Mpox virus particles. Via CDC/ National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
(NEW YORK) — Mpox cases are on the rise in the U.S., increasing to almost double what they were at the same time last year, according to new CDC data.
There is a national year-to-date estimate of 511 cases as of mid-March, compared to 287 cases during the same period last year. New York City has been dealing with over 100 cases so far this year, whereas last year, the city only had 30.
Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is a disease that is rarely fatal, and its symptoms are similar to smallpox but milder, according to the CDC.
While historically found in central and west Africa, cases began popping up in the U.S. in May 2022. Since then, over 32,000 cases have been reported, as well as 58 deaths in the U.S., according to the CDC. The outbreak led the Biden administration to declare a public health emergency in 2022, and the outbreak was contained largely due to vaccination uptake in high-risk groups.
“Our fight against mpox relies heavily on our collective action to get vaccinated, especially in high-risk scenarios. The increase in cases is a stark reminder of the virus’s presence and the ongoing need for vigilance and preventive measures,” said Dr. John Brownstein, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
Public health experts say the mpox virus does not discriminate. It will spread between any two people. However, gay and bisexual men and certain other groups have a higher risk because the virus started spreading in this community first. The mpox virus — characterized by a painful rash and deep lesion — primarily spreads via skin-to-skin contact..
The Jynneos vaccine is recommended for those at high risk of infection, including those who have been exposed to someone with mpox, according to the CDC. Others eligible for the shot are those who identify as gay, bisexual, or a man who has sex with other men who have had more than one sexual partner or been diagnosed with more than one sexually transmitted disease in the past six months. Those with HIV or other immune-compromising conditions are also eligible.
The vaccine consists of two doses and may be given intradermally or between the top layers of your skin. There are currently no recommendations for an annual booster. Locations offering the vaccine can be found on the CDC website.
Mpox typically spreads through intimate and close contact with a person who is infected with the monkeypox virus, including via sex, kissing, or prolonged face-to-face interactions, according to the CDC. One of the most common signs of infection is a rash on the hands, feet, chest, face, mouth, or near the genitals. Other symptoms mirror those of respiratory illnesses, including fever, chills, exhaustion, and headache.
(NEW YORK) — Videos and images of the Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore have become ubiquitous in the past few days and may cause strong emotions in some – but mental health professionals say there are some things you can do to help protect your mental health and cope with this tragedy in a healthy way.
“People can be vicariously traumatized from watching videos of disasters over and over again, especially kids and adolescents,” states Dr. George Everly, an associate professor of psychiatry and adjunct professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University.
For some people, witnessing an event that is particularly rare or out of the ordinary can be especially traumatizing, and can lead to conflicting messaging from different parts of the brain- such as the limbic system, which deals with memory and emotions like fear and anxiety, versus the pre-frontal cortex, an area that processes facts and logic.
“Over time, the human brain gets use to everyday threats, but when something novel and spectacular like this happens, it can go into survival mode, which is a protective mechanism,” Everly said. “But it’s important to slow down and look at the facts- let your brain see the numbers that show that this event, while spectacular and very tragic, is also exceedingly rare.”
For example, experts say it can be helpful to understand the statistics. From 1960 to 2015, there were only 35 bridge collapses in the entire world, leading to 342 deaths, as compared to the 3700 people that are killed daily in car crashes around the world, according to 2018 reports from the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure and the World Health Organization.
“Also, try to resist the urge to look for someone to blame,” Everly said. “That is the brain trying to make sense out of something that, right now, doesn’t make sense, but ultimately only accentuates pessimism and doesn’t help us regain any control.”
Putting the bridge collapse into context for children and adolescents is also important, as they “might catastrophize the event in ways such as believing they must happen all the time, or that bad things might happen to them or their parents,” says Dr. Jyoti Kanwar, a psychiatrist with the University of Maryland Medical Center and assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Decreasing their exposure to the images and videos by limiting screen time, and talking openly with kids about the facts of the disaster, are important first steps. Kanwar also recommends that parents show “comfort, support, and demonstrate resilience in the face of tough situations by going through your daily routine.”
The same advice holds true for adults who may be tempted to re-watch the tragic video and worry about bridges in their own communities: try to limit your screen time, review the facts and stick to your daily routines as much as possible, experts say.
If feelings of worry or anxiety are starting to impact wellness or daily functioning, Kanwar recommends talking with someone supportive about your fears and concerns.
