Health

(NEW YORK) — When a recent federal report published last week showed routine childhood vaccination rates had fallen among kindergartners for the 2022-23 school year, public health experts were disheartened to see the drop.

However, there was one state that lagged behind the rest: Idaho.

For all four major vaccines — measles, mumps and rubella (MMR); diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP); poliovirus (polio) and varicella (chickenpox) — Idaho had the lowest percentage of kindergartners who met school requirements for vaccinations, all around 81% compared to a nationwide rate of 93%.

What’s more, Idaho was the state with the highest percentage of exemptions from one or more required vaccines at 12.1%. Comparatively, the rate of exemptions across the U.S. was about 3%.

“This is concerning not only at a state level but nationally, as well, because we’re not the only state experiencing this; we just appear to be experiencing it a little more than other states,” Dr. Bethaney Fehrenkamp, a clinical assistant immunologist at Idaho WWAMI — a partnership between the University of Washington School of Medicine and Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho — told ABC News.

Public health experts noted that clusters of unvaccinated or under-vaccinated children can lead to outbreaks of preventable diseases such as measles, which is exceptionally contagious and can lead to serious complications such as pneumonia, encephalitis — which is inflammation of the brain — and even death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In one case, between November 2022 and February 2023, a measles outbreak swept across several schools and day cares in central Ohio, infecting 85 children, 80 of whom were unvaccinated.

In Idaho, there was a measles outbreak last month that infected 10 people, according to the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare. Prior to that, there had been just two cases reported in Idaho in 20 years.

When you have an under-vaccinated population and a contagious disease, “it’ll spread and it’ll spread more easily,” Dr. Kevin Cleveland, an associate professor at the College of Pharmacy at Idaho State University, told ABC News.

The type of exemptions allowed also may pose a problem. All 50 states and Washington, D.C. allow exemptions for medical reasons while 45 states and D.C. grant exemptions on religious grounds, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

However, there are also 15 states that grant philosophical exemptions due to “personal, moral or other beliefs,” the NCSL says. This means that parents can ask for an exemption for their child for just about any reason.

Experts say there are a few reasons why rates might be low. One is access. Idaho is a state with 35 of its 44 counties being rural and 174 physicians per 100,000 people, which may make it hard for people to reach providers or schedule appointments.

Additionally, the rates may be an after-effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the hesitancy around COVID-19 vaccines may have inadvertently spilled into concerns about other vaccines.

“We’ve seen a slow but kind of steady increase in vaccine hesitancy but that was exasperated by COVID-19,” Fehrenkamp said. “While some of the decreased vaccination rates during the pandemic itself were probably likely due to access and availability and maybe a fear of bringing your child to a health care facility during a pandemic — potentially, like misinformation and some lack of trust as well as incomplete transparency has also just kind of exasperated that trust, and made it worse.”

Cleveland said people may also be experiencing vaccine fatigue after being recommended by health experts to get COVID-19 boosters and updated vaccines to help combat circulating variants at various times.

“Every time we talk about a vaccine, it goes back to COVID vaccine,” he said. “I think people are just a little tired. It’s like, ‘Oh, no, another vaccine.'”

Another reason may be that because these diseases have been circulating at low rates due to vaccines, people have forgotten how serious they were before the advent of vaccines.

For example, in the decade before the MMR vaccine became available, it was estimated that 48,000 people were hospitalized with measles each year and between 400 and 500 people died each year, according to the CDC.

“These diseases are really, really contagious and they’re really serious and I think potentially, we’ve forgotten how serious these diseases can be and we require a certain number of the population to be vaccinated in order to get that protection for those that can’t be vaccinated,” Fehrenkamp said. “We’ve previously eradicated these diseases in the U.S., which is why I think maybe, culturally we have forgotten how serious and how detrimental they can be.”

To try to increase these numbers, Fehrenkamp said it’s important for health care providers to have honest conversations with parents about why they’re hesitant or concerned about vaccines to try to assuage their fears.

“I want parents to choose to vaccinate their children, but I want them to feel really good about it and I want them to feel really informed about it and so we need to do a better job informing on vaccine safety,” she said.

