Drug prices, MPOX, extreme heat, animal testing

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Thursday was my two-year STAT anniversary. I can't believe I've been here this long!

As a gift for this occasion, the STAT team has created a special code for you: until the end of the weekend, use the code BRITTANY30 to get 30% off your first year of STAT+ (that's so cool!).

Now for a big thing that I knew absolutely nothing about before joining STAT: Medicare drug price negotiations under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Medicare announces its negotiated drug prices

Yesterday was a big day in the world of pharmaceuticals and health policy: Medicare released the prices of the first ten drugs it examined under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The drugs include drugs for blood clots, diabetes, heart failure and arthritis.

Our DC office has been busy bringing you STAT+ reporting:

• Drugs under negotiation included Januvia, Entresto and Enbrel, each reduced by more than 30% from their 2021 list prices. But that doesn't mean seniors will see a 30% reduction in their prices. For all the details, read Rachel Cohrs Zhang's story.

• President Biden tweeted a graphic showing how much Medicare saved through negotiations compared to the list price of the drugs. But Rachel tells us the president is exaggerating: Medicare doesn't pay the list price and its current prices are secret.

• Speaking of bragging rights, who gets them? John Wilkerson and Rachel (who was busy yesterday) tell us how Harris and Trump negotiate the deals.

Animals have solved health problems, humans have not

STAT's Nicholas St. Fleur conducts a fascinating Q&A with cardiologist and evolutionary biologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, who approaches medicine from a “zoobiquitous” perspective: She looks at intractable human medical problems and asks whether animals have already solved those problems in ways that the human body has not.

“[Evolution] is research and development on the highest steroid dose ever,” said Natterson-Horowitz.

She cited as an example how many women stop breastfeeding because of a painful infection called mastitis. She reached out to dairy experts to learn how they solved this problem in cows. “There are 100 times more scientific studies on preventing mastitis in cows than in women,” she told Nick.

Read on to learn more about this new perspective on medicine, including whether giraffes are a cure for heart failure or elephants are a cancer resistance tool, and why human pride keeps us from investigating these potential cures.

The good, the bad and the not so good mpox news

• The bad: Swedish authorities have announced that a person who recently visited the area of ​​Africa where the recently declared public health emergency over Mpox is in effect has been infected with a clade I version of the virus. This is the first reported case of clade I outside the African continent. U.S. authorities have previously warned doctors to be alert for cases of Mpox in people who have recently traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo or nearby countries.
• The not so great: Jason Mast of STAT explains that a smallpox antiviral drug that authorities hoped would be effective against smallpox is no better than a placebo. The drug tecovirimat, approved by the FDA in 2018 as TPOXX, was part of an NIH co-sponsored trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Mpox is endemic. People infected with Mpox who were treated in the hospital did not respond to tecovirimat any faster than they did to a placebo—but in both groups, the death rate was less than half the average, suggesting that hospital treatment alone helped.
• The good: Helen Branswell also brings us a Q&A with the CEO of Bavarian Nordic, the maker of the MPOX vaccine Jynneos, about the company's vaccine inventory. Since the 2022 MPOX outbreak, the manufacturer has ramped up its production capacity and says it can deliver millions of vaccines next year – but this depends on orders, of which it currently has only one.

Follow STAT’s mpox coverage here.

Summertime and life is not easy

Summer heat poses a major problem for people with disabilities – often in ways that are not obvious to non-disabled people.

“When you wear a prosthetic, the rest of the limb is encased in a sealed, airtight material,” says David Gissen, an amputee. “You don't wrap your arms or legs in plastic when it's hot outside. But as an amputee, you wear a leg this way.”

Patty Glatfelter, a long-time triathlon competitor, saw her relationship with the outdoors change when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a disease that affects the body's ability to send signals through nerves, which is worse when temperatures exceed 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

She has to know her limits. On a recent trip to Santa Fe, NM, “we were just walking down the street, waiting at a light, and I felt myself getting weaker, so I looked for a shady spot,” she said. “And then, all of a sudden, my legs just gave out and I fell to the sidewalk.”

Read more from STAT's Timmy Broderick about the tangible and harsh effects the heat is having on people.

Bratwurst summer is coming to an end, venison sausage autumn is coming (and with it new risks)

I grew up in an area where some — but not all — kids were taken out of school at the start of deer hunting season. Who isn't jealous when they can skip school to do something fun with the family? A new study in JAMA Network Open examines shootings at the start of deer hunting season in rural counties to better understand the link between gun prevalence and gun violence — and the results may be surprising.

The Gun Violence Archive analysis, which mapped shootings to the weeks before and after the start of deer hunting season in each of the 854 counties, found that there was a statistically significant increase in shootings in the first and second weeks after the start of deer hunting season, which persisted even when hunting accidents were excluded.

Because the increase in shootings was not due to hunting accidents and was more pronounced with handguns than with the long guns commonly used for hunting, the authors concluded that gun violence was due not only to the number of guns in a given place or population, but also to the increasing influx of guns into public and private spaces.

How people with disabilities are excluded from clinical trials

Earlier this week, the National Council on Disability released a report describing how several federal agencies implicitly and explicitly exclude people with disabilities from clinical trials. For example, 90% of people with Down syndrome also have Alzheimer's disease, but are routinely excluded from drug trials.

“How can this population group benefit from these potentially life-changing treatments if they are excluded from the trials? And how can one know how effective and safe these therapeutics are for this population group – even though they are among the most affected population groups? Exclusion is too high a price to pay,” said NCD Vice-Chair Emily Voorde in a press release.

Read more from STAT's Timmy Broderick, including the Council's proposed solutions to the problem.

What we read

• An alternative to the Pap smear is available here, no speculum required, New York Times
• Most black hospitals in the South have long been closed, and their impact is still being felt, KFF Health News
• Lykos Therapeutics lays off 75% of its staff after FDA rejects MDMA-assisted therapy, STAT
• Running the perfect cooling center is harder than it looks, Bloomberg
• The fight against DEI programs shifts to health care, Wall Street Journal
• Gilead must be held accountable for the damage caused by patent hopping in an HIV treatment, STAT