“If you already have anxiety, talk with a psychotherapist to learn more strategies like exposure response prevention, cognitive behavioral therapy, developing mindfulness and being grateful for all the wonderful things in life despite this catastrophic event,” Kanwar said.
Everly adds, “Don’t surrender your happiness or your wellbeing to an event that is especially tragic, but remarkably rare.”
Dr. Julie Kollar MD, MPH is the Chief Resident of the Johns Hopkins General Preventive Medicine Residency Program, and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
Aedes aegypti mosquito, a known trasmitter of dengue. Photo via CDC
(SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico) — Puerto Rico has declared a public health emergency as the number of dengue fever cases continues to rise.
So far this year, there have been 549 cases reported with the plurality occurring in San Juan, according to the island’s health department. There has been a 140% increase this year in cases from Jan. 1 to March 21, compared to the same period last year, the department said.
“This year, dengue cases have exceeded historical figures,” Dr. Carlos Mellado López, the secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Health, said in a statement. “The teams have been working on the integrated plan for prevention and control in response to arbovirus and we are going to expand the implemented response. It is important to note that the increase in cases has not only been reflected in Puerto Rico, but we have seen it throughout the region of the Americas.”
The public health emergency order will remain in place for 90 days.
The department says its response will include early detection, epidemiological surveillance and providing educational material on dengue. Dr. Melissa Marzán, an epidemiologist with the health department, also emphasized the importance of collaboration with municipalities.
“Municipal leaders have played a crucial role alongside the Department of Health, recognizing the impact that dengue has on population,” Marzán said. “We are deeply grateful for your support and we urge you to empower your communities so that they can carry out cleaning efforts around the home and thus eliminate mosquito breeding grounds.”
Dengue viruses are spread through bites from infected Aedes species mosquitoes, mostly found in tropical and subtropical regions of the world, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These mosquitoes are also responsible for spreading Zika and chikungunya viruses.
Dengue can be caused by dengue virus 1, 2, 3 or 4, the health agency said. A person can be infected multiple times over the course of their life.
About one in four people develop symptoms lasting two to seven days, but symptoms are usually mild and include fever, rash, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain, joint pain and bone pain.
Because symptoms are not specific to dengue, they’re often confused with other illnesses, according to the CDC.
There are no specific medicines to treat dengue aside from supportive care, which includes rest, drinking fluids and taking acetaminophen. The CDC warns not to take aspirin or ibuprofen, because it can trigger gastritis or bleeding.
However, about one in 20 will develop severe dengue, which can lead to shock (damage to the body’s organs), internal bleeding and even death, although deaths are rare, the CDC said.
A dengue vaccine is approved for children between ages 9 and 16 who have a laboratory-confirmed previous dengue virus infection and who live in areas where dengue is endemic, according to the CDC. It is available in Puerto Rico and is part of the territory’s routine childhood immunization schedule, the CDC said.
Aedes aegypti mosquito, a known trasmitter of dengue. Photo via CDC
(NEW YORK) — Puerto Rico has declared a public health emergency as the number of dengue fever cases continues to rise.
So far this year, there have been 549 cases reported with the plurality occurring in San Juan, according to the island’s health department. There has been a 140% increase this year in cases from Jan. 1 to March 21, compared to the same period last year, the department said.
“This year, dengue cases have exceeded historical figures,” Dr. Carlos Mellado López, the secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Health, said in a statement. “The teams have been working on the integrated plan for prevention and control in response to arbovirus and we are going to expand the implemented response. It is important to note that the increase in cases has not only been reflected in Puerto Rico, but we have seen it throughout the region of the Americas.”
The public health emergency order will remain in place for 90 days.
The department says its response will include early detection, epidemiological surveillance and providing educational material on dengue. Dr. Melissa Marzán, an epidemiologist with the health department, also emphasized the importance of collaboration with municipalities.
“Municipal leaders have played a crucial role alongside the Department of Health, recognizing the impact that dengue has on population,” Marzán said. “We are deeply grateful for your support and we urge you to empower your communities so that they can carry out cleaning efforts around the home and thus eliminate mosquito breeding grounds.”
Dengue viruses are spread through bites from infected Aedes species mosquitoes, mostly found in tropical and subtropical regions of the world, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These mosquitoes are also responsible for spreading Zika and chikungunya viruses.