At Idaho WWAMI, Fehrenkamp said they bring in students from Idaho that have links to underserved communities to help educate them with the hope they’ll go back and practice in those areas and fill a health care gap.

Cleveland, who specializes in immunization outreach to underserved populations in Idaho, said it’s also important to bring those vaccines into rural or underserved communities to make it easier for people to keep up with vaccine schedules.

“Taking the vaccines to the people, especially in the rural areas or even like workplaces or schools, we usually have really good success in vaccine uptake,” he said.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — There have been dozens of eye drops pulled off shelves in the past year due to bacterial and fungal contamination, with multiple warnings issued by the Food and Drug Administration.

Experts and advocates say one reason is likely that in-person faculty inspections slowed significantly during the pandemic, meaning there’s been less regulatory oversight. Now, however, federal regulators may be cracking down after some consumers reported serious health effects.

The latest warning alone included over two dozen eye drops from big name retailers such as CVS Health, Rite Aid, and Target.

FDA action on eye drop products seemingly started to ramp up following an initial warning by the agency back in February that warned of at least one death linked to products contaminated with bacteria.

The agency has also regained the ability to conduct more in-person inspections of manufacturing facilities, following a lull during the pandemic. In fact, the FDA was unable to complete more than 1,000 of its planned fiscal year 2020 inspections, according to the Government Accountability Office.

In the most recent case, the FDA found “insanitary conditions in the manufacturing facility and positive bacterial test results from environmental sampling of critical drug production areas in the facility,” according to the warning issued by the agency.

These inspections occur periodically to ensure the quality and safety of products – akin to a surprise food inspector at a restaurant.

“FDA has an algorithm that they use…kind of a risk-based model where they pick and choose the facilities that they inspect based on kind of the level of risk,” Erin Fox, the associate chief pharmacy officer at University of Utah Health, told ABC News.

“In general, it should happen like every three years on average, but some are inspected more frequently than others,” Fox added.

While the FDA is charged with regulating over the counter products, it has limited legal authority to issue a mandatory recall, often times leaving the decision whether or not eye drops are pulled from shelves to the manufacturers or retailers.

“The FDA can’t, in general, force any company to recall a product or a drug product, whether it’s OTC or prescription. That’s why, like, a lot of times when you see a recall, notice, you’ll see it’s a voluntary recall,” Fox said.

In fact, the federal agency can only issue mandatory recalls for a few kinds of products including infant formula, medical devices, food, tobacco products, electronic products, controlled substances, biological products and, more recently, cosmetics, according to an FDA spokesperson.

There are also instances where mandatory recalls can be issued for false marketing of product efficacy, according to Teresa Murray, a consumer watchdog with U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

“So conceivably, the manufacture could sell like a daily vitamin that contains some kind of bacteria and the FDA would not be able to do a mandatory recall. But if the label says that the vitamin will help you live 1000 years, then the FDA could do a recall for false marketing,” Murray said.

If a manufacturer or retailer won’t comply with a mandatory recall, some of the only recourse regulators like the FDA have at their disposal are civil penalties.

“There’s a process where they can go ahead and file a civil action, take a company to court and say, okay, you’re not going to comply, doggone it, we’re going to take you to court. But then, of course, that’s a long protracted process, and it costs, frankly, money and resources that these regulators don’t have,” Murray said.

Along with the lack of authority to issue mandatory recalls, voluntary recalls can sometimes take an extensive period of time to be issued.

“A lot of times, the regulator and the company, and all of their team of lawyers will negotiate the wording of the recall. And that can take days or weeks,” Murray said.

In the meantime, the FDA can put out a warning, as the many that have been issued for contaminated eye drops.

Multiple bills have been introduced in Congress to broaden the FDA’s ability to issue mandatory recalls for prescription and over the counter medicines, such as the Protecting Americans from Unsafe Drugs Act, yet none have made it into law.

Eye drops that have been listed as contaminated should not be purchased or used and should be disposed of, according to the FDA.

