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Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here. Good morning. We’ve got municipal elections in Boston today, along with many other cities and towns around the state. I also heard there’s a mayoral election in New York? For now, health news. Advertisement Trump admin will partially fund SNAP this month The Trump administration said yesterday that it will partially fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for November, after two judges ruled Friday that the government is required to keep the program running. An emergency fund has enough money for about half the normal benefits, according to the administration. If the government shutdown continues into December, it’s unclear what will happen with the program, which currently supports about one in eight Americans. Read more. Experts are worried about the ‘soap opera’ at the FDA George Tidmarsh, the FDA’s top drug regulator, was put on administrative leave last week. The move was so unexpected that when Tidmarsh was pulled into the office of Commissioner Marty Makary, he thought he was going to learn that Vinay Prasad, who directs CBER, was being fired. Instead, he was accused of using his regulatory authority to target a former business associate. (Tidmarsh has since resigned. And if you haven’t read about it yet, the lawsuit filed against Tidmarsh includes a wild series of incendiary texts and emails.) Advertisement It’s the latest shockwave to roll through an agency in chaos. In interviews, observers called it a “soap opera,” a “clown show,” unpredictable, and potentially unprincipled. “What’s happening at the top of the FDA is embarrassing,” said one portfolio manager at a large biotech fund. “How am I supposed to convince people, other investors, that this sector is doing important work when the leaders of the FDA are acting this way.” Read more on what others had to say, including industry experts and both current and former FDA employees. 17% That’s how much more, on average, UnitedHealth Group’s insurance arm pays its own physician groups compared to outside ones, according to a study published yesterday in Health Affairs. The findings reinforce analysis from some colleagues here at STAT who spent much of last year reporting their incredible, multi-award-winning series: Health Care’s Colossus. The study’s lead author, Daniel Arnold, said his research was inspired in part by STAT’s reporting. Read more from STAT’s Tara Bannow, one of our four Colossus reporters. Microdosing weight loss drugs? Telehealth companies Noom, Found, and Hims & Hers have all launched programs to prescribe “microdosed” GLP-1s in the last three months, following in the steps of many smaller direct-to-consumer brands. They claim that compounded GLP-1s in small doses can reduce diabetes risk, lower inflammatory markers, and lower the risk of cognitive decline. But doctors and researchers say there’s no robust clinical evidence that these drugs are effective at very small doses, and the drugs aren’t proven to help patients with many of those symptoms. It’s the latest move for telehealth companies that have been tweaking their formulations in order to continue selling compounded versions of GLP-1s after regulators decided there was no longer a shortage. Read more from STAT’s Katie Palmer on how companies are rolling out these programs, what experts think about the approach, and which celebrities have signed on to endorse it. Advertisement 5,000 That’s the number of steps per day that could slow cognitive decline for people who are showing signs of Alzheimer’s, according to a study published yesterday in Nature Medicine. Researchers followed nearly 300 older adults with no cognitive impairment at the start of the study. Particularly among those with high levels of beta-amyloid (an early sign of the disease), low or moderate exercise levels seemed to slow cognitive decline. But that didn’t happen by slowing the buildup of beta-amyloid, as one might expect. Read more from STAT’s Jonathan Wosen on how exercise interacted with Alzheimer’s risk, and why some experts say interpreting the results can be tricky. Study: Less teen vaping overall, but more daily usage Fewer pre-teens and adolescents are vaping nicotine these days than in previous years. But a study published yesterday in JAMA Network Open found that among those who do, growing proportions are vaping daily — and they’re having more trouble quitting. Researchers analyzed nationally representative survey data from middle and high schoolers collected annually between 2020 and 2024. In that time, the number of young people who had vaped at least once in the past 30 days declined sharply — except for girls and young Black people, who saw stable rates or slower declines. Among all users, the proportion who vaped nicotine daily almost doubled from 15% in 2020 to 29% in 2024. At the same time, the number of folks who had unsuccessfully tried to quit rose from 28% of daily vapers to 53%. The study authors were concerned by the increasing rates of daily nicotine vaping, as a daily habit could be more harmful for cardiovascular, respiratory, and mental health outcomes than occasional use. They also pointed out that “a history of unsuccessful quit attempts is a cardinal symptom of nicotine use disorder.” It’s hard to say exactly why teen use has trended this way. The products that young people vape tend to be high or “ultrahigh” in potency. What we’re reading
