About Covid-19
Persistent complement dysregulation with signs of thromboinflammation in active Long Covid “Comparing the blood of patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection with that of uninfected controls, Cervia-Hasler et al. found that patients experiencing Long COVID exhibited changes to blood serum proteins indicating activation of the immune system’s complement cascade, altered coagulation, and tissue injury... At the cellular level, Long Covid was linked to aggregates comprising monocytes and platelets. These findings provide a resource of potential biomarkers for diagnosis and may inform directions for treatments.”
About health insurance/insurers
Medicaid Enrollment and Unwinding Tracker “At least 15,755,000 Medicaid enrollees have been disenrolled as of January 22, 2024, based on the most current data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Overall, 33% of people with a completed renewal were disenrolled in reporting states while 67%, or 30.6 million enrollees, had their coverage renewed (one reporting state does not include data on renewed enrollees). Due to varying lags for when states report data, the data reported here undercount the actual number of disenrollments to date.
There is wide variation in disenrollment rates across reporting states, ranging from 61% in Texas to 13% in Maine and Oregon…
Across all states with available data, 71% of all people disenrolled had their coverage terminated for procedural reasons.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Healthgrades America's 50 Best Hospitals Latest ratings from Healthgrades.
Long-term care hospitals can't afford to treat their sickest Medicare patients, AHA says “The cutoff for an expensive LTCH case to qualify for extra reimbursement, known as the high-cost outlier policy’s “fixed-loss amount,” rose 55% from FY 2023’s $38,518 to FY 2024's $59,873. The hospital lobby wrote that it projects the cutoff to again increase by 17% in FY 2025 to $70,117—bringing an extra $54 million in losses to a subsector with total annual Medicare payments of $2.6 billion.”
About pharma
US FDA seeks 'boxed warning' for CAR-T cancer therapies “Last November, the U.S Food and Drug Administration said it had received reports of patients developing a type of T-cell blood cancer after being treated with CAR-T therapies.
The FDA said in its letters to the companies on Monday that since the approval, it had identified adverse events and clinical trial reports describing T-cell malignancies.”
Clinically Important Benefits and Harms of Monoclonal Antibodies Targeting Amyloid for the Treatment of Alzheimer Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis “We conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate clinically meaningful benefits and harms of monoclonal antibodies targeting amyloid in patients with Alzheimer dementia…
Although monoclonal antibodies targeting amyloid provide small benefits on cognitive and functional scales in patients with Alzheimer dementia, these improvements are far below the MCID [minimal clinically important difference] for each outcome and are accompanied by clinically meaningful harms.”
J&J agrees to resolve 42 U.S. states' talc investigations “Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday said it had reached a tentative settlement to resolve probes by U.S. states into whether it misled consumers about the safety of its talc products, which thousands of lawsuits claim can cause cancer.
The deal includes 42 states and Washington, D.C. The company tentatively agreed to pay about $700 million to settle the states' claims, according to the Wall Street Journal…
The company, which reported fourth-quarter results on Tuesday, still faces more than 50,000 lawsuits over talc, most by women with ovarian cancer. A minority of the cases involve people with mesothelioma, a type of cancer linked to asbestos. It recently settled some of the mesothelioma cases for an undisclosed amount but has maintained that its talc did not contain asbestos.”
About the public’s health
Biden administration reinforces reproductive health obligations for payers, providers “The actions address barriers to contraceptives and other reproductive services that have arisen since the Supreme Court's 2022 decision to reverse the 1973 Roe ruling, and, in some cases, will soon reach the same Supreme Court that struck down the landmark decision.”
About healthcare IT
Healthcare Data Breaches Continue to Impact Patients in New Year “In 2023, more than 540 organizations reported healthcare data breaches to HHS, impacting upwards of 112 million individuals.”
The article has examples of significant breaches.
Ethics and governance of artificial intelligence for health: Guidance on large multi-modal models[LLMs] “WHO is issuing this guidance to assist Member States in mapping the benefits and challenges associated with use of LMMs for health and in developing policies and practices for appropriate development, provision and use. The guidance includes recommendations for governance, within companies, by governments and through international collaboration, aligned with the guiding principles. The principles and recommendations, which account for the unique ways in which humans can use generative AI for health, are the basis of this guidance.”
About health technology
Harvard Teaching Hospital Seeks Retraction of Six Papers by Top Researchers “The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, is seeking to retract six studies and correct 31 other papers as part of a probe involving four of its senior cancer researchers and administrators.
More than 50 papers, including four co-authored by Chief Executive and President Dr. Laurie Glimcher, are part of a continuing review, according to Dr. Barrett Rollins, the cancer institute’s research-integrity officer. Some requests for retractions and corrections have already been sent to journals, he said. Others are being prepared. The institute has yet to determine whether misconduct occurred.”