Healthcare & Laboratory News

The New York Times (3/24) reports that 23andMe filed for bankruptcy late Sunday night and announced the resignation of CEO Anne Wojcicki “after months of uncertainty over its business model and mounting concerns about the security of the troves of customer data it holds.” In a statement, 23andMe said it “intends to continue operating during the sale process, with no changes to the way it stores, manages or protects customer data.” The company was trading “at less than $50 million last week, before the bankruptcy filing.” One reason for declining earnings “was attributed to fewer test kits being ordered. That came after a data breach in 2023, in which hackers appeared to target Jewish and Chinese customers, and gained access to personal information from nearly seven million profiles.” A subsequent class-action lawsuit “accused the company of failing to notify those customers that they had been targeted.” The AP (3/24, Grantham-Philips) reports Wojcicki, who co-founded 23andMe nearly two decades ago, will step down as CEO effective immediately but remain on its board. Her resignation “comes just weeks after a board committee rejected a nonbinding acquisition proposal from Wojcicki, who has been trying to take the company private.” Reuters (3/23, Shah, Kalia, Misra) reported public officials, including California Attorney General Rob Bonta, “had questioned what would happen to the genetic data collected by 23andMe, though the company’s privacy policies say that the data could be sold to other firms. The company said the bankruptcy process will not affect how it stores, manages or protects customer data.” Nevertheless, Bonta “urged customers to delete their genetic data, citing 23andMe’s financial distress.” Also reporting are the Washington Post (3/24), the Wall Street Journal (3/24, Winkler, Kao, Subscription Publication), Bloomberg (3/24, Suhartono, Subscription Publication), the Los Angeles Times (3/24, Petrow-Cohen), CBS News (3/24, Dakss), NBC News (3/24, Capoot), and STAT (3/24, Mast, Subscription Publication).

Healio (3/24, Stulpin) reports that an analysis by WHO and UNICEF “revealed that measles cases topped 127,350 across Europe in 2024, doubling the cases from 2023 and marking the highest number of measles cases reported since 1997.” More than half of those cases “required hospitalization, and preliminary data provided by WHO and UNICEF show 38 deaths were reported.” Health experts attributed the rise in measles cases “to a backsliding in immunization coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Dragan Jankovic, MD, technical officer for WHO’s Vaccine-preventable Diseases and Immunization Program, stated, “Viruses do not respect borders, and the measles virus in particular is extremely contagious. Every measles outbreak is an opportunity for the virus to spread within and beyond a country or region.”

Reuters (3/24, Le Poidevin) reports the United Nations AIDS agency warned Monday that there “could be 2,000 new HIV infections a day across the world and a ten-fold increase in related deaths if funding frozen by the United States is not restored or replaced.” The disruption to health funding and the impact on broader services has had “a devastating impact on people living with HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima told reporters in Geneva.” She said, “This sudden withdrawal of US funding has been shutting down many clinics, laying off thousands of health workers. ... All this means that we expect to see new infections rising. UNAIDS has estimated that we could see 2,000 new infections every day.”

Reuters (3/24, Sunny, Choudhury) reports the World Health Organization said Monday that TB infections “among children in the European region rose 10% in 2023, indicating ongoing transmission and the need for immediate public health measures to control the spread.” WHO’s European region, consisting of 53 countries, “reported more than 7,500 cases among children under 15 years of age in 2023, an increase of over 650 cases compared to 2022.” Hans Henri Kluge, WHO’s Regional Director for Europe, said, “The worrying rise in children with TB serves as a reminder that progress against this preventable and curable disease remains fragile.” The WHO previously warned “that funding cuts from global donors will undo progress in controlling TB infections across low- and middle-income countries. These cuts can hurt TB programs in non-EU countries, fuelling a rise of hard-to-treat strains, the agency said.”

Politico (3/21, Gardner) reported the Trump Administration is “considering killing some panels of outside experts that advise the CDC on key health threats like HIV and avian flu,” according to an email sent to CDC leaders Friday. The advisory committees “offer the CDC guidance from outside experts on an array of subjects on which the agency makes recommendations.” Friday’s email said CDC leaders would need to justify keeping the committees by 10 p.m., but a follow-up email said that “no response is required at this time.” It is “unclear whether the second email means HHS is no longer planning to terminate the committees right away, or whether HHS will terminate them regardless of the CDC’s response.”

Politico (3/23, Paun) reports the Trump Administration’s “decision to suddenly halt and then terminate most U.S. foreign aid” may jeopardize the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), “the program President George W. Bush created to combat HIV and AIDS in the developing world.” Since late February, the Administration “has terminated hundreds of millions of dollars in PEPFAR grants and contracts.” The aid cuts have “alarmed public health advocates.” Over 500 AIDS physicians and researchers warned in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio that a “sudden end to PEPFAR could kill six million people in the next four years, reverse decades of progress and lead to growing HIV epidemics across the world.” Nevertheless, the 2003 law that established PEPFAR is set to expire March 25 “with no indication it’ll be renewed anytime soon.”

The New York Times (3/21, Rosenbluth) reported that as containment efforts “falter,” the measles outbreak in West Texas is “likely to persist for a year, perhaps even setting back the country’s hard-fought victory over the virus, according to Texas health officials.” Some physicians in West Texas “said in interviews that they had given up hope that a vaccination campaign could end the outbreak.” Katherine Wells, director of public health in Lubbock, said mandates are deeply unpopular in Texas, so the vaccination effort has “been a struggle.” As of Friday, the outbreak had “sickened more than 300 people in Texas since January; 40 have been hospitalized.” In New Mexico, officials have “reported 42 cases and one death. In Oklahoma, there have been four probable measles cases.” Reuters (3/21, Satija, S K) reported measles cases in Texas and New Mexico rose to 351 as of Friday, “an increase of 34 infections” in three days. The number of cases in the two states has already eclipsed last year’s count of 285 infections nationwide, according to CDC data. In addition, the CDC said that, as of Thursday, a total of 378 confirmed measles cases were reported by 18 jurisdictions, but these figures “do not reflect the update from Texas and New Mexico on Friday.” NBC News (3/21, Edwards) reported that nearly all of the Texans “who have gotten sick have been children and teenagers never vaccinated against the virus.” In New Mexico, 20 of the infected people “were ages 18 or older, eight were 4 or younger.” The AP (3/21, Shastri, Pananjady) reported that a “silver lining” of the outbreak is that “more people have received a measles, mumps and rubella vaccination this year in Texas and New Mexico...compared to last year – even if it’s not as high” as health experts would like. Furthermore, “pharmacies across the U.S., especially in Texas, are seeing more demand for MMR shots.”

The AP (3/21, Stobbe) reported that tuberculosis “continued to rise again in the U.S. last year, reaching its highest levels in more than a dozen years.” More than 10,300 cases were reported in 2024, “an 8% increase from 2023 and the highest since 2011, according to preliminary data posted this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” CDC officials “say the rise is...mainly due to international travel and migration,” as the “vast majority of U.S. TB cases are diagnosed in people born in other countries.”

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