Dengue can be caused by dengue virus 1, 2, 3 or 4, the health agency said. A person can be infected multiple times over the course of their life.
About one in four people develop symptoms lasting two to seven days, but symptoms are usually mild and include fever, rash, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain, joint pain and bone pain.
Because symptoms are not specific to dengue, they’re often confused with other illnesses, according to the CDC.
There are no specific medicines to treat dengue aside from supportive care, which includes rest, drinking fluids and taking acetaminophen. The CDC warns not to take aspirin or ibuprofen, because it can trigger gastritis or bleeding.
However, about one in 20 will develop severe dengue, which can lead to shock (damage to the body’s organs), internal bleeding and even death, although deaths are rare, the CDC said.
A dengue vaccine is approved for children between ages 9 and 16 who have a laboratory-confirmed previous dengue virus infection and who live in areas where dengue is endemic, according to the CDC. It is available in Puerto Rico and is part of the territory’s routine childhood immunization schedule, the CDC said.
It is a little-known mission within the United States Air Force that operates almost entirely underground, shrouded in secrecy – and is critical to national security.
Those tasked with the job are known as missileers. Their work requires them to be on alert 24/7, and they are responsible for the maintenance, security and operation of the United States’ arsenal of Minuteman III nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. Their mission is one component of the U.S. nuclear “triad,” which includes land, air and sea-based nuclear weapons.
The weapons are monitored by the missileers who operate in what are known as “launch control centers,” or LCCs, attached to three Air Force bases: F.E. Warren in Wyoming, Malmstrom in Montana and Minot in North Dakota. LCCs are essentially trailer-sized capsules positioned far beneath the earth’s surface, protected from threats and surveillance.
Now, a mysterious threat has potentially emerged, which has prompted investigations by the Air Force and Department of Defense. These latest investigations were launched after reports emerged of cancer among dozens of former missileers, who believe there is a potential link between their cancer diagnoses and their time spent working inside the LCCs.
Searching for possible connections
Retired Lt. Col. Jason Boswell was a missileer assigned to Malmstrom Air Force Base between 2006 and 2007. Eight years later, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Boswell’s discharge papers state that his cancer was considered a presumptive condition based on his time serving at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
But after joining the Wounded Warrior Project as a mentor to others, he was paired with a fellow missileer he knew from Malmstrom, Lt. Col. Daniel Sebeck, who was also suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Boswell told ABC News that he and Sebeck quickly began searching for other cancer diagnoses within the missileer community.
Boswell said they found through talking with friends that several other former missileers also said they had non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He says they immediately thought to themselves, “This is not insignificant, and we need to start voicing this and get people to listen.”
Sebeck began digging deeper.
According to a presentation he gave to his superiors in 2023, which ABC News has reviewed, in all, he initially documented nine cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma among hundreds of missileers he said he researched who had served in a 10-year span that overlapped Boswell and his service years. The median age of diagnosis was 42, according to Sebeck’s findings.
More than half of people are 65 or older when they are first diagnosed, according to the American Cancer Society.
The latest Air Force study
In 2001, the Air Force conducted a study looking into similar claims of a possible cancer link to work exposure among missileers serving at Malmstrom.
The findings, which were released in 2005, concluded Malmstrom was “environmentally safe.” Sebeck’s presentation, along with pressure from Montana Sen. Jon Tester, led the commander of the Air Force Global Strike Command, Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, to commission another medical study, called the “Missile Community Cancer Study.”
The commander ordered U.S. Air Force Medical Service researchers to undertake a comprehensive look at all aspects of missileers’ work, to include epidemiological and environmental surveys.
“Our leaders do not have to be a cancer survivor, like me, or be a parent of a child currently serving, like me, to take this issue incredibly seriously. That certainly helps with my motivation, but I want the leaders in the field to treat our people like they are their own son or daughter,” Bussiere said in a statement.
Sebeck’s findings also prompted a group of fellow missileers to start the Torchlight Initiative, which is asking those in the missileer community to self-report their cancer diagnoses. To date, they say they have received reports of 56 cases of various types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, with nearly a third of them involving former missileers from Malmstrom.
A possible carcinogen is found
The Air Force told ABC News its study is ongoing and “finding a causation is difficult.” But one year in, the Air Force says its study so far has led to the discovery of polychlorinated biphenols, or PCBs, on some surfaces within launch control centers at all three bases – Malmstrom, Minot and Warren.
