From Washington, DC,

• The Wall Street Journal reports,
  • “American women are giving birth at record-low rates. 
  • “The total fertility rate fell to 1.62 births per woman in 2023, a 2% decline from a year earlier, federal data released Thursday showed. It is the lowest rate recorded since the government began tracking it in the 1930s. * * *
  • “Total fertility estimates the number of children a woman would give birth to in her lifetime. The estimates don’t account for what women actually decide in later years, said Brady Hamilton, a co-author of the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
  • “The number of births last year was the lowest since 1979, according to provisional data. About 3.59 million children were born in the U.S. in 2023, a 2% drop compared with 3.66 million in 2022. 
  • “The figures are provisional and likely to adjust slightly when final data are released later this year.”

• The Congressional Budget Office shared a new presentation that “provides a brief summary of CBO’s long-term projections of federal health care spending, the distribution of federal subsidies for health care, the drivers of cost growth in health care, and options for reducing federal spending on health care.”

• The Internal Revenue Service released a fact sheet that “provides answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) addressing the tax treatment of work-life referral services (sometimes also called caregiver or caretaker navigation services) provided by an employer to an employee. Under certain circumstances, the value of such referral services can be excluded from gross income and employment taxes as a de minimis fringe benefit.”

From the public health and medical research front,

• The AP reports,
  • “It’s easier than ever for doctors to prescribe a key medicine for opioid addiction since the U.S. government lifted an obstacle last year. But despite the looser restrictions and the ongoing overdose crisis, a new study finds little change in the number of people taking the medication.
  • “Researchers analyzed prescriptions filled by U.S. pharmacies for the treatment drug buprenorphine. The number of prescribers rose last year after doctors no longer needed to get a special waiver to prescribe the drug, while the number of patients filling prescriptions barely budged.
  • “Buprenorphine, which helps with cravings, comes in a pill or film that dissolves under the tongue. It costs about $100 a month. A common version of buprenorphine is Suboxone. Nurse practitioners, physician assistants and doctors can prescribe it.
  • “People think this is a very complicated medicine and that it requires some sort of complex knowledge to use, when that’s just not the case,” said Dr. Ryan Marino of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland who has treated hundreds of people with buprenorphine. He had no role in the study.”

• MedPage Today lets us know,
  • “Taste dysfunction was gone 1 year after exposure to COVID-19, but smell loss remained for some people, a national cross-sectional study showed.
  • “Empirically measured taste function didn’t differ between individuals who had acute SARS-CoV-2 infection a year earlier and uninfected people, reported Shima Moein, MD, PhD, of Sensonics International in New Jersey and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and co-authors.
  • “However, olfactory dysfunction was present in 30.3% of individuals with prior COVID-19 compared with 21% of those who had no history of COVID infection (OR 1.64, 95% CI 1.18-2.27), Moein and colleagues noted in JAMA Network Open.
  • “Long-term taste loss after COVID may reflect damage to olfactory epithelium, not taste buds, the researchers suggested. Olfactory deficits were greatest for those diagnosed with COVID when the original untyped and Alpha viral variants were prevalent.
  • “Our study sheds light on a critical yet often overlooked aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic: the pervasive impact of smell loss on affected individuals,” Moein told MedPage Today. “Despite its prevalence, smell loss has remained largely neglected by healthcare professionals and policymakers, leading to a lack of awareness and support for affected individuals.”
• and
  • “A majority of pregnant individuals or those trying to become pregnant were interested in getting a maternal respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine once it became available, a nationwide survey found.
  • “Of 1,528 respondents, 54% said they were “very likely” to get an RSV vaccine during pregnancy, Jennifer Saper, MD, of the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, and colleagues reported in Pediatrics.
  • “I am excited by the findings that over half of pregnant, or trying-to-be-pregnant people are interested in the RSV vaccine in pregnancy,” Saper told MedPage Today in an email. “This means to me that there are a lot of opportunities to try to protect infants against RSV.”

• The Dana Farber Cancer Institute shares five things to know about advances in the treatment of multiple myeloma.

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• Per BioPharma Dive,
  • “Bristol Myers Squibb will cut 6% of its workforce in a restructuring meant to save $1.5 billion in costs by the end of next year. 
  • “The layoffs will affect some 2,200 employees, the company said Thursday. It’s also trimming its pipeline of experimental medicines, consolidating its array of offices and laboratories and reducing “third party” spending.
  • “Our focus remains on strengthening the company’s long-term growth profile,” said company CEO Christopher Boerner, in a statement on the restructuring, which was announced alongside earnings for the first quarter.” 
• and
  • “AstraZeneca’s revenue and profits grew at a rapid clip over the first three months of the year, beating Wall Street expectations as use of the British drugmaker’s flagship cancer drugs widened. 
  • “Total company revenue climbed 17% to $12.7 billion and operating profit jumped 22% to $3.1 billion, compared to the first quarter last year, the company said.
  • “Both the revenue and profit figures surpassed consensus forecasts by 7%, according to a note from Leerink Partners analyst Andrew Berens. The strong earnings were a recovery from the fourth quarter, when lower-than-expected sales and higher costs meant AstraZeneca missed profit estimates.”

• Per Fierce Healthcare,
  • “Evernorth’s Accredo arm will make a Humira biosimilar available to patients with no out-of-pocket costs, the company announced Thursday.
  • “Accredo is the specialty pharmacy segment within Evernorth Health Services, which also houses Express Scripts, eviCore data analytics and MDLIVE telehealth services. [Cigna owns Evernorth.] Beginning this June, the low- and high-concentration biosimilar will be produced for Evernorth’s private label distributor, Quallent Pharmaceuticals, in partnership with multiple manufacturers. * * *
  • “Most patients will be able to secure the biosimilar products for $0 out-of-pocket through the copay assistance programs offered at Quallent beginning in June, Evernorth said.”
• and
  • “Walgreens is expanding its specialty pharmacy services to offer gene and cell therapy services, supported by a dedicated 18,000-square-foot center in Pittsburgh, the company announced Thursday.
  • “The service is part of the retail pharmacy company’s newly integrated business unit, Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy, that rolls up all its specialty pharmacy segment assets, including AllianceRx. The new business, formerly called AllianceRx Walgreens Pharmacy, is under the Walgreens U.S. retail pharmacy segment.
  • “Walgreens said its integrated model enables it to work with payers, health plans and pharma with a specialty pharmacy offering independent of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).”

• Beckers Health IT informs us,
  • “UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Virtual Care is shutting down, Endpoints News reported April 24.
  • “News of the closure of the company’s telehealth business came shortly after Optum employees took to social media beginning April 18 regarding a reduction in force they say occurred across the organization.
  • “Virtual care has been and will continue to be a core part of our comprehensive, integrated care delivery model designed to provide care to people where, when and how they prefer,” an Optum spokesperson told Becker’s. “We continually review the capabilities and services we offer to meet the growing and evolving needs of our businesses and the people we serve. As always, we will support affected team members with job placement resources and seek to deploy them where possible to any open roles within the company.”