{"id":100257,"date":"2025-08-21T21:13:05","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T21:13:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/100257\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T21:13:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T21:13:05","slug":"epic-statin-drugs-cdc-panel-trans-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/100257\/","title":{"rendered":"Epic, statin drugs, CDC panel, trans health"},"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. We\u2019ve got a meaty issue for you today. In particular, I urge you to spend some time with Jason Mast\u2019s story<\/a>. It\u2019s another heartbreaking chapter of the Sarepta saga.<\/p>\n

Epic announces an AI overhaul<\/p>\n

At Epic\u2019s annual customer meeting in Wisconsin this week, CEO Judy Faulkner announced that the electronic health records system giant will be integrating several new artificial intelligence features into its software. The additions include an AI scribe<\/a> powered by Microsoft to rival products from health tech unicorns like Abridge, and AI assistants targeted at doctors, patients, and administrative staff.<\/p>\n

With more than 40% of the EHR market for hospitals, Epic\u2019s approach to AI reflects its dominance, STAT\u2019s Brittany Trang reports. It kept a relatively low profile while others raced to edge out the competition with announcements for back-office coding tools, physician co-pilots, armies of voice AI agents, and more. Read Brittany\u2019s story<\/a> on the announcement, and why the company\u2019s slow-walking isn\u2019t the same as sleepwalking.<\/p>\n

2.8 million<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how many people in the U.S. age 13 and older identify as transgender, according to a new report from the Williams Institute<\/a>. That comes out to 3.3% of 13- to 17-year-olds and 0.8% of adults. Among trans adults (2.1 million total), there\u2019s a pretty even split between trans men, trans women, and trans nonbinary people.<\/p>\n

The Williams Institute, part of UCLA, has been reporting on the size and characteristics of the trans population since 2011, and the report notes that data quality and availability has substantially improved in that time. But that\u2019s changing under the Trump administration. The report uses data from the CDC\u2019s Youth Risk Behavior Survey and the Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System. But the CDC has said it will no longer\u00a0process<\/a> data on transgender identity.<\/p>\n

Study upends ideas about the brain post-amputation<\/p>\n

Neuroscientists have long believed that the brain reorganizes itself when a body part is amputated, but a new study challenges that assumption. Researchers analyzed the brains of three people before and after having a hand amputated. Basically: brain images from before and six months after amputation were strikingly similar, suggesting that the brain\u2019s map of the body is preserved following limb loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The implications could be huge. \u201cThis could ultimately change the way that we think about delivering therapy, and it could also change the way that we\u2019re prescribing these prostheses,\u201d biomedical engineer Jacob George told STAT\u2019s Veronica Paulus. Read more<\/a> about how experts reacted to the results, and what questions still need to be answered.<\/p>\n

\u2018Overnight, it\u2019s gone\u2019: Patients left behind by Sarepta<\/p>\n

The saga of Sarepta\u2019s gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy is the biggest story in biotech this summer. The spectacle has stoked confusion, fear, and heartbreak<\/a> for families with children who suffer from the disease; it\u2019s also swung stock prices and contributed to the (temporary) ouster of a top FDA official. But out of the spotlight, there\u2019s another community left reeling.<\/p>\n

As Sarepta fought for its Duchenne treatment, the company pulled out of a nearly decade-long commitment to develop gene therapies for limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, a lesser known collection of over 30 ultra-rare and debilitating muscle disorders. It was devastating news for families who for years watched their programs inch along, while Sarepta devoted most of its resources to Duchenne, the most common and universally fatal form of muscular dystrophy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the trickiest and most wrenching parts of reporting on gene therapy over the past few years is how often the needs of individual families differ from the needs of the field,\u201d STAT\u2019s Jason Mast told me over Slack. Read the story<\/a> about how families like the one shown above\u00a0are handling the latest devastating disappointment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CDC advisory panel member no longer trusts CDC<\/p>\n

Robert Malone, a newly-appointed<\/a> member of the CDC\u2019s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, wrote in a blog post<\/a> yesterday that he \u201cwill no longer be able to trust that what is presented in CDC summaries to the ACIP is transparent, accurate, and unbiased.\u201d The comment was part of an introduction Malone wrote to a guest essay picking apart the data for Merck\u2019s RSV monoclonal antibody for babies, which Malone and other panel members voted in June to recommend<\/a>. Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. later accepted the recommendation.<\/p>\n

The analysis was first published by the Brownstone Institute, a nonprofit built on criticism of policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic like\u00a0lockdowns, calling them a \u201ctrauma\u201d that demonstrates the government\u2019s willingness to \u201crelinquish freedom and fundamental human rights in the name of managing a public health crisis.\u201d\u00a0Malone himself first gained widespread attention for questioning the safety of Covid-19 shots and spreading conspiracy theories on Joe Rogan\u2019s podcast.<\/p>\n

Monoclonal antibody shots are a safe and effective<\/a> way to protect babies from RSV, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The group recommends<\/a> babies younger than eight months receive a monoclonal antibody product if their birthing parent didn\u2019t recieve the vaccine during pregnancy.<\/p>\n

Is a statin drug right for you?<\/p>\n

As STAT\u2019s Liz Cooney puts it, answering this question involves a math problem with life-and-death consequences. As you might remember, a new model to estimate one\u2019s risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease won raves in late 2023 for drawing on a larger, more diverse population than its predecessors. But it didn\u2019t make the math any easier \u2014 along with praise came predictions<\/a> last year<\/a> that 40% of U.S. adults might no longer qualify for statins, widely prescribed pills that fight artery-clogging cholesterol.<\/p>\n

Equations estimating risk always come first, but thresholds are the next step to establish who might benefit from treatment. Determining a threshold that balances benefit with risk is why medical organizations have yet to issue guidelines based on the new equations, Liz explains. But a research letter published yesterday in JAMA Cardiology reveals what different thresholds would look like. Read more<\/a> from Liz on what they found.<\/p>\n

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

At least 600 CDC employees are getting final termination notices, union says, AP<\/a><\/p>\n

First Opinion: Congress must continue to support the VA\u2019s research into psychedelics for PTSD, STAT<\/a><\/p>\n

WeightWatchers bets on community driving growth in the GLP-1 era, Bloomberg<\/a><\/p>\n

First Opinion: The trauma of illness can last long after the body has healed, STAT<\/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":100258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[97,252,243],"class_list":{"0":"post-100257","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-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}