Health
As RFK Jr. Champions Chronic Disease Prevention, Key Research Is Cut
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken of an “existential threat” that he said can destroy the nation.
“We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world,” Mr. Kennedy said at a hearing in January before the Senate confirmed him as the secretary of Health and Human Services.
And on Monday he is starting a tour in the Southwest to promote a program to combat chronic illness, emphasizing nutrition and lifestyle.
But since Mr. Kennedy assumed his post, key grants and contracts that directly address these diseases, including obesity, diabetes and dementia, which experts agree are among the nation’s leading health problems, are being eliminated.
These programs range in scale and expense. Researchers warn that their demise could mean lost opportunities to address an aspect of public health that Mr. Kennedy has said is his priority.
“This is a huge mistake,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
Decades of Diabetes Research Discontinued
Ever since its start in 1996, the Diabetes Prevention Program has helped doctors understand this deadly chronic disease. The condition is the nation’s most expensive, affecting 38 million Americans and incurring $306 billion in one recent year in direct costs. With about 400,000 deaths in 2021, it was the eighth leading cause of death.
The program has been terminated, and the reason has little to do with its merits. Instead, it seems to be a matter of a lead researcher’s working in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The program began when doctors at 27 medical centers received funding from the National Institutes of Health for a study asking whether Type 2 diabetes could be prevented. The 3,234 participants had high risk of the disease.
The results were a huge victory. Those assigned to follow a healthy diet and exercise routine regularly reduced their chances of developing diabetes by 58 percent. Those who took metformin, a drug that lowers blood sugar, decreased their risk by 31 percent.
The program entered a new phase, led by Dr. David M. Nathan, a diabetes expert at Harvard Medical School. Researchers followed the participants to see how they fared without the constant attention and support of a clinical trial. The researchers also examined their genetics and metabolism and looked at measures of frailty and cognitive function.
Several years ago, the investigators had an idea. Some studies suggested that people with diabetes had a higher risk of dementia. But scientists didn’t know if it was vascular dementia or Alzheimer’s or what the precise risk factors were. The diabetes program could renew its focus on investigating this with its 1,700 aging participants.
The group added a new principal investigator, the dementia expert Dr. Jose A. Luchsinger. For administrative reasons, including the newfound focus on dementia, the program decided its money should flow through Dr. Luchsinger’s home institution, Columbia University, rather than through Harvard or George Washington University, where a third principal investigator works.
On March 7, the Trump administration cut $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia, saying Jewish students were not protected from harassment during protests over the war in Gaza. The diabetes grant was among those terminated: $16 million a year that Columbia shared across 30 medical centers. The study ended abruptly.
Asked about the termination, Andrew G. Nixon, director of communications at the Department of Health and Human Services, provided a statement from the agency’s acting general counsel saying that “anti-Semitism is clearly inconsistent with the fundamental values that should inform liberal education” and that “Columbia University’s complacency is unacceptable.”
At the time their grant ended, the researchers had started advanced cognitive testing for evidence of dementia in patients, followed by brain imaging to look for amyloid, the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. They planned to complete the tests during the next two years.
Then, Dr. Luchsinger said, the group was going to look at blood biomarkers of amyloid and other signs of dementia, including brain inflammation. For comparison, they planned to perform the same tests on participants’ blood samples from 7 and 15 years ago.
“Very few studies have blood collected and stored going that far back,” Dr. Luchsinger said.
Now much of the work cannot begin, and the part that had started remains incomplete.
Another troubling question the researchers hoped to answer was whether metformin increases, decreases or has no effect on the risk of dementia.
“This is the largest and longest study of metformin ever,” Dr. Luchsinger said. Participants assigned to take the drug in the 1990s took it for more than 20 years.
“We thought we had the potential to put to rest this question about metformin,” Dr. Luchsinger said.
The only ways to save the program, Dr. Nathan said, are for Mr. Kennedy to agree to restore the funding at Columbia or to transfer the grant to a principal investigator at another medical center.
