Testosterone therapy, wildfire smoke, Duchenne: Morning Rounds
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Greetings from Brooklyn, where the wildfire smoke is so thick you can chew it. Stay safe, everyone.
A new idea for treating Duchenne muscular dystrophy divides experts
Take a hike, viral vectors. A small California startup has burst onto the rare disease scene in the last year, claiming it may be able to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy using a novel method: ultrasound.
Deploying ultrasound to guide genes into certain tissues is an old idea — researchers have explored using it to deliver chemotherapy into tumors — but it is generally seen as not powerful enough to do this kind of work. Sonothera claims to have cracked the challenge.
The startup claims its ultrasound technology can deliver extraordinary amounts of full-sized dystrophin to the muscles of monkeys. The monkey’s calves had increased 290%, nearly four times the amount of human dystrophin as seen in healthy humans.
Are these findings about monkeys’ calves trustworthy? Is this a key step toward a cure for this fatal muscle-wasting disease? As always, it depends. STAT’s Jason Mast has the readout, including reactions from skeptical researchers.
Hormones for me, not for thee
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday that U.S. service members will undergo testosterone deficiency screenings with their annual physical exams once they turn 30.
The policy is the latest example of the Trump administration embracing testosterone replacement therapy for men and uplifting the hormone more broadly as a mark of masculinity and health. Testosterone replacement therapy has boomed in recent years as health influencers and online clinics have touted its benefits as a miracle drug well beyond what current evidence suggests. STAT’s Annalisa Merelli talked with medical experts to get reactions about this government-sanctioned testosterone replacement therapy.
Notably, Hegseth made no mention of transgender people, many of whom take the same hormone medication. The Trump administration banned trans people from the military last summer and has pulled pretty much every bureaucratic lever in its arsenal to restrict trans people’s access to hormones, which can often be lifesaving. Testosterone is testosterone is testosterone, so it’s worth asking: Why is a prescription for the same medication disqualifying among some, while essential to the “maximum psychological and mental readiness” of everyone else?
Brain implant restores touch, movement to man with quadriplegia
In 2020, Keith Thomas had a gnarly diving accident in a pool in Montauk, N.Y. It left him unable to feel or move below his neck. On Tuesday, I spent an hour with him on Zoom as he excitedly talked with hands while discussing his Malshipoo, Bow.
What changed?
Thomas participated in an experimental study that tried to restore movement and sensation in a person’s hand and arm using a brain-computer interface and a spinal cord stimulator. It worked and two years after the study finished, Thomas has retained much of the gains seen in the lab, as a Nature Medicine report published Thursday details.
Could Thomas’ gains be a blueprint for the roughly 300,000 people with spinal cord injuries in the United States? Read more from my story.
The state of the skies
Every time I see pictures of a city choked by wildfire smoke, or I walk outside my apartment in Brooklyn only to be met with smothering heat and an airborne campfire, I have the same depressing thought: “This will be the coldest summer for the rest of my life.”
Wildfire smoke has blanketed the Midwest and the Eastern U.S. in the past few days. Multiple STATians sent me photos of hazy skies from their respective bureaus. The photo above is from STAT’s Emory Parker, who lives in Minneapolis, where the air quality reached extremely hazardous levels on Thursday. If you’re not familiar with how poor air quality can wreck your health, this excellent Isabella Cueto story remains true three years later.
Don’t go outside if you don’t have to. If you do, wear a mask.
Q&A: How to counsel LGBTQ youth as 988 revives hotline
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is in a bind.
Specialized LGBTQ+ youth services will return by the end of the year, but officials are having to confront a new reality in which services comply with the Trump administration’s executive order denying the existence of transgender and nonbinary identities in an attempt to make the gender binary official U.S. policy. Advocates and experts worry that if specialty services are altered to exclude transgender youth in some way, it will be worse than nothing at all.
To get a sense of how hotline operators may navigate these unique challenges, STAT’s Theresa Gaffney spoke with Alex Boyd, director of crisis intervention at the Trevor Project. Read more.
Senate GOP blocks measure to end pilot of AI prior authorization in Medicare
A Medicare pilot that uses artificial intelligence to approve or deny care will continue after a Senate vote failed along party lines on Thursday.
The Democratic-led measure would have stopped the Trump administration from employing prior authorization in original Medicare, where the practice is rarely allowed. The model, known as WISeR, is opposed by the American Medical Association and many seniors groups, including the AARP.
By law, prior authorization is only allowed in original Medicare for some outpatient services, certain medical equipment intended for home use, and non-emergency ambulance service. But that could change if Republicans get their way. Read more from STAT’s John Wilkerson.
What we’re reading
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
