What We’re Reading: Abortion Pill Restrictions; Rising Infant Mortality Rate; Shot Provides HIV Protection

GOP States’ Abortion Pill Restriction Efforts Rebuffed by Appeals Court

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that a group of Republican-led states do not have legal standing to try to get a court to ban prescribing the abortion pill mifepristone via telemedicine or dispensing it by mail, according to Reuters. In the ruling, a unanimous 3-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals found that the states, namely Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah, cannot demonstrate that they were injured by the FDA’s decision to remove an in-person dispensing requirement for the drug. This ruling upheld a Washington federal court order, where the 7 states asked it to oppose a lawsuit by 12 Democratic attorney generals seeking to lift existing mifepristone restrictions and block any new ones. These lawsuits came after last month's Supreme Court decision that preserved mifepristone access; however, the Supreme Court did not rule on the case’s underlying merits, leaving mifepristone open to future challenges.

US Infant Mortality Rate Rose 3% in 2022, CDC Says

A recent federal report found that the US infant mortality rate increased by 3% in 2022, according to ABC News. Researchers from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics analyzed linked birth and death data sets from the National Vital Statistics System. They found that the infant mortality rate increased from 5.44 infant deaths per 1000 live births in 2021 to 5.61 deaths per 1000 live births in 2022; this equates to 20,577 infant deaths reported in 2022. Therefore, the infant mortality rate is up 3% from 2021, marking the second year of increases. Compared to other racial and ethnic groups, the mortality rate increased for infants born to American Indian/Alaska Native women, White women, and Dominican women in 2022. However, infants of Black women had the highest mortality rate at 10.90 per 1000 live births in 2022.

Study: Twice-a-Year Shot Provides 100% HIV Protection

A recent study found that a twice-yearly injection could prevent 100% of HIV infections, according to the Washington Post. The randomized trial of more than 5000 young women and girls in Uganda and South Africa determined that none of those who received the prevention shots, lenacapavir, contracted HIV. Annually, there are about 1.3 million new HIV infections worldwide, with women and girls accounting for 44% of them; in sub-Saharan Africa, young women and girls make up 62% of new infections. Therefore, if widely distributed at a low cost, lenacapavir could dramatically reduce new HIV infections worldwide. The shots were produced by drugmaker Gilead Sciences, which also funded the trial. The goal of the trial was to prove its safety and efficacy for HIV infection prevention in adolescent girls and young women; a separate trial for men is underway.