The study investigators are appealing to the diabetes caucus in Congress, hoping it can help make their case to the Health and Human Services.
“We hope the congressmen and senators might prevail and say: ‘This is crazy. This is chronic disease. This is what you wanted to study,’” Dr. Nathan said.
So far, there has been no change.
Include Diversity. Actually, That’s Too Much Diversity.
Compared with the Diabetes Prevention Program, a program to train pediatricians to become scientists is tiny. But pediatric researchers say that the Pediatric Scientist Development Program helps ensure that chronic childhood diseases are included in medical research.
It began 40 years ago when chairs of pediatric departments called for the creation of the program, which has been continually funded ever since by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Participants are clinicians who were trained in subspecialties like endocrinology and nephrology, practiced as clinicians and were inspired to go into research to help young patients with the diseases they had seen firsthand.
The highly competitive program pays for seven to eight pediatricians to train at university medical centers for a year, pairing them with mentors and giving them time away from the clinic to research conditions including obesity, asthma and chronic kidney disease.
In retrospect, the program’s fate was sealed in 2021 when its leaders applied for a renewal of their grant. It seemed pro forma. This was its eighth renewal.
This time, though, an external committee of grant reviewers told the investigators their proposal’s biggest weakness was a lack of diversity. The program needed to seek pediatricians who represented diverse ethnicities, economic backgrounds, states, types of research and pediatric specialties.
The critique said, for example, that “attention must be given to recruiting applicants from diverse backgrounds, including from groups that have been shown to be nationally underrepresented in the biomedical, behavioral, clinical and social sciences.”
So the program’s leaders sprinkled diversity liberally through a rewritten grant application.
“Diversity, in its broadest sense, was all over the grant,” said Dr. Sallie Permar, professor and chairwoman of pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of the program. “It was exactly what the reviewers appreciated when we resubmitted.”
The grant was renewed in 2023. Now it is terminated. The reason? Diversity.
The termination letter, from officials in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said there was no point in trying to rewrite the grant request. The inclusion of diversity made the application so out of line that “no modification of the project could align the project with agency priorities.”
Mr. Nixon, the health department spokesman, did not reply to queries about the pediatric program’s cancellation.
Participants in the program are distraught.
Dr. Sean Michael Cullen had been studying childhood obesity at Weill Cornell in New York. He has investigated why male mice fed a high-fat diet produced offspring that became fat, even when those offspring were fed a standard diet.
He hoped his findings would help predict in humans which children were at risk of obesity so pediatricians could try to intervene.
Now the funds are gone. He may seek private or philanthropic funding, but he doesn’t have any clear prospects.
Dr. Evan Rajadhyaksha is in a similar situation. He’s a childhood kidney disease specialist at Indiana University. When he was a resident, he cared for a little girl who developed kidney disease because of a condition in which some urine washes up from the bladder into the kidneys.
Dr. Rajadhyaksha has a hypothesis that vitamin D supplementation could protect children with this condition.
Now, that work has to stop. Without funding, he expects to leave research and return to clinical work.
Dr. Permar said she hadn’t given up. The program costs only $1.5 million each year, so she and her colleagues are looking for other support.
“We are asking foundations,” she said. “We are starting to ask industry — we haven’t had industry funding before. We are asking department chairs and children’s hospitals, are they willing to fund-raise?”
“We are literally looking under every couch cushion,” Dr. Permar said.
“But,” she said, federal support for the program “has been the foundation and cannot be supplanted.”
Health
Single infusion of controversial drug changed severe depression symptoms within hours, study finds
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People experiencing severe depression with suicidal symptoms may not have to wait weeks for traditional antidepressants to take effect.
A recent review suggests that a single intravenous ketamine infusion can provide rapid relief for some patients.
Originally developed as an anesthetic, ketamine is a medicine that can reduce pain and, in some cases, help treat depression, but it can also be misused as a recreational drug, experts warn.