Two samples at Malmstrom and two at Minot were found above the EPA limit, prompting cleanups within those LCCs.
“All sites were immediately closed for safety and a multidisciplinary team of experts was gathered to include medical, EPA, engineers, etc., to develop and institute cleanup and mitigation procedures and retesting. Mitigation efforts continue to ensure we keep our airmen and guardians safe,” the Air Force said in a statement.
The EPA lists PCBs as a “probable carcinogen,” although a direct link between PCBs and non-Hodgkin lymphoma has not been established. In the 1970s, the U.S. banned the production of PCBs, which were widely used in electronics manufacturing at the time.
The Department of Defense has expanded the study to now include investigating 14 additional types of cancer.
Is there a cancer link to missileer work exposure?
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, with more than 2 million people expected to be diagnosed this year, according to the American Cancer Society.
Still, Dr. William Dahut, ACS’s chief scientific officer, said it’s hard to know if any two people’s cancers are connected, and proving an official cancer cluster with non-Hodgkin lymphoma is even more difficult because of the complexity of the disease.
“Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is not really one disease. It’s a combination of diseases which can manifest in similar ways, but actually are very different biologically. Some you can live with for years without actually needing treatment,” Dahut said.
He continued, “Oftentimes the cancers in the cluster are not as closely related biologically as it’s seen at first blush.”
Air Force leaders in a recent virtual town hall said in addition to the ongoing environmental survey, the first of five epidemiological review phases has been completed. They said they have not found an increased rate of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in this initial batch of data.
However, the Air Force said there is data that “appears to show trends suggesting a potential increased incidence for breast and prostate cancer in the missile community,” while emphasizing that, “That picture will not be complete until we complete all phases of this Epidemiology Review.”
The results of the study aren’t expected until the summer at the earliest, officials said. Some missileers and their families who spoke with ABC News said they continue to hope those results will give them the answers they have been hoping for.
The loss of a missileer Jenny Holmes’ late husband Mark was a second-generation Air Force missileer. She tells ABC News of the grueling shifts, called “alerts,” her husband and his fellow missileers were required to work in the LCCs.
“Before we were married, even before I was in Montana with him, he did, I believe, 36-hour alerts,” Holmes said. “That’s one shift.”
“By the time we were married and he still had two and a half years left, they switched him to 24-hour alerts.”
Mark’s father, a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel named Dan Holmes, was a missileer in the 1970s. “I said to Mark that I thought the missile operations career field was the best non-rated career field in the Air Force,” he told ABC News.
But after hearing from Mark about how little had changed with the system and the then-grueling shifts that were required of him, something Dan hadn’t experienced, he says his opinion of the field has changed. “Had I known then what I know now, I would have told him, ‘don’t get anywhere near the missile business’ because my experience 40 years ago had absolutely no relevance to what Mark would experience,” he said.
But the worst experience was yet to come. In 2019, years after leaving active duty to become a reservist, Mark began to feel ill after a family vacation.
“He was jaundiced. And that’s what triggered me to call the doctor’s office immediately. Something is wrong,” Jenny Holmes said.
Mark was diagnosed with an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He endured several rounds of chemotherapy, which gave the Holmes family hope. But in January 2020, the cancer began to overwhelm his body.
“I remember him calling [from the hospital] and saying, ‘I just want to come home,’” Holmes said. “I was crying, and my two older kids were asking me, ‘What’s wrong? Is Daddy going to be OK?’ And I think that was the first time that I told them, ‘Daddy’s coming home and I think God is going to take him soon.’ And we just cried. That was really the first time that we just all broke down because I think we all envisioned a life without dad.”
Mark Holmes passed away in May of 2020, leaving behind Jenny and their three children.
A widow’s hope
Holmes has since tried twice unsuccessfully to receive survivors’ benefits from the Veterans Administration. Two of her husband’s doctors wrote letters saying his cancer was, in their opinion, caused by his exposure to carcinogens while working as a missileer, but proving the cancer was linked to his service has been difficult, she said.
A recent VA expansion of health care benefits does not specifically cover a veteran simply for serving as a missileer.
Holmes said she now hopes the Missile Community Cancer Study will finally yield the missing link she has been searching for, and hopes it will ultimately protect other missileers from suffering the same fate.
“If we can save one person, right? Then it would be worth it,” she said.
(LOS ANGELES) — A 10-month-old who was born at 26 weeks gestation has beaten the odds to return home from the hospital.
