be influenced by the way reproductive care has been politicized.<\/p>\n

How one quest to fight prejudice in biology classrooms ended<\/p>\n

Less than a decade after getting his Ph.D. in science education, Brian Donovan had done something remarkable. He\u2019d begun to develop a new approach to high school genetics education that, rather than simply outlining the basics, emphasized the complexities of human genetic variation \u2014 and mobilized a coalition of teachers, researchers, and geneticists to consider it. \u201cWhat I really wanted was to take a sledgehammer to prejudice,\u201d he told STAT\u2019s Megan Molteni. \u201cI was naive enough to think that we could teach genetics and actually make a real dent in this problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a single day last April, years of painstaking, thorough work was ground to a halt. Donovan lost both of his National Science Foundation grants as part of the Trump administration\u2019s mass cancellation of awards determined to \u201cno longer effectuate administration priorities.\u201d Now, he\u2019s preparing to apply for nursing school. In her latest story, Megan details all that science education will lose without Donovan\u2019s research efforts. Read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Half of U.S. adults are aerobically active enough<\/p>\n

A little less than half \u2014 okay, 47.2% to be exact \u2014 of American adults met federal guidelines for aerobic physical activity in 2024, according to new data analysis<\/a> from the National Center for Health Statistics. That includes about 52% of men and 42% of women. Some of the other demographic breakdowns seem to highlight structural and societal inequalities: people without disabilities, with more money, in younger age groups, and who were white or Asian were more likely to be more active than their peers.<\/p>\n

These numbers are much higher than they were for 2020, which, to be fair, was a unique year for all of us when it came to physical movement. That year, just a quarter<\/a> of adults met the guidelines for aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities together. (Wondering how you stack up? Guidelines<\/a> recommend at least 2.5 hours of moderate aerobic activity \u2014 or an hour and 15 minutes of vigorous activity \u2014 per week.)<\/p>\n

How insurance works against addiction recovery<\/p>\n

As an addiction medicine physician, John Fomeche has seen firsthand that financial stability isn\u2019t secondary to treatment for many patients \u2014 it\u2019s a key part of the treatment itself. In a new First Opinion essay, he recalls speaking with a patient who had done everything that clinicians ask patients in recovery to do. But her progress was jeopardized when her insurance premium tripled, making\u00a0continued support much more perilous.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the part of addiction medicine we rarely name out loud: Relapse is often engineered far upstream from individual choice,\u201d Fomeche writes. Read more<\/a> on the real consequences to opaque changes like premium hikes, formulary shifts, and prior authorization barriers.<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re reading<\/p>\n

Health insurers score major win with higher 2027 Medicare Advantage rates, STAT<\/a><\/p>\n

These women had their breasts removed to thwart cancer. Then came the pain, KFF Health News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT\u2019s free newsletter Morning Rounds.\u00a0Sign up here.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[163,1541,85,46,482],"class_list":{"0":"post-380496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}