SINGLE DOSE OF POWERFUL PSYCHEDELIC CUTS DEPRESSION SYMPTOMS IN CLINICAL STUDY
Researchers from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine reviewed 26 clinical trials that included more than 1,100 patients. Approximately 626 received ketamine and 540 served as controls who did not take the drug.
Most of the trials included patients with major depressive disorder, but 11.5% included those with bipolar depression and 7.7% included people with both unipolar and bipolar depressive diagnoses.
A recent review suggests that a single intravenous ketamine infusion can provide rapid relief for some patients with treatment-resistant depression. (iStock)
Compared to a placebo, a single treatment significantly reduced depression in just four hours and dramatically lowered suicidal thoughts within 24 hours, the study found.
Patients reported fewer depressive symptoms after a week and reduced suicidal thoughts for up to a month after one ketamine infusion. Those who received repeated ketamine infusions showed a similar reduction of suicidal and depressive symptoms at the end of the treatment.
WHAT IS KETAMINE THERAPY? MORMON REALITY STARS TOUT CONTROVERSIAL TREATMENT
The most common adverse effects of ketamine – including headaches, numbness, dissociation (“out of body” experiences), nausea, dizziness and visual disturbances – were temporary and resolved within hours of the infusion.
Rarer, more serious side events included hospitalization, suicide attempts and suicide, but most were unrelated to ketamine, the review stated.
The analysis was published in May in JAMA Psychiatry.
Treatment-resistant depression
Major depressive disorder is a formal psychiatric diagnosis affecting approximately 280 million people globally, according to recent research.
Effective treatment involves a combination of therapy and medication, frequently antidepressants. However, for a few patients, symptoms do not respond to multiple therapies, a condition known as treatment-resistant depression, doctors say.
“When all existing treatment options fail, patients with severe depression could consider ketamine infusions.”
These patients are at a higher risk of very serious, sometimes tragic consequences, including suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts and death.
“When all existing treatment options fail, patients with severe depression could consider ketamine infusions,” lead author Taeho Greg Rhee, PhD, of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, told Fox News Digital. “This is still a safer option when compared to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).”
Compared to a placebo, a single treatment significantly reduced depression in just four hours and dramatically lowered suicidal thoughts within 24 hours, the study found. (iStock)
Traditional antidepressants stabilize mood by slowly elevating serotonin levels in the brain, but it can take weeks for the full effect to be achieved.
Ketamine, in contrast, works rapidly by blocking glutamate, a neurotransmitter that can impact emotions negatively when levels are too high in the brain, according to Cleveland Clinic.
Implications for care
The authors say their findings have two important potential clinical applications.
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First, ketamine’s rapid effects can be a life-saving treatment in the emergency room for patients presenting with suicidal ideation.
Experts caution that the medication should only be administered in closely monitored settings, such as clinics, to ensure safe treatment. (iStock)
Second, the effects of a single ketamine infusion are relatively short-lived – as almost all patients relapsed with depressive symptoms after a single infusion – so those with treatment-resistant depression will need repeated sessions.
“While intravenous ketamine is not yet FDA-approved for treating depression, it may still be used with off-label indications for those with severe depression and/or with a high risk of suicidal behaviors,” said Rhee.
Experts urge caution despite promise
Dr. Lama Bazzi, a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City, has had several patients receive ketamine infusions.
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“For a small subset of patients in a major depressive episode or struggling with suicidal thoughts, intravenous ketamine can be genuinely lifesaving,” Bazzi, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital. “The relief they experience is almost immediate, offering them distance from the intensity of their emotions.”
However, she cautions that the medication should only be administered in closely monitored settings, such as clinics, to ensure safe treatment.
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Ketamine is not a panacea, Rhee agreed, warning of the potential risk of abuse and addiction.
“It should only be used medically,” he advised.
Ketamine’s rapid effects can be a life-saving treatment in the emergency room for patients presenting with suicidal ideation, some experts claim. (Getty Images)
Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News senior medical analyst, noted in previous comments to Fox News Digital that ketamine is increasingly being used to treat severe depression, but emphasized that it should be administered under careful medical supervision because of its potential risks.
