The FDA has given emergency use authorization to bivalent COVID-19 boosters for US children ages 5 to 11 years that target the original SARS-CoV-2 virus and the BA.4 and BA.5 sublineages of the Omicron variant. Boosters from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech are included in the authorization, and the CDC is expected to quickly add its recommendation.
Long COVID causes prolonged suffering, has devastated the lives of tens of millions of people, and is wreaking havoc on health care systems and economies, and countries need to launch efforts immediately to tackle the crisis, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. A large study in Scotland found about 5% of COVID-19 patients have not recovered within six to 18 months, 42% have recovered only partially, and even people who were asymptomatic may experience long COVID symptoms.
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The US Preventive Services Task Force recommended that children ages 8 to 18 who are asymptomatic and have not been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder be screened for anxiety. The task force also recommended that children ages 12 to 18 be screened for major depressive disorder. The recommendations, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and on the task force website, said there was insufficient evidence to recommend for or against screening children and adolescents for suicide risk.
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Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates that about 63% of patients experiencing long COVID symptoms in the first two years of the pandemic were female. Risk for the symptoms appeared to be higher in patients who needed to be hospitalized, especially those admitted to the intensive care unit.
An intention-to-treat analysis found that there is an 18% reduction in risk of colorectal cancer and a nonsignificant reduction in CRC-related mortality among people who were invited to have a colonoscopy versus those who did not get an invitation, researchers reported in The New England Journal of Medicine. However, among people who went on to have a colonoscopy, the risk of cancer fell 31% and risk of death associated with CRC dropped 50%.
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About 36% of counties in the US are considered maternity care deserts, meaning they have no hospitals offering obstetric care and have no obstetric care provider, and more than 60% of those counties are located in rural America, according to a report from the March of Dimes. About 6.9 million US women reside in areas with no or little access to maternity care, including more than 2.2 million women of childbearing age, the report estimates.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is working with the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative on a new program that aims to protect members from falls in their homes. The program, which will evaluate members' home environments and provide repairs if needed, will be offered to members ages 45 and older across nine counties who are deemed at risk because of issues such as poor balance or vision, cancer, low bone density or history of falls.
Black women who use Medicare have less access to advanced mammographic technology, even in exams that occur at the same place, and have a 40% higher likelihood of death from breast cancer compared with white women, according to a study published in Radiology. Digital mammography use was 3.8 percentage points lower among Black women than white women in 2011 and 1.2 percentage points lower in 2016, suggesting slower adoption of more advanced technology in underserved areas and communities.
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A study involving 40 US states on fatal poisonings among children younger than 5 years old, presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference & Exhibition, found that 47.3% of poisoning deaths involved opioids, while 14.7% of poisoning deaths were related to over-the-counter pain, cold and allergy medications. Researchers also highlighted that 60.7% of poisoning deaths occurred in the child's home, and in 70.6% of those cases, the child was being supervised when the poisoning occurred.
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals' injectable RNA therapeutic Oxlumo, or lumasiran, has gained expanded approval from the FDA for use in lowering plasma oxalate and urinary oxalate levels in adults and children with primary hyperoxaluria type 1. The approval was based on late-stage clinical data that showed the drug substantially lowered plasma oxalate levels in patients with severe renal impairment and demonstrated promising tolerability and safety profile in patients with kidney failure, those receiving hemodialysis and those with compromised renal function.
The CMS is considering expanding dental benefits in Medicare and has sought comments on what types of services should be included. CMS Deputy Administrator Meena Seshamani said dental services under consideration would be "inextricably linked" to other covered medical procedures, and the agency also is looking at developing a system for reviewing requests for additional dental treatments that would improve outcomes of other medical care covered by Medicare.
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