addiction

RFK Jr. targets the ‘spiritual malaise’ behind addiction

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In an announcement yesterday, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. provided new details about the sweeping but vague addiction initiative that the White House rolled out last week, unveiling a new program to address homelessness and plans to involve religious organizations in the government’s response to the addiction epidemic. 

Kennedy said the effort was an attempt to address what he called a nationwide “spiritual malaise,” and to align government, nonprofits, and the private sector behind a structure that incentivizes high-quality care and, by extension, long-term recovery. Read more from STAT’s Lev Facher on what that means. And before you click, guess which Kennedy cousin showed up to support.

reproductive health

How HPV vaccination status could determine cancer screening rates

As we reported here last month, new federal guidelines recommend that women ages 30 to 65 can skip pap smears and do an HPV test every five years. But as the first generation of women to be vaccinated against HPV in their adolescence grows up (hello), new research suggests that some people could go even longer between screenings. 

A study out of Norway, published yesterday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that as long as a woman is vaccinated by age 30, it’s both cost effective and causes less harm for her to do cervical cancer screenings less often than the five-year recommendation. The exact intervals laid out by researchers depend not only on the age at vaccination, but also the type of vaccine received and how the scientists weighed costs against risks in the calculations. Generally, someone vaccinated between ages 25 and 30 could reduce screenings to 10-year intervals, while someone vaccinated between 12 and 24 could be screened just two or three times in their life, per the study. 

The data on individualized recommendations could be particularly valuable to American physicians and families as Kennedy, who has led an overhaul of American vaccine standards, has long-standing connections to litigation over Merck’s HPV vaccine. 

science

The peptide with big claims but limited data

You may not have heard of BPC-157 — but maybe you have. The peptide, like many that have gained traction with MAHA, is having a moment. Popular podcasters, wellness clinics, and patients are gravitating to the chemical for relief from health conditions that aren’t always well-managed with traditional treatments. But there’s one problem: “The amount of hype to evidence is just so skewed, it’s crazy,” physician and researcher Flynn McGuire said. He put it even more bluntly in an email: BPC-157 “should not be used by humans.”

Too late. In a thorough write-up, Sara Talpos spoke with people who have taken the peptide. Some described benefits like helping the body heal more quickly and reducing pain. But others report side effects like full-body itchiness, intense anxiety, or anhedonia. Anecdotal evidence like this is some of the only data we have on what these drugs can do in humans. 

Read more from Sara about how BPC-157 became a buzzy, mainstream MAHA supplement. As Talpos writes, the story begins in a laboratory in post-communist Croatia. We’re publishing this investigation by Undark, where Sara is a contributing editor.