From Washington, DC,

• According to the House of Representatives and Senate press galleries, each body will assemble before noon to adjourn the 118th Congress sine die and at noon will convene for the start of the 119th Congress.

• Govexec tells us,
  • “Current federal employees, retirees and others impacted by widespread breach of personal data maintained by the Office of Personnel Management took advantage of only a small portion of the money made available in a settlement agreement following the 2015 hack. 
  • “Plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit reached a settlement in 2022 with the government that made $63 million available for those who could demonstrate financial hardship as a result of the breach. A federal judge closed out the case last month after OPM and the Treasury Department doled out just $4.8 million to just more than 5,000 individuals. The remaining $58.2 million is set to go back to the Treasury on Thursday, according to court documents last month.” 

From the public health and medical research front,

• The Washington Post reports, “More children are getting kidney stones. Experts think it’s their diet.”
  • “Some research suggests that genetic predisposition may play a role, but experts say the increase more likely reflects dietary habits and lifestyle.
  • “A North Carolina doctor detected a potential culprit: salt-laden diets. Sodium intake has increased significantly among children in the past few decades.
  • “There is so much added salt to the American diet today, and when the kidney is excreting the sodium, it pulls calcium with it and increases the risk of calcium-based stones,” John S. Wiener, a pediatric urologist at Duke Health, said.”

• The American Medical Association discusses “Raw milk: Questions patients may have and how to answer.” Econtalk host Russ Roberts chats with Brown University economist Emily Oster about raw milk and similar public health issues in his latest podcast.

• HealthDay lets us know,
  •  “Alzheimer’s disease experts have updated their diagnosis guidelines for the first time in more than 20 years, laying out how family doctors and brain specialists can best detect dementia.
  • “The guidelines call for the use of three general criteria to assess a person’s brain health, according to a report published Dec. 23, 2024, in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia:
    • “The patient’s overall level of cognitive impairment
    • “Specific symptoms they’re suffering, which can involve memory, reasoning, language or mood
    • “Brain diseases most likely to be causing these symptoms
  • “These three areas of diagnosis were intentionally left broad, so that new tests can be incorporated into the guidelines as researchers learn more about dementia and Alzheimer’s, Dr. Alireza Atri, a lecturer on neurology at Harvard Medical School, said in a news release from the Alzheimer’s Association.”

• Per National Institutes of Health news releases,
  • “Based on new brain mapping research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), scientists have discovered that not all cell types in the brain age in the same way. They found that some cells, such as a small group of hormone-controlling cells, may undergo more age-related changes in genetic activity than others. The results, published in Nature, support the idea that some cells are more sensitive to the aging process and aging brain disorders than others.
  • “Aging is the most important risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease and many other devastating brain disorders. These results provide a highly detailed map for which brain cells may be most affected by aging,” said Richard J. Hodes, M.D., director of NIH’s National Institute on Aging. “This new map may fundamentally alter the way scientists think about how aging affects the brain and also provide a guide for developing new treatments for aging-related brain diseases.”
  • “Scientists used advanced genetic analysis tools to study individual cells in the brains of 2-month-old “young” and 18-month-old “aged” mice. For each age, researchers analyzed the genetic activity of a variety of cell types located in 16 different broad regions — constituting 35% of the total volume of a mouse brain.”
• and
  • ‘In a small clinical trial, a CAR T-cell therapy—a type of immunotherapy that uses a patient’s own immune cells to fight cancer—shrank tumors in several children and young adults with diffuse midline gliomas. This fast-growing form of brain and spinal cord cancer typically causes death within a year of diagnosis.
  • “In the trial, several participants were still alive 2 years or more after receiving the treatment.” * * *
  • “This study breaks new ground,” said study co-investigator Crystal L. Mackall, M.D., of Stanford Medicine. “It demonstrates that CAR T cells can have real, meaningful benefit for solid cancers, something that many people have not believed [was possible].”  
  • “In the trial, 9 of 11 patients who received the GD2 CAR T-cell therapy had neurological improvement. Of those, 7 had tumor shrinkage and in some cases the effects were quite dramatic. As patients’ tumors shrank, their symptoms improved and many regained physical functions they had lost from the disease, such as hearing, walking, and taste sensation. 
  • “Participants lived a median of nearly 2 years after treatment, with two patients still alive past the study’s 2.5-year follow-up period. One of these patients had a complete disappearance of his tumor and remains cancer free 4 years after his diagnosis. 
  • “It’s really remarkable,” said Rosandra N. Kaplan, M.D., of NCI’s Center for Cancer Research, who is also running a GD2 CAR T-cell therapy clinical trial but was not involved in this study. “This is a tumor for which nothing has ever worked. I think this is the start of a revolution in understanding how to treat these patients.”   

