{"id":464319,"date":"2026-02-12T14:20:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T14:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/464319\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T14:20:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T14:20:06","slug":"pregnancy-and-antidepressants-moderna-morning-rounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/464319\/","title":{"rendered":"Pregnancy and antidepressants, Moderna: 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. Sorry to keep talking about the weather, but I got outside in mid-thirties weather yesterday and I felt more alive than I have\u00a0in weeks. Is it time for the first fake spring yet?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The latest on Moderna\u2019s rejected vaccine app<\/p>\n

In case you missed it, another Lizzy Lawrence scoop came in yesterday: Top FDA official Vinay Prasad overruled the agency\u2019s reviewers when he refused to accept<\/a> Moderna\u2019s application for a new flu vaccine. Three agency officials familiar with the matter told Lizzy that a\u00a0team of career scientists was ready to review Moderna\u2019s application.<\/p>\n

A senior FDA official said\u00a0that if the company comes back to the agency, \u201cmaybe even show[ing] some humility,\u201d then perhaps the decision would change. Read Lizzy\u2019s story<\/a>, even if you read it early yesterday when she first published. She\u2019s added more good details since then.<\/p>\n

Gotta catch \u2019em all (HHS posters?)<\/p>\n

HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gathered supporters at agency headquarters in downtown D.C. yesterday to celebrate the first MAHA Super Bowl commercial. If you missed that spot, it features boxer Mike Tyson talking about obesity, which runs in his family, and how Americans need to \u201ceat real food.\u201d<\/p>\n

HHS has gone all-in on the \u201creal food\u201d idea: At yesterday\u2019s rally, poster boards balanced on every seat included the phrase alongside an image of a carrot, egg, apple, or a slab of salmon or beef, among other options. \u201cWe are putting the full weight of the American government behind one goal,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

The posters were a talking point at agency events last month, as attendees tried to figure out where to keep them during speeches (they make for very stiff chair-backs). Now they have become something else: cheerleading tools and, to some, collectibles. HHS staff stood near the stage on Tuesday, waving posters around and urging the crowd to join in as Kennedy, Tyson, and others spoke. Afterward, attendees poked around for a poster to take, or asked to swap the depicted food items.<\/p>\n

\u201cOoh, banana!\u201d one woman crooned. \u201cI already have that one,\u201d said another. An event goer who works in the dairy industry said her co-worker brought back a whole milk poster from the dietary guidelines launch. One special poster, in which Kennedy is pictured in black and white, with Tyson\u2019s signature face tattoo, was not up for grabs. \u2014 Isabella Cueto\u00a0<\/p>\n

This item also ran in D.C. Diagnosis<\/a>. <\/p>\n

New questions about lung cancer in \u2018never-smokers\u2019<\/p>\n

As the number of people who smoke has gone down over the decades, those who never smoked have begun to make up a greater proportion of lung cancer cases overall. STAT\u2019s Sharon Begley, who herself never smoked, wrote about this in 2021<\/a> just days before her own death from the disease. At the time, it was unclear whether the absolute number of lung cancer cases among never-smokers was increasing, even though the proportion clearly was.<\/p>\n

Five years later, there\u2019s still debate around those numbers. STAT\u2019s Andrew Joseph spoke with lung cancer biologist Deborah Caswell about the questions that remain. It\u2019s a really accessible conversation about the science surrounding the disease, including why women\u2019s risk is higher than men\u2019s and what it means for someone to present with \u201cnonspecific symptoms.\u201d I recommend giving it a read<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A growing fentanyl harm reduction move<\/p>\n

Over the last decade, there\u2019s been a rapid, organic shift among drug users away from injection and towards smoking. The change is a clear example of how people\u2019s behavior, no matter the context, can significantly affect their health outcomes. (Opting out of needles can practically eliminate a person\u2019s risk for skin wounds or certain infections, for example.)<\/p>\n

The shift has also revealed how, too often, public opinion and government policy are out of step with the basic realities of drug use epidemiology. \u201cMy favorite thing about smoking as overdose prevention is that smoking is a social experience,\u201d said Jim Duffy, the founder of Smoke Works, which distributes \u201cinjection alternatives\u201d like pipes. \u201cWe lose people when they\u2019re alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a> from STAT\u2019s Lev Facher on what changing behaviors mean for public health and addiction treatment. And to get an up-close look at how harm reduction works, watch the accompanying video<\/a>. Lev and Alex Hogan visited Duffy at the Smoke Works headquarters, then hiked into the New Hampshire woods with a local worker distributing supplies to folks in a remote homeless encampment.<\/p>\n

What happens when pregnant people discontinue antidepressants?<\/p>\n

People who discontinue antidepressants during pregnancy are almost twice as likely to have a mental health emergency as those who continue on their meds, according to a study abstract presented yesterday at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine\u2019s annual pregnancy meeting<\/a>. Those emergencies peaked in the first and ninth month of pregnancy, data from nearly 4,000 patients showed.<\/p>\n

Researchers analyzed a \u201cstate-based private insurance database\u201d and found that the majority of people who had prescriptions for SSRIs or SNRIs discontinued them during pregnancy. It\u2019s an important time for this research: a recent FDA panel on antidepressant use during pregnancy elevated skeptics<\/a> of the drugs, and officials have indicated that they\u2019re considering adding warning labels for pregnant people. \u201cTreatment for mental health conditions should not be withheld during pregnancy,\u201d the study authors concluded in the abstract.<\/p>\n

An uptick in rejections with little explanation<\/p>\n

At least 40 life sciences students have had their applications for the National Science Foundation\u2019s high-profile early-career fellowship program \u201creturned without review.\u201d Effectively, these applications have been rejected before outside experts got a chance to judge the scientific merit of their proposals.<\/p>\n

STAT\u2019s Jonathan Wosen writes about this disappointing phenomenon being tracked by Grant Witness and first reported by Eos. \u201cA lot of students are hearing all these things that are happening, but they may not be at the forefront of submitting large NSF or large NIH grants. They\u2019re getting a taste of it 1770906006,\u201d computational biologist and master\u2019s advisor Jill Wegrzyn told Jonathan. Read more<\/a> on how this experience might alter the course of some students\u2019 careers.<\/p>\n

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

Intersex Texans fear new law will force gender identities, Texas Tribune<\/a><\/p>\n

A Greek myth explains the biggest challenge facing oncologists like me, STAT<\/a><\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of mothers were flagged to police over flawed drug tests at childbirth, The Marshall Project<\/a><\/p>\n

WHO director-general calls plans for U.S.-funded vaccine trial \u2018unethical,\u2019\u00a0STAT<\/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":464320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[97,252],"class_list":{"0":"post-464319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464319","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=464319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}