Ellyannah, the daughter of Cecia Juarez and Boris Lopez, was discharged from Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s in Los Angeles on March 15 after spending the first eight months of her life in the neonatal intensive care unit, two weeks in the pediatric intensive care unit and then another month on the pediatrics floor.
“There were doctors [and] nurses from three different units, and I just felt like Ellyannah’s exit couldn’t have been any other way, like, she deserved it,” Juarez told “Good Morning America” of her daughter’s homecoming. “This is what her life has been — a whole celebration of hope.”
For Juarez and Lopez, the journey to parenthood was a long and uncertain one. The couple, who live in Gardena, California, had been married for eight years and had been trying to conceive when Juarez said she learned she was pregnant at the end of 2022.
“I think our pregnancy was nothing short of, like, this miraculous event,” the 36-year-old mom said. “We scheduled an appointment for January of 2023 to seek help, but [on] Dec. 31, 2022, I took a pregnancy test, and I was pregnant without any help.”
At their 20-week appointment, however, Juarez and Lopez received concerning news.
“She was extremely small. She wasn’t getting the right nutrients, and her heart would stop beating at any moment … and because of that, the doctors thought that the best thing for me to do was to terminate my pregnancy,” Juarez recalled. “And at that moment, my husband and I … we just kind of looked at each other, we both agreed that that wasn’t an option.”
Juarez was admitted to the hospital in early May 2023 at 26 weeks gestation. She said doctors told her and Lopez that her blood pressure kept “spiking” and they were counseled to make the difficult decision to have their daughter delivered early.
Ellyannah, whom Juarez and Lopez affectionately call “Elly Belly,” was born May 19, 2023, weighing just 12 ounces, just a little bigger than an average soda can.
“Because her weight was so [low], the doctors believed that she weighed as much as a regular 22-weeker,” Juarez said.
What followed next was what Lopez described as “a roller coaster,” with Elly “extremely sick” and requiring intensive treatments for multiple health challenges, from needing a high-flow ventilator at 100% oxygen to doctors having to resuscitate her during one particularly harrowing period, as well as a collapsed lung.
“All I could think of is to have hope and to have faith and just believe that everything is in God’s hands,” Lopez said.
Despite the long odds, Ellyannah, her parents and her care team never gave up. After 10 months, Elly had recovered, grown and was soon healthy enough to go home.
“Things could have gone a different way and we’re just grateful,” Juarez said.
The mom of one added, “What she looks like now, I think everybody agrees that this isn’t anything short of a miracle.”
Juarez and Lopez said they want to share their daughter’s story to offer hope to other families who might also have a child in the NICU or hospital.
“If someone can look at her story and think … ‘Hey, if that little girl can make it, I think there’s hope,’ then I think it’s worth telling her story,” Juarez said. “There’s things that sound so crazy to the mind but we just have to hold on to our faith and believe that she’s here for a purpose.”
The first-time parents said they also want their “princess” to know she is stronger than she might realize and they’re always going to support her.
“There are no limits to what she’s capable of doing because if she can get through a NICU and she can graduate the NICU, then there is nothing that she can’t do in life,” Juarez said.
Speaking to his daughter, Lopez added, “The same way we were supporting [you] since day one, we’re going to support you every day of your life. We love you. We’re gonna be with you always.”
(BOSTON) — A surgical team said Thursday it has conducted the world’s first genetically edited pig kidney transplant into a living human.
During a four-hour procedure earlier this month, surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital connected the pig kidney’s blood vessels and ureter — the duct that carries urine from the kidney to the bladder — with those of 62-year-old Richard Slayman, a man living with end-stage kidney disease. He continues to recover well, the hospital says.
Massachusetts General said the procedure marks a “major milestone” in the pursuit of having organs more readily available for patients in need.
“The success of this transplant is the culmination of efforts by thousands of scientists and physicians over several decades,” Dr Tatsuo Kawai, a member of the surgical team, said in a release. “We are privileged to have played a significant role in this milestone. Our hope is that this transplant approach will offer a lifeline to millions of patients worldwide who are suffering from kidney failure.”
The patient, a resident of Weymouth — 16 miles southeast of Boston — has been living with Type 2 diabetes and hypertension for many years, the hospital said. He was on dialysis for many years before receiving a kidney transplant from a human deceased donor in December 2018 at Massachusetts General Hospital.
