For people with diabetes, even a little activity every week is tied to better health
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Diverging Reports Breakdown
For people with diabetes, even a little activity every week is tied to better health
New analysis suggests study on GLP-1s and kids was potentially shaped by industry. A long Covid drug fails a clinical trial, but may get another shot. NIH-funded researchers produced 10,000 fewer scientific papers in 2024 than in 2013, a new analysis shows. The Trump administration has paused or canceled scores of NIH grants, and proposed cutting the agency’s budget significantly. The study comes as the political crisis in the U.S. could be a springboard for improvements in scientific research, Michael Lauer says, in an interview with STAT’s Anil Oza. The National Institutes of Health has a $1.2 billion budget for research and development, but has only about $1 billion for basic research, according to a report by the agency’s inspector general. The agency has no immediate comment on the study’s findings, which were published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics on Wednesday. The report was published by the journal’s editor-in-chief, Margaret Hoover.
Good morning! It’s Lev Facher, filling in for Theresa. Let’s get to today’s news.
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New analysis suggests study on GLP-1s and kids was potentially shaped by industry
When the American Academy of Pediatrics issued new guidelines in 2023 about treating obesity in children, it generated controversy for encouraging the use of GLP-1s, adopting a substantially more pro-medication tone than pediatric societies in other countries.
But now, an analysis shows that more than one-third of the people who developed the guidelines had undisclosed financial ties to pharmaceutical companies working to develop and manufacture the medications, my colleague Isabella Cueto writes. Ten of the 27 people on the guideline committees received a combined $74,000 from 2017 to 2023, the analysis showed, while six did not accept gifts and 11 are not physicians, meaning their contribution information wasn’t publicly available. (Some of the companies included in the analysis, however, didn’t end up becoming major players in the GLP-1 space.)
“At every level there are financial ties to these companies. And that, to my mind, is a different kind of conflict of interest than we are used to talking about,” said Laura Schmidt, a professor in the School of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and senior author of the paper. Read more here.
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A long Covid drug fails a clinical trial, but may get another shot
Miles Griffis/The Sick Times
People suffering from long Covid finally had reason for hope: A German biotech had repurposed a drug candidate initially meant for heart disease as a potential treatment and enrolled patients in a rare double-blind Phase 2 study. For some participants, the results were transformative. One patient told Betsy Ladyzhets of The Sick Times that thanks to the infusion, BC 007, “I have literally regained life.”
But last fall, the biotech company Berlin Cures abruptly announced the trial results were a failure, that it was out of money, and that it was done researching BC 007 as a treatment for long Covid. The story serves as a case study in the difficulty of developing long Covid therapies, as well as a window into the real-world impacts the hope and pain that clinical trials can inspire as they ramp up and then suddenly vanish. However, the drug may still have a future. Read more.
Study traces decline in NIH-funded basic research, even before Trump cuts
NIH-funded researchers produced 10,000 fewer scientific papers in 2024 than in 2013, according to a new analysis by Michael Lauer, who served as the scientific agency’s longtime deputy director until he retired early this year amid a rash of high-level departures.
The analysis comes as the Trump administration has paused or canceled scores of NIH grants, and proposed cutting the agency’s budget significantly. Doing so, experts warn, would further accelerate the declining pace of new research being published.
In an interview with STAT’s Anil Oza, Lauer reflected that U.S. dominance in scientific research arose during and after World War II, and that science’s current political crisis could be a springboard for improvements. “Maybe one way of thinking about this is that we might now have an opportunity to take advantage of adversity to get some great things,” he said. Read more here.
Biotech eyes a new class of narcolepsy drugs
Molly Ferguson for STAT
Several major biotech players are racing to develop a new class of narcolepsy drugs known as orexin receptor agonists, with potentially major ramifications not only for treating sleep disorders but also for a broader class of conditions that lead people to experience fatigue during the day, like Alzheimer’s and depression.
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Companies working on new narcolepsy treatments include Alkermes, Centessa Pharmaceuticals, and Takeda, my colleague Elaine Chen writes in a new story for STAT. In some cases, those companies’ executives have drawn parallels to the development of GLP-1s, in which medications studied for a narrow group end up having potential to improve the lives of a far broader population.
And while some have urged caution, other doctors see these medications as a potential turning point for narcolepsy. “It’s not that often in medicine in general that you can talk about a new therapy being truly transformative,” said Thomas Scammel, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School who consults for Takeda. Read more here.
ICE refusing medical care for disabled detainees, advocacy group says
People with disabilities are being “treated like dogs” at Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing centers, according to a recent report by Disability Rights California. The quote came from a detainee, who shouted the phrase in Spanish at a DRC official who was conducting a monitoring visit at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center north of Los Angeles. When DRC investigated the facility in 2019, it found grim conditions for people with disabilities.
The recent report said that one person with diabetes needed to take his medication twice per day — but only received it twice over the 10 days he had been detained. Another person sought help for panic attacks he was having from past traumatic events, but had not been evaluated despite residing in the detention center for over three weeks. Other detainees reported insufficient access to critical medications. ICE did not respond to STAT’s request for comment on the report.
This is not the only recent claim that ICE has struggled to meet the needs of disabled detainees. In the spring, ICE officials reportedly refused crucial asthma medications to Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University Ph.D. student. — O. Rose Broderick
Just move: For people with diabetes, even a little activity every week is tied to better health
People with diabetes who were just a little physically active in their leisure time reduced their risk of dying from any cause — and from cardiovascular disease in particular — compared to people who weren’t active at all, according to a new Annals of Internal Medicine study that followed more than 51,000 people for 21 years. That benefit showed up for people who met the American Diabetes Association’s recommended 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a week over at least three days, but it was also apparent for “weekend warriors” who hit 150 minutes in just two days, matching research in people without diabetes. “Insufficiently active” types whose activity fell short of the 150 minutes per week also fared better than those who did no exercise.
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Overall mortality was 21% lower for weekend warriors, 17% lower for regularly active people, and 10% lower for modestly active people compared to inactive people. For cardiovascular deaths, the rate was lower by 33% for weekend warriors, 19% for regulars, and 2% for less active people. A caveat: Diabetes and activity were self-reported.
“This should be reassuring given the elevated premature mortality risk, distinct physiology, and low physical activity adherence among adults with diabetes,” the authors write. — Elizabeth Cooney
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