‘This Was Not a Rare or Exceptional Circumstance’: What We Heard This Week

“It became clear to me that this was not a rare or exceptional circumstance, but that the overwhelming majority of youth receiving this care were happy with it.” — Kristina Olson, PhD, of Princeton University, reporting that most youth who received gender-affirming care had no regrets.

“We really should be looking at the non-coding genome, the other 3.6 billion base pairs in the genome.” — Gemma Carvill, PhD, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, discussing a pediatric neurology syndrome not previously identified.

“You’d have to find a drug that was highly, highly effective, and we did not see that.” — Susanna Naggie, MD, MHS, of the Duke University School of Medicine in North Carolina, on how the asthma drug montelukast (Singulair) did not reduce COVID symptom duration.

“The rotation really focuses on just that — like in just taking care of your children, you’re already gaining so much knowledge that you can translate into clinical practice.” — Emily Cunningham, a third-year medical student, who enrolled in a caregiver elective at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

“I don’t put much weight into anecdotal stuff, but I do put some weight when you have a randomized, multicenter, sham-controlled clinical trial.” — Allen Ho, MD, of Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, reacting to a patient’s description of vision improvement with a novel gene therapy.

“Midlife is when accumulating damage becomes more easily detectable.” — Nicolas Cherbuin, PhD, of the Australian National University in Canberra, discussing poor midlife sleep and brain aging.

“Our results … took us somewhat by surprise and indicated that the Dobbs decision likely served as a population-level shock that was strong enough to elicit a national-level, aggregated response in infant mortality.” — Parvati Singh, PhD, of Ohio State University in Columbus, on infant deaths after federal abortion protections were eliminated.

“Unlike anosmia, hearing loss can be ameliorated.” — Lee Neilson, MD, of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, discussing links between hearing loss and incident Parkinson’s disease.

“The placement process can take several days and there’s no place for these new patients to go.” — Alison Haddock, MD, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, on barriers that keep patients “boarding” in the emergency department.