“If anyone using these drops has eye discharge, redness or pain (i.e. signs of infection) they should see an ophthalmologist immediately,” said Dr. Christopher Starr, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Weill Cornell Medicine and spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology told ABC News.

Eye drops can also expire, where they pose a higher risk of contamination.

“I remind everyone to also check expiration dates of their eye drop bottles. If expired, please discard them, as there is a higher risk of contamination even with non-recalled, well-manufactured eye drops,” Starr added.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Global cases of measles increased by 18% from 2021 to 2022, following a drop in vaccinations over the past few years, according to a new report Thursday from the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Deaths due to measles have also increased globally by 43% from 2021 to 2022, the new data shows.

“The alarming increase in measles cases and deaths globally is a clear warning sign,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an ABC News medical contributor and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. “The drop in vaccination rates over recent years has set the stage for this resurgence, particularly impacting children who are most vulnerable.”

So far this year in the United States, 41 measles cases have been reported by more than a dozen states. Domestic cases of measles surged in 2019, with an estimated 1,274 people sick in at least 31 states — the greatest number of cases reported since 1992.

“The recent outbreaks of measles in the U.S. are a stark reminder of the consequences of vaccine hesitancy, emphasizing the need for robust public health campaigns to bolster confidence in and uptake of the MMR [measles, mumps and rubella] vaccine,” Brownstein said.

Most of the cases were among young people who were not vaccinated, and most outbreaks occur in groups of people who are not up to date on their vaccines.

An estimated 92% of American adolescents aged 13-17 were vaccinated against measles in 2019, according to the CDC. The federal agency notes that a vaccination coverage rate of 95% with both doses is necessary to protect communities from outbreaks.

Childhood immunizations overall — including the measles, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP), polio and chickenpox vaccines — have dipped in recent years among kindergarteners, decreasing from 95% in 2019 to 94% in 2020, then to 93% in 2021, according to the CDC.

The MMR vaccine is about 93% effective against measles, increasing to 97% after the second dose, according to the CDC.

Children in the U.S. need two doses of the MMR vaccine for best protection. The first dose is given between 12-15 months of age followed by a second dose between 4 to 6 years of age.

According to the latest global report from health officials, a total of 37 countries experienced large outbreaks in 2022 compared to 22 countries in 2021.

The majority of the countries with outbreaks were located in Africa, as well as a handful in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

“The rise in measles [is] a reflection of a growing health crisis that disproportionately affects children, especially in low-income countries. It’s crucial to close the immunization gap and guarantee every child access to essential vaccines,” Brownstein said.

There were an estimated 9 million cases of measles and 136,000 deaths globally, mostly among children, according to the report.

There were 33 million children who missed a measles vaccine dose in 2022, including about 11 million getting their first shot but missing their second dose, the health agencies said.

Measles can cause serious health complications, especially in children younger than 5, according to the CDC. About one in five people in the U.S. who get measles will be hospitalized.

 

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — The United States continues to be one of the “most dangerous developed nations” for childbirth, according to a new report released Thursday by March of Dimes, a nonprofit organization focused on improving the health of pregnant people and babies.

The U.S. earned a D+ grade on its preterm birth rate for the second straight year in March of Dimes’ annual report looking at the state of maternal and infant health.

The preterm birth rate was 10.4%. The report also notes that the U.S. saw a 3% increase in infant mortality over the past year and a maternal death rate that doubled from 2018 to 2021.

When it comes to preterm births, one of the leading causes of infant deaths in the U.S., more than 380,000 babies were born before 37 weeks over the past year, according to March of Dimes. There are also large racial disparities when it comes to preterm births, according to the report, with Black and American Indian/Alaskan Native women 54% more likely to have a preterm birth compared to white women.

Racial disparities also exist when it comes to maternal health, with non-Hispanic Black women dying due to pregnancy-related complications at a rate 2.6 times that of non-Hispanic white women, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition, a separate March of Dimes report released earlier this year found that more than 5.6 million women in the U.S. live in counties with limited or no access to maternity care services. Since 2018, there has been a 4% increase in maternity care deserts, defined by March of Dimes as “any county in the United States without a hospital or birth center offering obstetric care and without any obstetric providers.”

