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Top Contributors to Leading Psychiatry Journals Fail to Disclose Industry Payments, Analysis Finds
Amid ongoing concern over conflicts of interest that may affect medical practice, a new study found that 14% of the $4.5 million paid to authors in two leading psychiatry journals was undisclosed and nearly all of the payments were made to researchers conducting randomized controlled trials for pharmaceuticals.
All totaled, $206,000 paid to American Journal of Psychiatry authors, or 7.5% of total payments, was not disclosed, while $439,000, or 25% of the payments made to contributors of the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry, was not disclosed. Total undisclosed payments among the top 10 highest-earning authors accounted for 85% and 99.6% of all payments that were not disclosed in the AJP and JAMA Psychiatry, respectively.
Among those who received undisclosed payments, 80% of the authors who contributed to JAMA Psychiatry and 36.3% of those who wrote for AJP received “substantial” undisclosed payments, defined as those exceeding $5,000, according to the National Institutes of Health threshold for a “significant financial interest.”
Vaccine Stocks Drop After FDA Memo Links COVID Shots to Child Deaths
Vaccine stocks slumped Monday after an explosive memo from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine chief Vinay Prasad surfaced late Friday, signaling the agency is preparing to roll out tough restrictions on new vaccines for children. Prasad described a “profound revelation” linking COVID-19 shots to at least ten deaths in children.
By late morning, Vaccine makers dropped on the memo: Moderna -6%, BioNTech -4.3%, Novavax -4%, Vaxcyte -6.6%. “This is a profound revelation,” Prasad wrote in the memo. “For the first time, the US FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children.”
Americans Are Microdosing Obesity Drugs, Driven by ‘Thin Is in’ Marketing Blitz
Weight-loss drugs are coming for a new kind of customer. “You don’t need to be obese to start a GLP-1,” reads an ad from a telehealth startup, the words scrawled in icing on a cake. Another one features a slender woman excited to lose a little weight before her wedding. Yet another says patients can drop 17 pounds in two months by microdosing copycat Ozempic.
They’re part of a marketing blitz that’s ramped up in recent months, with ads plastered on billboards, in subway stations and online. As the body positivity era gives way to a “thin is in” moment, telehealth platforms are seizing the opportunity to cash in. Increasingly, their marketing is positioning blockbuster weight-loss shots not as medicines to treat obesity or diabetes but as cosmetic elixirs for anyone who wants to lose a few pounds.
But GLP-1 medications aren’t approved for use in people whose body mass index, or BMI, falls below 27. Drug companies haven’t tested their drugs for people with those BMIs, either. Doctors warn that such patients could put themselves at risk for potentially serious side effects, such as gastrointestinal issues and pancreatic damage, with little to no health benefits.
World Health Organization Issues First-Ever Guidelines for Use of GLP-1 Weight Loss Medications
The World Health Organization on Monday released new guidance on GLP-1 medications for adults with obesity, recommending their long-term, continuous use when clinically appropriate. The medications covered include semaglutide (Wegovy), liraglutide (Saxenda) and tirzepatide (Zepbound).
The recommendations, published in the medical journal JAMA, emphasize that these medications alone are not a solution to treating the global obesity epidemic. Obesity is a chronic disease that needs lifelong care and is best treated with long-term GLP-1 use combined with a structured program that includes healthy eating, regular movement and ongoing counseling to lose and maintain weight loss, according to the WHO.
“It signals that treating obesity early — as a chronic disease that deserves lifelong care — is finally moving into the mainstream of health care,” Dr. Louis Arrone, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine, told ABC News.
Could Weight Loss Drugs Turn Fat Cats Into Svelte Ozempets?
In just a few short years, new diabetes and weight loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro have taken the world by storm. In the United States, one in eight adults say they’ve tried one of these medications, which are known as GLP-1 drugs, and that number seems sure to rise as prices fall and new oral formulations hit the market.
Fluffy and Fido could be next.
On Tuesday, Okava Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company based in San Francisco, is set to announce that it has officially begun a pilot study of a GLP-1 drug for cats with obesity. The company is testing a novel approach: Instead of receiving weekly injections of the drugs, as has been common in human patients, the cats will get small, injectable implants, slightly larger than a microchip, that will slowly release the drug for as long as six months.
“You insert that capsule under the skin, and then you come back six months later, and the cat has lost the weight,” said Dr. Chen Gilor, a veterinarian at the University of Florida, who is leading the study. “It’s like magic.”
