Go with your gut
The most important news in healthcare: Friday, July 24th
Good morning. Today we’re discussing a new finding that could improve children’s health worldwide and how a new healthcare start up is responding to rising levels of mental health concerns.
A gut feeling
The pulse
A team of researchers from the U.S. and Bangladesh have uncovered an important driver of stunted growth in malnourished children – the gut microbiome.
What exactly is stunted growth?
It’s defined by the World Health Organization as having a height for age less than two standard deviations from the median and affects over 150 million children worldwide. It is usually caused by long-term malnourishment in children who cannot get the nutrients they need to grow. However, even when children with stunted growth are given enough calories, they still end up shorter and frailer than other children.
What causes this persistent stunting?
This latest study, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, seems to show that the gut microbiome – the bacteria, fungi, and viruses found in the gastrointestinal tract-- may play a role.
How was the study done?
Researchers looked at 110 young children with stunted growth (average age of 18 months) in an urban slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Though everyone has a unique microbiome, the team found that the microbiome in these children with stunted growth were similar to each other and significantly different from samples obtained from healthy children.
What’s the significance of this difference in microbiome?
The bacterial strains found in the children with stunted growth were associated with persistent gut inflammation. This could be causing long term tissue deterioration in the intestines that prevents proper absorption of nutrients even when the children are given enough to eat.
How does this knowledge help combat global malnutrition?
Theoretically, treatments for stunted growth could focus on either trying to eliminate the microbes associated with inflammation or trying to increase the presence of more beneficial strains in young children. Still, more studies are certainly needed.
Bottom line it for me:
Gut bacteria play an important role in child nutrition and growth; targeting gut bacteria could be the key to preventing stunted growth in hundreds of millions of children worldwide.
Source: Hims & Hers
Hims and Hers
The pulse
Amidst surging rates of stress and anxiety during the pandemic, health startup Hims & Hers is launching a new subscription-based virtual healthcare service that aims to improve access to medication and talk therapy - and may net a billion dollar valuation as a result.
How has mental health been affected by the pandemic?
COVID and the restrictions imposed by it have had significant impacts on population mental health. A study published in Lancet this week found that rates of clinically-significant mental distress in the UK had risen by close to 50% by the end of April, just one month into the lockdown. The story is similar in America - a late April poll by Kaiser found that the pandemic had negatively affected that health of 56% of adults. In the same month, texts to a federal health emergency mental-health line were up 1000% compared to the year before.
Even in normal circumstances, fewer than half of Americans with mental illness receive treatment.
What is Hims & Hers?
Hims & Hers is a San Francisco-based startup that launched in 2017 and gained early traction selling medications for hair loss and erectile dysfunction. It first expanded into the mental health space when it connected patients to providers who could prescribe performance anxiety medication propranolol.
What are their new mental health offerings?
In April, as a response to the crisis, the startup launched virtual group therapy sessions, and is now expanding to provide a subscription-based program that connects patients with a licensed psychiatrist or nurse practitioner. The initial session is $59, followed by a $49 monthly payment that allows roughly five consultations a year. All payment is out-of-pocket -- Hims & Hers does not yet accept insurance.
Bottom line it for me.
This is simultaneously a step forward for virtual mental healthcare and another illustration of the myriad ways companies are using COVID to boost their bottom lines.
Rapidfire
The CDC has released new guidelines recommending that patients with COVID-19 can leave isolation after ten days of being symptom-free. This replaces old guidelines that called for having two negative PCR tests taken 24 hours apart.
Here’s some scientific ammo to use on anyone who tries to tell you that having that fifth cup of espresso is bad for you: studies have shown that having 3-5 cups of coffee a day is associated with a lower risk of multiple chronic diseases and has no effect on cardiovascular health.
Biofourmis and Chugai Pharmaceuticals are teaming up to create a digital biosensor to objectively measure pain in women with suspected endometriosis. Though it affects about 10% of women, endometriosis is notoriously underdiagnosed by healthcare practitioners who dismiss the chronic pain associated with the condition as menstrual cramps.
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