“This year’s report shows the state of infant and maternal health in the United States remains at crisis-level, with grave disparities that continue to widen the health equity gap,” Dr. Elizabeth Cherot, president and CEO of March of Dimes, said in a statement about Thursday’s report. “We have long known that many of the factors impacting poor outcomes for moms and babies can and must be addressed if we are to reverse these trends.”

She continued, “The fact is, we are not prioritizing the health of moms and babies in this country, and our systems, policies, and environments, as they stand today, continue to put families at great risk.”

States where infant, maternal outcomes are the worst

The South and Midwest regions of the U.S. continue to have the worst outcomes when it comes to infant and maternal health, according to the March of Dimes report.

Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio, Mississippi and Alabama are among the states with the highest infant mortality rate. Those states each had an infant mortality rate of at least 7 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to the national average of 5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Infant mortality is defined by the CDC as “the death of an infant before his or her first birthday.”

The primary causes of infant mortality include birth defects, preterm birth and low birth weight, sudden infant death syndrome, accidents and injuries, and maternal pregnancy complications, according to both the CDC and March of Dimes.

States including Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi also had the worst maternal health outcomes, according to the March of Dimes report.

Among all states, birthing people living in Louisiana are the most vulnerable to “poor maternal health outcomes,” according to the report, with 39 deaths per 100,000 live births.

The report did not go into specific causes for poor maternal health, but cited “clinical risk factors and other social, contextual, and environmental factors.”

Previous research has shown that birthing women, and people of color specifically, often face discrimination or other gaps in care when receiving health care, and that is linked to poorer treatment.

Lack of proper health care and existing health complications — like diabetes, obesity and hypertension — are among the factors that can make pregnant women more likely to have a preterm birth, according to the March of Dimes.

The report found, again, that states in the South — including Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana — had the highest rates of preterm birth.

To improve the state of maternal and infant health care in the U.S., the March of Dimes, in its report, called for several policy changes, including extending Medicaid health care benefits to one year after the birth of a child, the expansion of mandatory paid parental leave, Medicaid coverage of doula care for birthing women and federally funded maternal mortality and fetal and infant mortality review committees in every state.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A proposed amendment in Florida that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution is currently at the center of a battle that could be taken up by the state’s Supreme Court.

State Attorney General Ashley Moody and other groups have asked Florida’s highest court to prevent the Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion from being put on the ballot for a vote in the 2024 election.

The proposed amendment reads, in part, “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

Floridians Protecting Freedom, the initiative’s main sponsor, and the ACLU of Florida filed response briefs to the attorney general’s challenge, arguing that the ballot initiative’s language is clear and does not mislead voters, as opponents have claimed.

The effort to include the initiative on the Florida ballot comes on the heels of Ohio voters approving a constitutional amendment during last week’s election that guarantees access to abortion and other aspects of reproductive health care.

Currently, abortion is banned at 15 weeks or later in Florida, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that studies sexual and reproductive rights.

Patients seeking abortion are required to make two trips: the first for an in-person appointment, and the second 24 hours later for the abortion itself.

Additionally, only physicians are allowed to perform abortions and not other qualified health care professionals, the Guttmacher Institute says.

As of Monday, Floridians Protecting Freedom has collected more than 491,000 signatures of the 891,523 required to place the Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion on the ballot. However, the number of signatures collected is already enough to qualify it for ballot summary review by the Florida Supreme Court.

If the amendment makes it onto the ballot and is subsequently passed by a majority of voters, it would protect abortion up until the fetus can survive outside the womb, which is generally considered to be between 24 and 26 weeks’ gestation. It would also make Florida the eighth state to protect abortion rights or prevent further restricting those rights, via a ballot imitative, since the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022

There is no language in the proposed Florida amendment addressing what type of health care professional is or is not allowed to perform an abortion, or whether there is a mandatory 24-hour wait period between requesting an abortion and receiving one, as the law currently requires.

