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Researchers have come up with a less invasive way to collect amniotic stem cells — a development they say could reduce dangers for pregnant women and other pregnant individuals as well as fetuses and help researchers grow cells that can help children born with congenital conditions. Scientists use amniotic stem cells to treat congenital anomalies such as spina bifida and heart defects. (Blakemore, 7/26)

US regulators are investigating the death of an 8-year-old boy in Brazil who received Sarepta Therapeutics Inc.’s Elevidys. The death occurred on June 7, according to a statement from the US Food and Drug Administration, which did not specify where the boy lived. On Thursday, Sarepta’s partner, Roche Holding AG, which markets the treatment outside the US, said that a patient in Brazil recently died after being treated with Elevidys for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Brazilian authorities said that the death was unlikely to be due to the drug. (Smith and Langreth, 7/25)

Jack Welter didn’t feel sick when he agreed to take a new blood test that looks for multiple types of cancer. But, approaching 60, he thought it couldn’t hurt. To his surprise, the test came back positive. Welter then underwent multiple rounds of follow-up tests, and ultimately, doctors found cancer in his throat. The now 61-year-old Elkhart, Indiana, resident endured radiation and chemotherapy in 2023 and is now cancer-free. (Schencker, 7/26)

For over an hour, Jeff Vierstra lay still in Columbia University’s ALS clinic, as a doctor poked him ankle-to-throat with an electric needle. Sometimes, he wiggled it around in Vierstra’s skin. Sometimes, he asked Vierstra to flex a muscle. A computer tracked the results. Later, another doctor would read Vierstra’s future in the graphs it wrote, fate engraved in the curves of an electrical wave pattern. (Mast, 7/28)

Katie Duffy had already lost 50 pounds on Zepbound when she learned some unsettling news: Her drug-benefit plan would no longer cover the medication because of new, more favorable pricing for another drug, Wegovy. The acupuncturist was devastated. She had tried various methods to lose weight over the years including diet and exercise until one finally stuck—Eli Lilly’s leading weight-loss drug Zepbound. The 50-year-old is now on Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, but worries because it is less effective. Studies have shown Wegovy helps people lose less weight, on average, than Zepbound. (Loftus, 7/27)

The biggest buzz around GLP-1 drugs these days has nothing to do with weight loss. And that might lead to some problems for patients and insurers. Blockbuster treatments like Ozempic have been found to lower the risk of everything from Alzheimer's and addiction, to sleep apnea, seizures and bacterial infections. More potential uses keep surfacing. (Bettelheim and Goldman, 7/28)

A quarter-size device that tracks the rise and fall of sugar in your blood is the latest source of hope — and hype — in the growing buzz around wearable health technology. Continuous glucose monitors, small patches that provide 24-hour insight into concentrations of sugar in the blood, could be a tool for Americans to “take control over their own health,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently told federal lawmakers. “They can take responsibility,” Kennedy said. “They can begin to make good judgments about their diet, about their physical activity, about the way they live their lives.” (Aleccia, 7/26)