SUMMIT

STAT Summit, Day 1

STAT

The first day of the STAT Summit did not disappoint. We had biotech’s biggest stars, the perils and promise of AI, and moving anecdotes from patients. Here are a few snippets of the day’s action.

• FDA heads sound off: In this extremely juicy panel, former Food and Drug Administration commissioners offered sharp criticisms of the current health regime and candid reflections about their own time at the helm. No agency was spared. As Rob Califf opined, “DOGE will go down as one of the biggest disasters in American history.” Read more from STAT’s Chelsea Cirruzzo.
• Whoop! (There it is): Whoop built its reputation as a wearable company mainly used by young, fit consumers. That may soon change. Whoop’s newly appointed Chief Medical Officer Ami Bhatt spoke about the company’s recent acceptance into Medicare’s ACCESS program, which would make their wearables available at no cost to many traditional Medicare patients ages 65 and up. What else did Bhatt say about AI and wearables? Read more from STAT’s Katie Palmer.

RESEARCH

Ovaries don’t go gentle into that postmenopausal night

Ovaries stop having a clear function relatively early on in life. For decades, women carry around an obsolescing organ — but is nothing truly all ovaries do after menopause? New research from Northwestern University suggests the answer is no. In a study of healthy ovaries from 28 women aged 50 to close to 80, published on Wednesday in Aging Cell, researchers found that there were hundreds of proteins in the ovaries evolving in the decades after menopause.

“It wasn't that there was just a cluster of proteins that are being turned on and they're staying constant; we actually saw quite dynamic changes that were happening across this period of time,” said Francesca Duncan, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the study’s corresponding author. As they age, the ovaries' tissue changes, showing increased inflammation as well as higher concentration of proteins associated with ovarian cancer. This doesn’t mean all aging ovaries will develop ovarian cancer, though it does raise the potential question “of whether or not at a certain point it actually could be beneficial to take your ovaries out,” said Duncan.

ONE BIG NUMBER

40%

Forty percent of high school students in the United States reported binge eating in the last month, according to a new government survey.

It’s the first time the biennial survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has asked about binge eating, and the first data on disordered eating collected by the Youth Risk Behavior Survey in a decade. The high rates were striking, especially among young people of color.

Digging into the crosstabs, the survey found that binge eating was more prevalent among female than male students (19% versus 16%). It was also more common among Black (19%), Hispanic (20%), and multiracial (20%) students compared to white (15%) and Middle Eastern or North African students (10%).

Read more from STAT’s Sarah Todd about this striking survey.