If the amendment doesn’t make it on the ballot, or if it does but isn’t passed by a majority of voters, that failure could help clear the way for a six-week abortion ban to be enacted.

In April 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban into law, replacing the previous 15-week ban. The legislation makes exceptions for when a woman’s life or health is at risk and for cases of rape or incest, under certain conditions.

Two physicians currently must certify in writing that an abortion is necessary to save the woman’s life or to avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman. If two physicians are not available, one physician must certify in writing the above, as well as that a second physician is not available to consult.

For abortions in the case of rape or incest, the exceptions allow the procedure to be performed up to 15 weeks into the pregnancy, and if the woman provides a copy of a restraining order, police report, medical record or other court order or documentation proving that she’s a victim of rape or incest.

Currently, the 15-week ban is on hold while the Florida Supreme Court decides whether it’s constitutional, following challenges by the Center for Reproductive Rights and other groups. If the 15-week ban is upheld, then the six week-ban will be allowed to go into effect.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Annual heat-related deaths worldwide for people over 65 are projected to increase by 370% through the middle of the century if global temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius, a new report says.

The projection comes as heat-related deaths of adults over 65 have increased by 85% since the 1990s, according to the annual Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change report.

The hottest global temperatures in over 100,000 years were recorded in 2023 with the planet currently at 1.14°C of global heating, the report says.

Increasing global temperatures are linked to environmental changes like melting Arctic ice caps, drought and heat waves, and more intense hurricanes and wildfires. These stark changes are more than just ecological concerns; they also significantly impact human health, the report stressed.

This new Lancet report comes the same day as the new White House climate report, which flagged that climate-related hazards such as extreme heat, drought and wildfires will continue to grow and directly impact human health.

There were on average 86 days of health-threatening high temperatures in 2018-2022, according to the Lancet report. Human-caused climate change made more than 60% of those days more likely to have happened, the analysis showed.

“We’re already seeing climate change claiming lives or livelihoods in every part of the world. The impacts are happening here and now,” said Marina Romanello, the executive director of the Lancet Countdown and a climate change and health researcher at University College London, during a press briefing.

Droughts and heatwaves are increasing globally, leading to food insecurity and water scarcity, according to the researchers. There has been a 29% increase in areas of extreme drought since the 1950s. Around 127 million more people said that they experienced significant food insecurity in 2021 than annually between 1981 and 2010.

The report also warned that warming ocean temperatures are enabling the spread of the Vibrio bacteria, which can cause serious illness and death if people swim in water with open wounds or eat raw or contaminated seafood.

The coastline area suitable for Vibrio bacteria around the world has increased every year by 329 square kilometers since 1982, putting around 1.4 billion more people at risk of diarrheal disease, severe wound infections and sepsis by 2022.

“Climate breakdown has begun, and humanity is staring down the barrel of an intolerable future. We are already seeing a human catastrophe unfolding with the health and livelihoods of billions across the world endangered by record-breaking heat, crop-failing droughts, rising levels of hunger, growing infectious disease outbreaks, and deadly storms and floods,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in response to the Lancet report.

The Paris Agreement, the international treaty on climate change, calls for the world to keep global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, with the aim of limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The new report found that under the 2-degree warming scenario, there would be 525 million additional people experiencing significant food insecurity by 2031-2060. There would be 23–39% more cases of infection with Vibrio bacteria under the 2-degree warming scenario. There would also be a 37% increase in the spread of dengue, a mosquito-borne illness that can be life threatening, the report says.

“Continued warming could lead to those patterns spiraling out of control,” Romanello said to the projections outlined in the report.

The researchers behind the report say that there needs to be urgent action on climate change to mitigate the health impacts.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — An estimated 36 million adults in the United States have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine as of Monday, according to new data from the federal government.

Additionally, about 3.5 million children have also gotten the updated shot, according to the survey, which is a sample size of the U.S. population, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This is roughly equal to the number of Americans who had received the bivalent booster — which was targeted against different COVID variants — by this time last year.

While this means that uptake has not lagged compared to previous seasons, it also means just 13.9% of the adult population has gotten vaccinated.

