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Fewer Than 1% of Clinical Trials in the US Include Pregnant Patients, Study Finds
Pregnancy comes with unique health risks and considerations, but pregnant people also continue to experience the same health problems that nonpregnant people do. Despite this, a new study has found that fewer than 1% of randomized controlled trials in the U.S. include pregnant participants.
The study was published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology on Jan. 3 and was announced in a Jan. 21 press release. Out of 90,860 drug trials involving reproductive-age women from the last 15 years, only 0.8% included pregnant participants. What’s more, about 75% of the studies explicitly excluded pregnant people from participating.
Excluding pregnant people from trials “slows down the use of beneficial medications because doctors and pregnant people are hesitant to use drugs when there is limited safety data available,” study author Alyssa Bilinski, Ph.D., a health policy researcher at Brown University, told Fierce Biotech in an email. “Conversely, when a medication is harmful, more people likely experience adverse effects before the problem is discovered because not all individuals taking the medication are studied.”
RFK Jr.’s Anti-vaccine Group Sees Vindication in His Senate Testimony
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn’t want to talk about his past as a leader of the anti-vaccine movement. But as he made his case to be the nation’s top health official, the anti-vaccine movement couldn’t wait to talk about him.
The head of Children’s Health Defense — the anti-vaccine nonprofit that Kennedy founded — praised Kennedy’s performance in front of the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, calling it a moment of vindication for a movement that until now had existed on the fringes of mainstream politics. “Bobby is challenging the status quo,” Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, told POLITICO. “We’re very happy with the greater attention — and we hope to educate more people that there are issues around a lot of things that people don’t often think about.”
Holland pointed to Kennedy’s vow of “radical transparency” at the health department as a sign that he would order fresh scrutiny of vaccines, arguing that more study is needed to determine that even routine immunizations are safe.
I No Longer Think GLP-1s Are the Answer
McGowan is an obesity medicine specialist and gastroenterologist. Few medications have had such a meteoric rise as semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Zepbound), the GLP-1-based treatments for obesity that have captivated society and quickly become household names. These drugs represent a significant advancement in obesity medicine — for a good reason.
Until semaglutide’s 2021 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for chronic weight management, the most effective medication was arguably phentermine (Adipex), first approved in 1959. After more than six decades with questionable progress, it’s no surprise that patients and doctors saw the GLP-1s as a long-awaited breakthrough. Until recently, I was one of those doctors, too.
As a practicing obesity medicine specialist, I was an early and vocal advocate for GLP-1 therapy — speaking publicly and often about their unprecedented efficacy against obesity. I shared the excitement around these medications and fought alongside my patients to obtain them despite well-documented barriers: high costs, limited insurance coverage, prematurely terminated coupon programs, and supply shortages.
However, years later, my perspective has shifted based on real-world experience — and I’m now deeply concerned about how GLP-1 medications are being used.
Nurse Dies in First Ebola Virus Outbreak in Uganda Since 2022, Health Ministry Says
A nurse in Uganda has died of Ebola, a health official said Thursday, in the first recorded fatality since the last outbreakopens in a new tab or window ended in 2023.
The 32-year-old male nurse was an employee of Mulago Hospital, the main referral facility in the capital, Kampala, Diana Atwine, MBChB, MMed, permanent secretary of the health ministry, told reporters Thursday.
After developing a fever, he was treated at several locations in Uganda before multiple lab tests confirmed he had been suffering from Ebola. The man died on Wednesday and the Sudan strain of Ebola was confirmed following postmortem tests, Atwine said.
At least 44 contacts of the victim have been identified, including 30 health workers and patients at Mulago Hospital, according to Uganda’s Ministry of Health.
The health authorities are “in full control of the situation,” Atwine said, urging Ugandans to report suspected cases. Tracing contacts is key to stemming the spread of Ebola, and there are no approved vaccines for the Sudan strain of Ebola.
