Kenya reports second Ebola case

STAT Summit, Day 1

The first day of the STAT Summit featured biotech's biggest stars, discussions on the perils and promise of AI, and moving anecdotes from patients.

FDA heads sound off: Former Food and Drug Administration commissioners offered sharp criticisms of the current health regime and candid reflections about their own time at the helm. As Rob Califf opined, "DOGE will go down as one of the biggest disasters in American history."

Whoop! (There it is): Whoop built its reputation as a wearable company mainly used by young, fit consumers. That may soon change. Whoop's newly appointed Chief Medical Officer Ami Bhatt spoke about the company's recent acceptance into Medicare's ACCESS program, which would make their wearables available at no cost to many traditional Medicare patients ages 65 and up.

Ovaries don't go gentle into that postmenopausal night

Ovaries stop having a clear function relatively early on in life. For decades, women carry around an obsolescing organ — but is nothing truly all ovaries do after menopause? New research from Northwestern University suggests the answer is no. In a study of healthy ovaries from 28 women aged 50 to close to 80, published in Aging Cell, researchers found that there were hundreds of proteins in the ovaries evolving in the decades after menopause.

"It wasn't that there was just a cluster of proteins that are being turned on and they're staying constant; we actually saw quite dynamic changes that were happening across this period of time," said Francesca Duncan, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the study's corresponding author. As they age, the ovaries' tissue changes, showing increased inflammation as well as higher concentration of proteins associated with ovarian cancer. This doesn't mean all aging ovaries will develop ovarian cancer, though it does raise the potential question "of whether or not at a certain point it actually could be beneficial to take your ovaries out," said Duncan.

High rates of binge eating among U.S. high school students

Forty percent of high school students in the United States reported binge eating in the last month, according to a new government survey. It's the first time the biennial survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has asked about binge eating, and the first data on disordered eating collected by the Youth Risk Behavior Survey in a decade.

The high rates were striking, especially among young people of color. The survey found that binge eating was more prevalent among female than male students (19% versus 16%). It was also more common among Black (19%), Hispanic (20%), and multiracial (20%) students compared to white (15%) and Middle Eastern or North African students (10%).

The maddening journey to not share patient data with Epic

Alex Rosenblat had a goal: stop her Ohio hospital from sharing her health data with Epic's gigantic health network.

But when she logged into her MyChart account, there was no button to easily opt out. The simple-seeming request turned into an arduous task that would require scores of emails, multiple phone calls with Epic employees, a flight to Las Vegas, and a software update. That was just one of three months-long journeys Rosenblat embarked on last year to keep her hospital from sharing her personal health data with outside vendors.

Kenya reports second Ebola case

Kenya has reported a second case of Ebola involving a 39-year-old man who is related to the country's first confirmed case. The individual was already in quarantine when symptoms manifested, as outlined by the Kenyan Ministry of Health.

A representative from the World Health Organization stated on Wednesday that, despite the emergence of these two cases, there is currently no evidence indicating an Ebola outbreak in Kenya. The initial patient, a Kenyan citizen, contracted the virus while residing in Congo and succumbed to the illness earlier this month. The Kenyan Ministry of Health has identified 128 individuals who had contact with this patient; of those, 108 remain in quarantine, 5 have exited the country, and 15 have yet to be located. Efforts are now underway to trace the contacts of the second patient.

The Ebola situation in Congo remains critical, with authorities documenting over 4,000 deaths and 9,000 cases amid one of the fastest-growing outbreaks on record.