This is lower than the nearly half of adults who said they planned to get the vaccine in a poll conducted by the KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor in September.

Poll results showed that 23% of U.S. adults said they would “definitely” get the updated booster and 23% said they will “probably” get it.

The updated vaccine is targeted against variants that are currently circulating, which are related to XBB, an offshoot of the omicron variant.

There are formulations made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna for those aged 6 months and older, and a formulation made by Novavax for those aged 12 and older.

The same CDC survey showed that 91 million U.S. adults, or 34.8% of the adult population, have received the flu vaccine and nearly 11 million over the age of 60, 13.5% of this age group, have received the RSV vaccine.

Meanwhile, 23 million children, or 4.9% of the pediatric population, have received the flu shot, data survey showed.

Public health experts usually advise that people receive respiratory virus vaccines by the end of October, but stress that it’s never too late to receive shots from pharmacies or doctors’ offices.

It comes as respiratory illness activity causing people to seek care remains low in most areas of the U.S., according to data updated this week by the CDC.

For the week ending Nov. 4, 2.9% of outpatient visits have been for respiratory illnesses. This is about half of where it was at the same time last year, but higher than the four preceding seasons, CDC data shows.

Last year’s respiratory virus season was unusually early, and activity increased sharply. Experts have said it’s possible that this year’s trending activity is a sign that we are getting back to the usual timing of ‘cold and flu’ season following disruptions after the emergence of COVID.

“Last year’s early spike was an anomaly, likely influenced by the pandemic’s impact on social behaviors and immunity,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.

“This year’s numbers, aligning more closely with pre-COVID patterns, indicate a reestablishment of typical ‘cold and flu’ season dynamics,” he continued. “However, we still have to see how the rest of the respiratory virus season plays out to know for sure.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Taking semaglutide, the active ingredient in drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic used for weight loss, can help boost heart health in people without diabetes, according to new research.

In a study of over 17,000 people, semaglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist medication, was found to lower the risk of cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes by 20% in people who have pre-existing cardiovascular disease and who are overweight, but do not have Type 2 diabetes.

The research, published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is significant because semaglutide was initially prescribed for adults with Type 2 diabetes, a condition in which cells don’t respond normally to insulin, the hormone made by the pancreas. It is a condition that affects tens of millions of people in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Interest in semaglutide has surged over the past year for its role in helping people lose weight.

Novo Nordisk, the company that funded the most recent study, makes both Wegovy and Ozempic, the two most popular drugs that have semaglutide as the active ingredient.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Ozempic as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes alongside diet and exercise if other medications cannot control blood sugar levels well enough.

Although Ozempic is not explicitly approved for chronic weight management, it can be prescribed off-label and used safely for people who are obese.

Wegovy is essentially the same injectable drug as Ozempic prescribed at a higher dosage. The FDA has specifically approved Wegovy for patients with severe obesity, or who are overweight and have one or more weight-associated conditions like high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

Both drugs work by slowing down movement of food through the stomach and curbing appetite, thereby causing weight loss.

ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton, a board-certified OB-GYN, who was not involved in the study, said there are different theories on why semaglutide can help lower the risk of cardiovascular events.

“What’s really interesting about this drug is the more it’s studied, the more we’re finding possible other theories,” Ashton said Monday on “Good Morning America.” “Data has shown in lab animals that semaglutide can reduce inflammation, so … it can promote what’s called plaque stability in those arteries, making the plaque less likely to break off and close off that artery, and then it almost works like a blood thinner in lab animals in terms of reducing platelet clumping.”

She added, “When you combine that with weight loss, [there are] significant cardio protective effects.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Kelsey Hatcher, a 32-year-old mom of three, and her husband Caleb said they were very surprised to learn earlier this year that Kelsey was pregnant.

The couple was even more surprised to learn at Kelsey Hatcher’s eight-week ultrasound appointment that she was expecting two babies.

Hatcher and her husband described themselves as completely shocked to learn that the babies are each in their own uterus, a result of Hatcher being born with a rare condition known as uterine didelphys, or double uterus, meaning she was born with two uteruses and two cervixes.

