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The US Department of Justice launched an investigation into an Abbot Laboratories infant-formula plant following contamination and closure in 2022. The Sturgis, Michigan plant under investigation was previously shut down for months following an alarming finding of Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria, which can be deadly to infants, by the Food and Drug Administration.

While diagnosing the gun violence epidemic as a public health crisis, pediatricians are testing a new treatment that they hope will be a part of the solution. Their answer to the leading cause of death for children and those aged 24 and younger in this country, along with simultaneously raising awareness for gun storage and safety measures alike, is to provide free gun locks with a “no questions asked” policy attached.

Newly minted 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline sees a staggering increase in calls, texts, and chats since its national debut. With the recent transition from a 1-800 number to three easy digits, simplification and recognition has led to people getting more help more quickly than the previously terminated National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Following in the shameless footsteps of dangerously flavored tobacco and nicotine products, flavored cannabis marketing is once again targeting and exploiting our youth. While dispensaries expand and the cannabis industry evolves, our public health policy struggles to keep up and keep our children safe from enticing packaging and tricky marketing taking advantage of those under the age of 21.

With the Strengthening Organic Enforcement rule, the US Department of Agriculture provides substantial support and legitimacy behind the treasured organic label. This new ruling “provides a significant increase in oversight and enforcement authority to reinforce the trust of consumers, farmers, and those transitioning to organic,” USDA Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Jenny Lester Moffitt opined.

Cardiac Casper: ‘Ghost Heart’ Presents Transplantation Breakthrough

Molecular biologist Doris Taylor may have found some inspiration in the ambitious words of Mary Shelley’s fictional character Victor Frankenstein, who claimed that “the world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.” Doris Taylor’s ambitions don’t involve creating a monster but do involve a familiar fusion of life; yet hers include the scaffolding of a pig’s heart infused with human stem cells to create a personalized, viable, and acceptable beating heart that the body will embrace via transplantation.

• Taylor’s process of giving birth to these hybrid hearts involves washing all the cells of a pig’s heart to leave behind an extracellular matrix, which appears as a “ghost heart” to act as a scaffold for her work to continue. Blood vessel cells are then infused onto the matrix and grown for several weeks to reestablish the blood vessel network of the ghost heart.
  
  
• Next, immature stem cells are injected across the scaffold, and subsequently stimulated electrically in a careful and precise manner to create a connection across the heart and begin the rhythmic beating of the nearly finished hybrid heart.
  
  
• At this stage, the birthing process is complete, but nurturing does not end here. Assistance is provided of course, such as electrical pumps for support, and being fed oxygen from artificial lungs. Taylor teaches the heart to pump blood and maintain a blood pressure. Artificial blood fills the heart chambers, which the heart cells learn to squeeze against over time.
  
  
• Taylor’s vision involves banking people’s own stem cells from youth to have ready and available for the growth of an organ of need, such as a heart, lung, liver, or kidney.
  
  

What the author of the study is saying: “Now we can truly imagine building a personalized human heart, taking heart transplants from an emergency procedure where you’re so sick, to a planned procedure,” Taylor told the audience. “That reduces your risk by eliminating the need for (antirejection) drugs, by using your own cells to build that heart it reduces the cost … and you aren’t in the hospital as often, so it improves your quality of life,” she said. “It’s the first shot at truly curing the number one killer of men, women, and children worldwide – heart disease. And then I want to make it available to everyone,” said Taylor.

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Fearsome and Freaky “Forever Chemicals” Found in Locally Sourced Fish

These toxins, which belong to the class of product additives called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are especially dangerous due to their inability to break down in the environment, as well as dangerously accumulate in our bodies as “forever chemicals.” The Environmental Working Group provided the graphical representation attached above of the widespread contamination of PFOS (74%) and PFAS (25%) detected in fish across the country.

Key takeaways

• “Chemicals in the PFAS family are linked to high cholesterol, cancer and various chronic diseases, as well as a limited antibody response to vaccines in both adults and children, according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.”
  
  
• “These chemicals are ubiquitous in the American environment. More than 2,800 communities in the US, including all 50 states and two territories, have documented PFAS contamination,” Dr. Ned Calonge, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health and chair of the Academies committee that wrote the report, told CNN previously.
  
  

By the digits

• 5-year half-life range for many PFAS detected in this finding.
  
  
• 10 nanograms of such PFAS in your system would take 5 years to reduce to 5 nanograms, another 5 years to reduce to 2.5 nanograms, and a total of 25 years before the chemical becomes undetectable in your body.
  
  
• 8,000 parts per trillion of PFOS found in freshwater fish.
  
  
• 70 parts per trillion of PFOS allowed in our nation’s drinking water as allowed by the US Environmental Protection Agency, for comparison.
  
  
• 98% of Americans have PFAS in their blood serum according to the CDC.

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A 2-year-old girl with sickle cell disease is brought to the emergency department by her parents because of painful swelling of her feet for the past 3 hours. Her temperature is 37.0°C (98.6°F). Physical examination shows swelling and tenderness of her feet; no other abnormal findings are noted. Results of laboratory studies are shown:
Hemoglobin         7.8 g/dL
WBC               13,000/mm3
Neutrophils, segmented   60%
Lymphocytes          40%

Which of the following is the most likely diagnosis?

Another promising HIV vaccine fails in prematurely halted trial. The vaccine failed to prevent transmission, and the study was discontinued once it was determined that there was no evidence that the vaccine lowered the rate of HIV acquisition when compared to placebo.

Antibiotic resistant gonorrhea strains have been identified in the United States for the first time. The threat of infections that are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics is one of the most serious and pressing public health concerns of our lifetime.

Preclinical study provides hope for translation of bone restoration properties of regenerative drug. Bone loss is a major health risk for the elderly as a natural part of the aging process, but the experimental drug highlighted in this preclinical study could have major implications in human subjects should translation prove successful.

Rykindo has been approved by the FDA for Schizophrenia and Bipolar I. This new option is being presented as a long-lasting alternative to risperidone and acts as an extended-release intramuscular injectable rather than a daily oral medication.

Thank you for reading! More next week,

My best wishes for a productive and idea-filled week ahead. Thanks for your ongoing efforts to improve the lives of the patients we all serve. Please send any news, comments, suggestions and ideas to hello@morningmed.email.

Quiz answer: The correct answer is A) Bone infarction

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