Study limitations
Although the studies compared ketamine with a placebo, some patients may have realized they were receiving the drug. This could have influenced how they reported their symptoms and how effective they perceived the treatment to be, according to the researchers.
“It should only be used medically.”
Another limitation is the small sample size of the studies, which could make the effects seem disproportionately magnified.
Also, as this was a review of many different studies, it is challenging to apply the findings to the general population, the researchers noted.
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“While long-term outcomes have not been studied, I believe that when patients are severely depressed or suicidal, ketamine is sometimes the only choice that almost always works,” Bazzi added.
Anyone interested in exploring alternative depression treatments should first consult a doctor.
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Tick bite-related ER visits are at their highest seasonal levels since 2017 across most U.S. regions, raising concerns about increased Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.
That’s according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Tick Bite Tracker, which monitors weekly emergency department visits associated with tick bites across the country.
For every 100,000 ER visits, approximately 71 were related to tick bites in April 2026, compared to a historical seasonal average of roughly 30 per 100,000.
DOCTORS REVEAL KEY SIGNS OF LYME DISEASE AS TICK SEASON INTENSIFIES ACROSS US
Some of the highest rates of tick-based ER visits were among children younger than 10 years and adults between 70 and 79 years.
A close-up shows a parasitic mite in motion on a human fingertip, highlighting the potential for disease transmission such as encephalitis. (iStock)
“Over the past three decades, the geographic range of the blacklegged tick has expanded significantly, and with it, the risk of Lyme disease and other Ixodes-transmitted infections,” Dr. Steven Goldberg, a family medicine physician who practices urgent care and family medicine at UofLHealth in Louisville, Kentucky, told Fox News Digital.
‘RABBIT FEVER’ CASES RISING IN US AS CDC WARNS OF ZOONOTIC BACTERIAL DISEASE
“The Ohio River Valley region is one of the most striking examples — Lyme disease cases in Ohio have increased roughly 10-fold over the past decade, likely driven by the convergence of Northeastern and Upper Midwestern tick populations meeting in that corridor.”
States like Virginia and West Virginia, as well as areas south of the traditional endemic zone, are reporting increasing tick abundance and disease cases, the doctor noted.
“Over the past three decades, the geographic range of the blacklegged tick has expanded significantly.”
“The lone star tick is also expanding its range northward beyond its traditional stronghold in the Southeast, which means diseases like ehrlichiosis and alpha-gal syndrome are appearing in regions where clinicians may not yet be thinking about them,” he warned.
Some climate studies predict that the blacklegged tick’s suitable habitat could expand by over 200% by the end of the century, Goldberg noted, including into Canada and across the central and southern U.S.
What’s driving the spike?
“Warmer, wetter conditions allow ticks to survive in habitats that previously would have been too cold,” said Dr. Suraj Saggar, chief of infectious disease at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey. “Milder winters also extend the lifespan of both ticks and the animals they feed on, accelerating tick reproduction and shortening their life cycles.”
Areas that historically experienced longer, colder winters or significant snow cover are now more hospitable to ticks, the doctor noted.
COPPERHEAD SNAKE BITE LEAVES MAYOR’S WIFE IN ‘EXCRUCIATING PAIN,’ HE REVEALS
“As temperatures rise and precipitation patterns change, ticks are able to spread northward and thrive in new ecosystems,” he said.
Another contributing factor is increased land development and human expansion into wooded and grassy areas, as well as reforestation of formerly agricultural land.
“As temperatures rise and precipitation patterns change, ticks are able to spread northward and thrive in new ecosystems,” an expert said. (iStock)
“The recovery and expansion of white-tailed deer populations — critical hosts for adult blacklegged ticks — has been a major driver,” Goldberg added. “Deer density is positively associated with Lyme disease incidence. Small mammal communities, particularly white-footed mice that serve as key reservoir hosts for Borrelia burgdorferi, also play a central role.”