While uterine didelphys is rare on its own, the odds of being pregnant at the same time in each uterus are about “1 in a million,” according to Dr. Richard Davis, a maternal and fetal medicine specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Women & Infants Center, where Hatcher is being treated.

“When I first found out, I was like, ‘I wonder if there’s anybody I can reach out to just to, you know, see what their experiences were,'” Hatcher told “Good Morning America.” “But I think I’ve only read of two other cases [in which] they’ve had [pregnancies] in completely separate uteruses, and no one that I’ve been able to reach out to.”

Hatcher said she learned she had a double uterus at age 17, but with each of her three previous pregnancies, she had a single baby carried in one uterus. She said each of her pregnancies with her kids — now ages 7, 4, and 23 months — also went full-term, with no complications.

Knowing there was still a chance she could be carrying twins with this fourth pregnancy, Hatcher said that was one of the first questions she asked at her eight-week ultrasound appointment.

“I said, ‘There’s only one right?,’ and the [nurse] said, ‘Yeah, there’s only one,'” she recalled. “So, I just kind of laid back and was relaxing. Everything looked good. There was only one.”

Hatcher said that as she was telling the nurse to not be alarmed if she saw a second uterus on the ultrasound, both she and the nurse saw a second baby on the scan.

“Before she could say anything, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s another one,'” Hatcher said, adding of her reaction, “Probably all I did was laugh for 30 minutes or so because it was just like, this is not happening.”

Caleb, Hatcher’s husband, said when his wife called to tell him they were expecting two more babies, his reaction was, “I don’t know what happened differently this time, but it’s wild.”

According to both Davis and Dr. Shweta Petal, the OB-GYN caring for Hatcher, the two babies are considered fraternal twins.

“There are lots of different types of twin pregnancies out there,” Petal told “GMA,” adding of Hatcher’s specific case, “Most likely what happened is that she ovulated separately and had one egg come down each fallopian tube, meaning coming down on each side of the uterus, and then sperm traveled up on each separate uterus and fertilization occurred separately.”

Petal and Davis are both part of a team at UAB that has spent the last several months planning for Hatcher’s delivery. Neither of the doctors, nor anyone else at the university’s medical center, has ever cared for a patient carrying two pregnancies in two uteruses.

“There’s no true expert out there who knows how to manage a patient with two uteruses and two babies, with one in each uterus,” Petal said. “So we really are relying on our baseline teaching and our baseline knowledge and the normal physiology of pregnancy that we understand, and applying it in her scenario.”

Hatcher is currently around 34 weeks pregnant and her due date is Dec. 25 — Christmas Day.

Davis said the plan is to allow Hatcher to carry her pregnancy as long as both she and the babies are healthy.

She could deliver each baby individually in two vaginal births, which could happen over the span of a few minutes or a few days, or if there are complications, Davis said they could deliver the babies via cesarean section.

“Each uterus can contract on its own at different times,” Davis said. “It could be that one side contracts, and the other side is not doing anything.

Petal noted there are a “lot of different scenarios” for which the medical team is working with Hatcher to prepare ahead of her delivery.

“They could be born minutes apart, or they can be born days apart,” Petal said. “It’s so unpredictable, and that’s why we’ve had a lot of conversations with Kelsey kind of talking about the different scenarios that could happen, where she could have a vaginal delivery with both babies, she could have a vaginal delivery with one and a C-section with the other, or maybe end up having a C-section for both of them as well.”

Hatcher said that despite the rarity of her pregnancy, it has been a smooth one so far, with just more fatigue in the first trimester than she had experienced in her previous pregnancies.

“Past the first trimester, a lot of things have been very similar, other than just feeling the movement of two,” she said, adding that in the last two weeks she has been able to see the two pregnancies separate when she lays down. “There’s like a divet in between my stomach so that you can see that each uterus has one on each side. It is pretty wild.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(BOSTON) — A sickle cell disease center is leading the way in treatment with a new, innovative approach to caring for those with the illness.

Dr. Sharl Azar, Medical Director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Disease Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), hired a medical exercise specialist to work with their patients on fitness programs that will help improve their lives.