However, the kidney began to fail about five years later and Slayman was forced to resume dialysis in May 2023, which the hospital said affecting his quality of life.
“I saw [the procedure] not only as a way to help me, but a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive,” Slayman said in a statement.
During a press conference on Thursday morning, staff at Massachusetts General praised Slayman’s bravery and declared him a “hero”.
“This surgery, once deemed unimaginable, would not have been possible without his courage and his willingness to embark on a journey into uncharted medical territory,” Dr. Joren Madsen, director of the Mass General Transplant Center. said during the press conference.
The kidney was provided by eGenesis, a pharmaceutical company based in Cambridge, from a pig donor genetically-edited using CRISPR-Cas9 technology. The harmful pig genes were removed and certain human genes were added to improve its compatibility with humans and hopefully reduce rejection, according to the hospital.
Additionally, scientists inactivated retroviruses that are found in pigs to reduce the risk of infection in humans.
This is not the first time that an animal organ has been transplanted into a human patient.
Last year, researchers at NYU Langone Health in New York City conducted a two-month study of a genetically engineered pig kidney that had been transplanted into a 58-year-old man who had been declared brain dead, with his family’s consent. The team observed only mild rejection that required intensifying immunosuppression medication to reverse it.
Experts have expressed hope that being able to transfer animal organs into human patients will help the future of the organ supply.
However, the edited animal organs bring up questions if they will work long term, if they are safe and if it is ethical raising animals for human organ transplantation.
Currently, more than 103,000 men, women and children on the national transplant waiting list, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Someone is added to the transplant waiting list every eight minutes and 17 people die each day waiting for an organ transplant. Additionally, a September 2022 study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology in October 2020 found many donor kidneys in the U.S. are unnecessarily discarded.
If these type of transplants for kidneys prove to work and be safe — this could one day make dialysis unnecessary for the more than 500,000 people in the U.S. who require it to live.
(WASHINGTON) — The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has launched a bipartisan investigation into the U.S. organ transplant system — the latest scrutiny of the system following reports from the Senate and whistleblowers alleging its failures and mismanagement.
The move by the committee aims to “ensure successful implementation” of a bipartisan bill that was signed into law by President Joe Biden last September. The law was aimed at breaking up the monopoly system that allowed a private nonprofit — the United Network for Organ Sharing — to be the sole contractor managing the country’s Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) for over 40 years.
As part of the investigation, the committee sent letters — obtained first by ABC News — seeking a wide range of documents from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which is responsible for awarding the contract to manage the organ transplant system.
“The Committee writes to request information related to the United Network for Organ Sharing’s (UNOS) role as the sole contractor for the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network,” the letter to UNOS states.
The letter added, “According to HRSA statistics, approximately 17 Americans die everyday waiting for an organ transplant, and a disproportionate number of them are patients of color and/or rural Americans.”
The nation’s organ transplant system has received scrutiny in recent years amid government reports, congressional investigations and whistleblower accounts that revealed outdated and poor technological infrastructure, mismanagement from organ procurement organizations under UNOS, and errors that included allowing organs to go unused.
“Everybody knows the system has been broken for years, with heartbreaking consequences,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in September.
An investigation by the Senate Finance Committee launched in 2020 found that “serious errors in the procurement and transplant system are shockingly common.”
The committee found at the time that some of the errors included failure from organ procurement organizations to complete mandatory tests for things like blood types and errors in delivering organs.
“It’s reasonable to assume that many more errors are going unreported,” the Senate Finance Committee said in a report. “Why? Because filing official complaints with UNOS appears to accomplish zero productive oversight or reform.”
“Complaints went in, UNOS went quiet,” the Senate Finance Committee added.
The Senate Finance committee also found that “hundreds of people” developed diseases from transplanted organs, and that 70 people died between 2007 and 2015 from those illnesses.
The law that Biden signed is partially a result from that investigation as it pushed to break the monopoly that UNOS had as the sole contractor managing the OPTN.
The new investigation by the Committee on Energy and Commerce, according to the letters, aims to ensure “successful implementation” of the bill signed into law by Biden. The bill seeks to increase competition among contractors, gain additional funding and improve the OPTN.
In the letter to UNOS CEO Maureen McBride, the committee requested information on UNOS’ data and IT system, a breakdown of “an additional 35,000 deaths of waiting list candidates and transplant recipients,” and an explanation of their protocols and procedures to inform HRSA of “adverse events and potential patient safety concerns.”