Tick-borne diseases
Tick bites are known to transmit numerous illnesses, the most widespread of which is Lyme disease, a bacterial infection.
“Lyme disease cases alone have increased roughly two- to threefold over the past 20 years,” Saggar said. Approximately 476,000 Americans are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year, per CDC surveillance data.
MOSQUITO-BORN DENGUE FEVER CASES SURGE AT POPULAR US VACATION DESTINATION
Also common are anaplasmosis and ehrlichiosis, two different types of bacterial infections, according to the doctor. Tick bites can also cause babesiosis, a malaria-like parasitic disease that infects and destroys red blood cells.
“Another growing concern is alpha-gal syndrome, a condition in which a (lone star) tick bite triggers a serious allergic reaction to red meat,” Saggar said. “In rare cases, people have died from anaphylactic reactions linked to alpha-gal syndrome following a tick bite.”
Some common symptoms of tick-borne illness include fever, chills, fatigue, headaches, muscle aches and joint pain. (iStock)
Ticks can also transmit viruses, including the Powassan virus, which can cause severe neurologic injury.
“Powassan virus disease is arguably the most concerning emerging tick-borne infection,” said Goldberg, who is also chief medical officer at HealthTrack. “It’s transmitted by the same blacklegged tick that carries Lyme disease, but unlike Lyme, it can be transmitted within minutes of tick attachment.”
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Powassan can cause severe encephalitis with a roughly 10% to 15% fatality rate, and more than half of survivors have lasting neurological deficits, Goldberg noted.
In the Rocky Mountain states, the Rocky Mountain wood tick (Dermacentor andersoni) transmits Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Colorado tick fever.
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“In the Southeast and South-Central U.S., the lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum) drives a different set of concerns: ehrlichiosis, tularemia, and two emerging viral threats — Heartland virus and Bourbon virus,” said Goldberg.
Symptoms to watch for
Some common symptoms of tick-borne illness include fever, chills, fatigue, headaches, muscle aches and joint pain, according to Saggar.
Another sign is the classic “bull’s-eye” rash associated with Lyme disease, known medically as “erythema migrans.”
“If you think you have been bitten by a tick, you should seek medical attention if you develop symptoms after a known tick bite or after spending time in tick-prone areas, especially during the spring, summer and fall.” (iStock)
“Because testing can sometimes be falsely negative early in the disease process, doctors may treat patients based on symptoms and exposure history rather than waiting for laboratory confirmation,” Saggar noted.
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“If you think you have been bitten by a tick, you should seek medical attention if you develop symptoms after a known tick bite or after spending time in tick-prone areas, especially during the spring, summer and fall.”
Preventing tick bites
As there are no vaccines currently available for any tick-borne disease in the U.S., prevention is the most effective strategy.
Goldberg shared the following recommended prevention strategies.
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- Use EPA-approved repellents, including DEET, picaridin, IR3535 or oil of lemon eucalyptus on exposed skin. Treat clothing and gear with permethrin (a synthetic insecticide and repellent) or purchase pre-treated clothing.
- Wear light-colored clothing (to spot ticks more easily), long sleeves and long pants tucked into socks when in wooded or grassy areas.
- After spending time outdoors, check your entire body, paying special attention to the scalp, behind the ears, armpits, groin and behind the knees, the doctor advised. It’s also recommended to shower within two hours of coming indoors.
- Tumble-dry clothing on high heat for at least 10 minutes to kill any ticks on clothing.
- Remove ticks promptly and properly. Using fine-tipped tweezers, grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible, and pull upward with steady, even pressure. Clean the bite area afterward.
Approximately 476,000 Americans are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year, per CDC data.
“The longer a tick is attached, the higher the risk of disease transmission — for Lyme disease, transmission generally requires at least 36 hours of attachment,” Goldberg said. “The Powassan virus can be transmitted much more quickly.”
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