“One of the parts of the lore of this disease has been patients living with sickle cell disease can’t exercise or they shouldn’t, because exercising can exacerbate symptoms of their disease,” Azar told ABC News. “It can put them into the painful crises that are the hallmark of the illness.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), sickle cell disease is a red blood cell disorder, in which the affected individual has abnormally shaped red blood cells (sickle cells) rather than round ones because of abnormal hemoglobin, a protein that carries oxygen. Sickle cells perish early resulting in a shortage of red blood cells. They also block blood flow when they get clogged in vessels. The constricted blood flow can cause a crisis of agonizing pain for the patient.

That painful crisis is all too familiar to Amy Diawara, 27, who has had sickle cell disease her entire life. She said that a crisis feels like excruciating throbbing pains embedded deeply in the muscles of her body.

Diawara is a patient at MGH and worked with its medical exercise specialist Jen Miramontes on a personalized training program to run the Boston Athletic Association Half Marathon on Nov. 12.

“You need people that are going to want to ride with you to the finish line and I’m so grateful for Jen and Dr. Azar,” Diawara told ABC News. “They’ve encouraged me and this is how I’ve gotten to this point, and super excited to run the Boston half this Sunday.”

Miramontes, 59, isn’t only training Diawara, she agreed to run the race with her. She has competed in a total of 80 marathons throughout her life and created a training program specifically tailored to Diawara’s needs.

“We’re going to keep it at one mile, three times a week for the first two weeks,” Miramontes, who said she had to err on the side of caution when training Diawara, told ABC News. “Whereas, if I was training a person that did not have sickle cell disease, the process would have been probably two to three times faster to get to where we are [today].”

Other factors that Diawara had to be careful of were extreme heat and cold climates during her runs because dehydration and exceedingly cold temperatures could initiate a crisis, according to Miramontes. To avoid that, she instructed Diawara to run on treadmills during much of her training.

Miramontes was hired by the hospital through a grant, according to Azar. She was selected to offer medically approved fitness programs tailored to each patient she sees. Jen, who lives in California, flies to Massachusetts monthly to assess patients and create an exercise plan to meet each individual’s needs and goals. Afterward, she stays in constant communication and coaches the patients through virtual care, Azar said.

According to Azar, even though scientists have known about the genetic cause of sickle cell disease for over 100 years, population studies on the illness are far behind other chronic congenital diseases like cystic fibrosis or hemophilia. Azar says that is because sickle cell mostly affects people of color, resulting in the lack of adequate resources toward research for the illness.

According to the CDC, 100,000 people are living with sickle cell in the United States, but Azar says the data hasn’t been properly updated in decades. One out of every 365 African Americans are born with the disease and one in 13 African Americans are born with the trait inheriting a single copy of the sickle cell gene. If those numbers are expanded to today’s population of African Americans it should far exceed 100,000, according to Azar.

“It’s shameful to say that here we are in 2023, putting together the first program where we’re exploring the role of exercise in patients living with sickle cell disease.”

Most suffering from the disease have always been told not to overexert themselves with exercise because of a crisis risk, but Diawara and Miramontes are bucking the trend.

“I was shocked and just extremely disappointed to discover that there was very, very, very little research on exercise and sickle cell disease,” Miramontes said. “If you look up cancer, or MS [multiple sclerosis], or Parkinson’s and try to find research on how fitness can affect the disease, how it can impact positively the disease, you can find 1000s and 1000s of studies. I found two [for sickle cell]. And, so it’s certainly groundbreaking at a minimum.”

According to Azar, the Food and Drug Administration is set to make its first approval of a gene therapy product in December that will help to improve the lives of those with sickle cell disease. As for Diawara, she doesn’t think she’ll take the gene therapy treatment since she rarely has crises anymore. She’s more focused on her training and accomplishing her goal of running her first half marathon.

“I’m super excited because, again, this is something that I didn’t even think I could do,” Diawara said. “it’s always just been a dream. But now it’s like manifesting into an actual goal that’s about to be accomplished.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.