Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
6-Year-Old Undergoes Hemispherotomy In Rare Brain Surgery
A 6-year-old girl with a rare neurological disease recently underwent a 10-hour surgery in California where half of her brain was disconnected in an effort to help cure her. ... The surgery was performed by Dr. Aaron Robison at Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, California. Robison told ABC 7 that "just disconnecting it [the brain] is enough to stop the disease completely and essentially, potentially cure it." (Hauari, 10/10)
More health and wellness news 鈥
The number of stroke deaths worldwide is set to climb 50% to nearly 10 million by 2050, with most cases occurring in low- and middle-income countries, according to a new wide-ranging report from the World Stroke Organization-Lancet Neurology Commission. (Chen, 10/9)
Adding an extra cup of unsweetened coffee each day was associated with a reduced risk of gaining weight over a four-year period,聽according to a study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on Oct. 1. The benefit, however, was canceled if a person added a teaspoon of sugar to the hot beverage. Adding "cream or non-dairy coffee whitener" did not have an effect on weight, the published report said. (McGorry, 10/10)
A growing number of AI tools are being used to predict everything from sepsis to strokes, with the hope of accelerating the delivery of life-saving care. But over time, new research suggests, these predictive models can become a victim of their own success 鈥 sending their performance into a nosedive and generating inaccurate, potentially harmful results. (Palmer, 10/10)
麻豆女优 Health News: Listen To The Latest '麻豆女优 Health News Minute'聽
This week on the 麻豆女优 Health News Minute: What happens in a small town when the only practicing physicians are ready to retire. Plus, the Biden administration wants to stop medical debt from dragging down your credit score. (10/10)
Also 鈥
United States gymnastics legend Mary Lou Retton has been hospitalized for more than a week after contracting 鈥渁 very rare form of pneumonia,鈥 her daughter said Tuesday. Retton鈥檚 daughter, McKenna Kelley, has launched a fundraising campaign to help pay for her mother鈥檚 medical expenses. In the description for the campaign, Kelley explains that her 鈥渁mazing mom鈥 is in the intensive care unit 鈥渇ighting for her life鈥 with no medical insurance. 鈥淲e ask that if you could help in any way, that 1) you PRAY! and 2) if you could help us with finances for the hospital bill. ANYTHING, absolutely anything, would be so helpful for my family and my mom. Thank y鈥檃ll so very much!鈥 (Carras, 10/10)
Florence Fisher, an adoptee who spent decades searching for her birth parents and then spent another half century fighting to open adoption records for millions of others, died on Oct. 1 in Brooklyn. She was 95. (Risen, 10/10)
Dorothy Hoffner, the centenarian who gained international adoration for skydiving at age 104 earlier this month, all while exhibiting an air of blas茅 disregard for the attention the feat brought her, died in her sleep overnight Sunday into Monday at her home in Chicago. (Medina, 10/10)
On bird flu 鈥
The U.S. Department of Agriculture detected traces of highly pathogenic bird flu in commercial poultry flocks in South Dakota and Utah on Friday, raising concerns about possible future outbreaks across the country. So far, virus detections in 328 commercial flocks and 516 backyard flocks in the U.S. have affected 58.97 million birds nationwide. Backyard flocks are residences that keep 1,000 or fewer birds, whereas commercial flocks exceed that amount, according to the USDA. (Dausch and Arredondo, 10/11)
The chicken may be getting an upgrade. In a scientific first, U.K. researchers have used gene editing technology to create poultry that's partially resistant to bird flu infection, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications. It鈥檚 no bionic chicken. But study authors say growing disease-resistant chickens in the lab is an important first step to giving farmers a tool to combat bird flu, which wiped out tens of millions of chickens amid an H5N1 outbreak over the past two years. (Rodriguez, 10/10)