The energy and commerce committee also requested a comprehensive account of all patient-safety complaints and allegations regarding the misuse of medical advice and “documentation of all compensation or other financial interests” from the UNOS executives and board of directors.
“UNOS has been the sole organization managing the OPTN, during which time concerning reports have emerged that the organ donation system has become unsafe, inequitable, self dealing, and retaliatory,” the letter states. “The Committee supports HRSA’s proposed reforms to make the contracting process truly competitive to help ensure patients are served by the best contractors for each function.”
A spokesperson for UNOS did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
In a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee in 2022, then-CEO of UNOS, Brian Shepard, defended the organization and said UNOS “is dedicated to continuously improving, monitoring and adapting.”
“From transportation to technology, from equity to system-wide improvements, by building on the successes of our national system and our community’s ongoing efforts on all fronts, we can come together around these shared goals,” Shepard said.
Following his testimony, Shepard called many of the allegations against UNOS “misperceptions” in a letter and said the Senate committee “misunderstood the role UNOS has been assigned by the government within the nation’s organ donation and transplant system.”
HRSA, which said it has taken steps to resolve some of the issues playing the organ transplant industry, also received a letter Wednesday for information and documents related to its contract with UNOS and how the agency plans to support multiple contracts with other companies.
“Errors and inefficiencies in OPTN management can have deadly consequences,” the letter states. “As HRSA proceeds through the solicitation and review process for new OPTN contracts, the Committee wants to know how the agency plans to structure, award, and exercise ongoing oversight of the contracts, and about its past experience contracting with UNOS.”
In a press release last month, HRSA said that for the first time in four-decades, the agency is “issuing requests for proposals in advance of executing multiple different contract awards.”
“In 2023, new legislation reformed the decades-old statute, enabling HRSA to fundamentally transform the system and make multiple different contract awards to access best-in-class vendors,” HRSA said.
Greg Segal, the CEO of Organize, a watchdog organization focused on patient safety, health equity, and anti-corruption in organ donation, told ABC News that reform on the organ transplant system is overdue.
“UNOS and OPOs represent a multi-billion dollar industry which has been abusing patients and taxpayers for decades,” Segal said.
(NEW YORK) — Life expectancy in the United States increased in 2022 after two years of decline, according to new final federal mortality data.
In a report published early Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), data showed life expectancy at birth was 77.5 years in 2022.
While life expectancy hasn’t reached pre-pandemic levels, it marked an increase of 1.1 years from 76.4 years in 2021.
In total, there were 3.27 million deaths recorded in the U.S. in 2022, about 184,374 fewer deaths than recorded in 2021.
The death rate in the U.S. decreased from 879.7 deaths per 100,000 in 2021 to 798.8 in 2022, a 9.2% drop.
The report found the top 10 leading causes of death stayed the same from 2021 to 2022 but some causes changed ranks. Heart disease and cancer remained the two leading causes of death, respectively.
COVID-19 fell to the fourth-leading cause of death in 2022 while unintentional injuries took the number three spot.
Additionally, the number of deaths for which the virus was the underlying cause of death dropped by 55.3% from 416,893 in 2021 to 186,552 in 2022.
All of the top 10 leading causes of death saw a drop in death rates except kidney disease — the ninth-leading cause — which increased by 1.5%, from 13.6 per 100,000 deaths in 2021 to 13.8 per 100,0000 deaths in 2022.
When broken down by sex, males and females saw roughly the same increase in life expectancy from 2021 to 2022 with males increasing by 1.3 years from 73.5 years to 74.8 years and females increasing by 0.9 years from 79.3 years to 80.2 years.
Every racial/ethnic group saw a decrease in death rates for both males and females. American Indian/Alaskan Native males had the highest death rates in 2022 but also saw the biggest drop in a year, decreasing 15.9% from 1,717.5 per 100,000 deaths to 1,444.1 per 100,000.
By age, death rates decreased for almost every age group except among children. The 1-4 age group saw death rates increase 12% from 25.0 deaths per 100,000 in 2021 to 28.0 per 100,000 deaths in 2022 and the 5-14 age group saw a 7% increase from 14.3 deaths per 100,000 in 2021 to 15.3 per 100,000 deaths in 2022.
