Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
The Little-Known Tinnitus Treatment No One Is Trying
About three years ago, a high-pitched "eeeeeeeee" sound started ringing in Linda Gray's ears. Sometimes, the ring would suddenly turn into a roar, sending Gray into panic mode. Her heart would speed up. She'd try to find a quiet room. "You're trying to escape it. It's like, 'Turn this off!' " she says. A lot of people experience ringing, roaring or buzzing, also known as tinnitus. It can be maddening. ... Doctors writing Thursday in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery found that about 1 in 10 U.S. adults reported experiencing tinnitus within the past year. And, surprisingly, very few of them talked with their doctors about one of the few methods known to help with it. (Bichell, 7/21)
Scientists in China plan to use the genome-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 in patients as early as next month, Nature reported on Thursday. If they go ahead, it would be the first time people would be injected with cells whose DNA has been altered by CRISPR. A US proposal to run a similar study received approval by a federal ethics and safety panel last month, but it faces months of additional regulatory hurdles before it can go ahead by the end of 2016 at the earliest. (Begley, 7/21)
But science journals face no such repercussions for marketing some decidedly rotten studies as 100 percent sound. The problem is this: Recent estimates suggest that between 20 percent and 36 percent of cell lines scientists use are contaminated or misidentified — passing off as human tissue cells that in fact come from pigs, rats, or mice, or in which the desired human cell is tainted with unknown others. But despite knowing about the issue for at least 35 years, the vast majority of journals have yet to put any kind of disclaimer on the thousands of studies affected. (Oransky and Marcus, 7/21)
State public health officials are voicing concern about a little-known, but potentially dangerous tick-borne disease. It's called Powassan virus: a rare but serious disease transmitted by the bite of a black legged tick, also known as a deer tick. The Department of Public Health says it's received reports of nine cases of the virus in Massachusetts since 2013. (Zimmerman, 7/21)
