May 9, 2025
rose-b-avatar-teal
Disability in Health Care Reporting Fellow
I had planned to make this box about a recent study that confirmed some birds form friendships. But as a lapsed Catholic who spends too much of her time watching college basketball (shout-out Xavier University), I am *thrilled* that we’re getting a pope who seemingly knows ball.

FALLOUT

Precious frozen spit

Adobe

The emotional, financial and scientific fallout from the Trump administration’s dismantling of the National Institutes of Health is starting to come into focus. 

Take the lede from Megan Molteni’s latest story: Jay Tischfield oversees one of the largest DNA banks in the world, replete with saliva samples to find genetic connections between substance use and mental health conditions like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. But now, after receiving an email from NIH last week, the five-year grant powering these freezers will end prematurely. Similar scenes of chaos have played out in labs across the country in recent months.

The economic tally for this chaos is startling. The Trump administration cancelled over $1.4 billion in NIH grants in just a single month, according to a separate report published Thursday. The figure is imperfect and is likely an undercount, but points to an unprecedented disruption to science in the U.S.

The two centers that saw the greatest cuts to their portfolio were the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the National Institute of Nursing Research. Many of the cancelled grants were training grants, which support early-career researchers and are sometimes intended to promote diversity in the sciences. STAT’s Anil Oza has the full write-up.

POLICY

FDA speedrunning AI adoption

The Food and Drug Administration plans to rapidly roll out a generative AI model to assist scientific reviews across the agency by the end of June. 

Calling it a “historic first,” FDA commissioner Marty Makary said Thursday that the AI tool will be deployed across all of the agency’s review offices, following the completion of pilot testing whose scope and rigor was not specified. It will be a high-stakes test of the technology’s use in vetting products used in the care of millions of Americans.

Experts have cautioned against adopting the technology too quickly for clinical purposes. The first meeting of FDA’s Digital Health Advisory Committee in November cited many of generative AI’s risks — including hallucinations, output variability, and privacy concerns — that should encourage careful testing before full adoption.

The announcement spurred many questions. What will be automated? How will federal officials ensure the model’s accuracy? My colleagues Casey Ross and Katie Palmer have the answer to these questions and more. 

ADVOCACY

24-hour Medicaid vigil

Hundreds of disability advocates, Medicaid users, families and politicians gathered outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday for a 24-hour vigil focused on a simple message: Protect Medicaid. 

The federal health program treats many of the country’s most vulnerable populations, including children and people with disabilities. Republicans have targeted the program for cuts, citing “waste, fraud, and abuse,” since President Trump took office, but Medicaid’s popularity with Americans has complicated their efforts.

The vigil featured dozens of speakers expounding upon why Medicaid was crucial for their health and well-being or for a loved one. Nicole Jorwic, chief program officer at Caring Across Generations, spoke about her brother, Chris, who is autistic and is on Medicaid. 

He told her, “Medicaid…is a life boat to people like me. Medicaid gives my life color. Today it meant time in the community with my niece, nephew and support worker. Every day it means freedom. We must protect Medicaid to protect that freedom and independence for all disabled people.” 

Research

Risk factors for childhood high blood pressure

What’s making children sick? Decades of research have highlighted parental health as a key factor, but specific drivers are harder to pinpoint. A new study of 12,480 mothers links pre-pregnancy obesity, diabetes or high blood pressure during pregnancy to higher blood pressure in their offspring. Childhood high blood pressure can lead to bigger problems later on, including cardiovascular disease. 

Researchers found these three cardiometabolic risk factors — estimated to affect over half of pregnant people in the US — were associated with a 4.88 percentile point higher systolic blood pressure (the upper value in a reading) and 1.90 percentile point higher diastolic blood pressure in their children, respectively. Some associations were stronger in babies assigned female at birth, and in Black mother-baby pairs. Other studies have reached similar conclusions, reinforcing the importance of the in-utero environment during pregnancy in shaping well-being over the lifespan. — Isabella Cueto 

PAIN RELIEF

Lyme research should prioritize quality of life, not infection origins

Researchers should focus first on improving the lives of people impaired by Lyme infection-associated chronic illness rather than investigating the still-unknown mechanism behind the persistent condition, a new report out Thursday urges. 

The recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine ask scientists to dive into available evidence so they can investigate treatments to ease the fatigue, pain, and brain fog that affect 10% to 20% of people after being infected by the tick-borne disease. There are no validated treatments that manage or cure these symptoms, which resemble what people with long Covid and ME/CFS also describe.

The researchers suggest coordinating new studies of long Covid and ME/CFS to define tools and metrics; creating biobanks and patient registries; and building a data coordinating center.

“People living with this condition deserve to have information that allows them to both make informed decisions about their own health and to have safe and effective treatments available to them,” Kent Kester, chair of the report’s writing committee, said in a statement. — Liz Cooney 

 

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What we're reading

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  • Democrats urge Republicans to target Medicare Advantage ‘upcoding’ instead of cutting Medicaid,