• The Hill reported yesterday
  • “Broccoli sold at Walmart stores in 20 states has been recalled.
  • “Braga Fresh last week issued a voluntary and precautionary advisory for 12-ounce bags of Marketside Broccoli Florets that may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.” * * *
  • “According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which posted the advisory Tuesday, the pathogen can cause “serious and sometimes fatal infections” in young children, elderly people and others with weakened immune systems.” * * *
  • “It was distributed to stores in Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
  • “No illnesses have yet been reported in connection with the product, the advisory said.”

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• Modern Healthcare reports,
  • “Sanford Health closed its merger with Marshfield Clinic Health System on Wednesday.
  • “The combined system, led by Sanford President and CEO Bill Gassen, has more than $10 billion in revenue and operates 56 hospitals across seven states, in addition to two health plans with roughly 425,000 members. It has almost 56,000 employees, including about 13,000 employees from Marshfield, according to a Thursday news release.“
• and
  • “CareSource has completed its acquisition of Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative, the nonprofit health insurers announced in a news release Thursday.
  • “Privately held CareSource, which has 2 million Medicare, Medicaid and health insurance exchange members, gains 54,000 marketplace customers in Wisconsin through the deal. Common Ground CEO Cathy Mahaffey remains as chief executive of Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative and was named CareSource market president for the Badger State.”
  • “Common Ground had been one of three remaining member-owned cooperative health insurers supported with funding from the Affordable Care Act of 2010.” * * *\
  • “Of the 23 co-ops that debuted on the exchanges in 2013, only Community Health Options in Maine and Mountain Health CO-OP in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are still in operation.”

• Beckers Hospital Review lists “the hospitals patients are most likely to recommend in every state using Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems data from CMS.”
  
• Beckers Payer Issues identifies the fifteen insurers exiting Medicare Advantage markets in 2025.

• BioPharma Dive points out “ten clinical trials to watch in the first half of 2025. Expected readouts in diabetes, cancer and depression headline a series of study results that could help the biotechnology sector regain its footing after a shaky year.”

• Forbes reports,
  • “The anti-obesity drug Zepbound made by Eli Lilly & Co. could be one of the biggest cost drivers for health insurers, employers and government health programs that cover it this year.
  • “Already, GLP-1 weight loss prescriptions Wegovy, Rybelsus and Saxenda—along with Ozempic—are the “single biggest driver” of employer health costs, adding 1% to the total premium expense for 2025, data released last fall from the benefits consultancy Aon said.
  • ‘These GLP-1 drugs are adding to general healthcare inflation that is projected to increase employer-sponsored health insurance coverage by 9%, eclipsing $16,000 per employee in 2025. The spike in premiums, which is higher than the 6.4% increase employers faced in 2024 and in 2023, comes before any “cost savings strategies” are implemented, Aon said.
  • “But a new report from GlobalData indicates Zepbound is poised to overtake other GLP-1 drugs.
  • “Zepbound’s superior efficacy and strategic market expansion suggest that the drug will dominate the obesity market, surpassing Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy (semaglutide),” GlobalData said in a report the market research firm released Tuesday.”

• Per BioPharma Dive,
  • “Neumora Therapeutics, a well-funded biotechnology company, lost more than 80% of its value Thursday because its most advanced drug failed a major test.
  • “After seeing positive signs in a smaller study in 2023, Neumora pushed the drug into a trio of late-stage clinical trials to evaluate it as a treatment for the most common type of depression. The company just released data from the first of those trials, which found the drug no better than a placebo at alleviating depression.
• and
  • “Pfizer won’t move forward with asking regulators to approve a gene therapy for hemophilia A and instead will hand back rights to development partner Sangamo Therapeutics in a blow to the California-based biotechnology company. In a Dec. 30 statement, Sangamo CEO Sandy Macrae said his company was “surprised and extremely disappointed” by Pfizer’s decision, which comes some five months after the treatment met its goal in a Phase 3 study of people with the inherited bleeding disorder. Sangamo plans to search for an “optimal path” forward, which could include partnering with another company. Pfizer has steadily retreated from gene therapy, although it sells a hemophilia B gene therapy called Beqvez that it obtained from Spark Therapeutics.”
• and
  • “After many years of effort, Novartis has obtained positive results from a Phase 3 study for a form of its spinal muscular atrophy gene therapy Zolgensma that’s delivered via spinal injection rather than intravenous infusion. Data from the study, called Steer, showed treatment improved motor abilities in people with the neuromuscular disease who were two years of age or older and could still sit but had never walked independently. U.S. regulators suspended testing of the intrathecal formulation in late 2019 over safety concerns, but in August 2021 permitted Novartis to begin the Steer study. Novartis plans to share the new data with health authorities to support approval of the gene therapy in a broader range of people with spinal muscular atrophy.”