A 2023 study found child and adolescent mortality rates had dropped due to decreases in childhood disease but have been increasing recently — primarily due to increases in homicides, accidental drug overdoses, car accidents and suicides between ages 10 and 19.
Meanwhile, infant mortality increased by 3.1% from 543.6 infant deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021 to 560.4 in 2022.
Congenital malformations were the leading cause of infant death in 2022 followed by low birth weight; sudden infant death syndrome; unintentional injuries; maternal complications; cord and placental complications; bacterial sepsis of newborn; respiratory distress of newborn; intrauterine hypoxia and birth asphyxia; and diseases of the circulatory system, respectively. Additionally, the report said the top 10 leading causes of death accounted for 65.2% of all infant deaths in the U.S. in 2022.
It comes as a separate NCHS report, also released on Thursday, found rates of drug overdose deaths — despite quadrupling over the last two decades, becoming one of the leading causes of injury death in the U.S. — did not significantly change from 2021 to 2022.
Between 2021 and 2022, the death rate involving synthetic opioids other than methadone — such as fentanyl — increased by 4.1% from 21.8 per 100,000 to 22.7 per 100,000, while rates for deaths involving heroin, natural and semisynthetic opioids and methadone declined.
(NEW YORK) — As the U.S. welcomes spring, it also means the arrival of allergy season, which affects millions of people.
High pollen levels can lead to a variety of symptoms including sneezing, runny nose, itchy and watery eyes, hives and coughing — and Americans may have to deal with them for much longer than in past years.
Typical allergy seasons are getting longer and more intense in North America because of climate change, research shows.
One 2020 study found that between 1990 and 2018, North American pollen seasons became 20 days longer on average with pollen concentrations increasing up to 21% during the same period.
Plants have more time to bloom and sprout leaves, releasing allergy-inducing pollen when there are longer periods of freeze-free days. With no mitigation, these trends will persist, further impacting respiratory health in the coming decades.
Parts of the Midwest, including the Ohio River Valley, are currently experiencing the earliest spring leaf out on record, two to three weeks earlier than average, according to the USA National Phenology Network.
Allergies occur when the immune system views food, medicine, things in the environment or something else as harmful and overreacts. The immune system then releases chemical compounds such as histamine, which causes those hallmark symptoms of allergies.
Reactions can range from mildly annoying symptoms to life-threatening reactions including anaphylactic shock, which occurs when blood pressure drops suddenly and the organs can’t get enough oxygen.
In 2021, approximately 81 million people in the U.S. were diagnosed with seasonal allergies, otherwise known as hay fever, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA).
However, the warming planet is likely making allergy seasons longer, as more carbon dioxide (CO2) is released into the air.
“We’ve known for a long time, several decades, that when you turn up the temperatures and increase the CO2 levels around plants, they tend to grow bigger and produce more pollen,” Dr. William Anderegg, an associate professor in the school of biological sciences at the University of Utah and the director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy, told ABC News.
Anderegg, a lead author on the 2020 study, explained that warmer temperatures drive more pollen from plants and higher pollen levels will mean more intense allergies and asthma.
Plants are incredibly sensitive to temperature and so warming really trigger plants to think, ‘Well, it’s time, it’s the growing season. Time to put out pollen.’ And that really kicks off our allergy seasons,” he said.
This has been seen in other events, including the bloom of the iconic cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C.
Peak bloom occurs when 70% of the cherry blossoms open. This year, the National Park Service announced the trees reached a near-record early peak bloom on Sunday, March 17.
The peak bloom date for the trees at the Tidal Basin is occurring earlier than it did in the past, shifting about a week earlier since 1921.
Higher pollen counts don’t just mean earlier seasons or more severe allergies.
Dr. Rita Kachru, chief of clinical immunology and allergy and associate professor in the department of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said earlier and more intense pollen seasons due to global warming mean people are dealing with a more diverse and intense variety of allergens, which can trigger a more persistent and severe inflammatory response.
She added that increased pollen and mold due to climate change can exacerbate the effects air pollutants have on certain individuals. Exposure to these pollutants can also make new groups sensitive to seasonal allergies.
Anderegg said the results from his study and others like it show that climate change is already affecting people’s health. His warning for those who suffer from seasonal allergies? Be prepared.
“Earlier and longer pollen seasons are something we need to prepare for,” he said. “This is something that climate change is going to keep driving in the coming years. So preparing for that earlier start is a good way to try to minimize some of the health impacts.”
