Science's Women's Health Issue Puts Female Pain and Menopause in the Frame

Yevgeniya Nusinovich, Sacha Vignieri, Joana Osório and Sarah Ross edited the issue as an all-female team.

STAT reported on 1 October that the editors cited political attacks on women's rights and health care, along with funding cuts, as urgent motives for the collection. They noted that the importance of clinical trials in women has gained recognition over the years and should remain a priority. This is especially true as funding cuts target women-specific research, threatening the quality of future healthcare. One review in the issue focuses on pain. Women experience functional pain at roughly twice the rate of men, and persistent pelvic pain often becomes debilitating in daily life. The review covers sex hormones, immune-neural interactions, the gut microbiome and the role of ovarian hormones, but also highlights how little is known about female pain.

"Women are desperately waiting for concrete answers that might help eliminate the common 'all in your head' approach to their illnesses," the review's authors wrote.

A second review argues that XX and XY chromosomes shape aging and disease so strongly that sex chromosomes should always be considered when developing precision medicine strategies. Other contributions call for rethinking menopause research and treatment around the individual patient, examine the immune system's role in pregnancy, and look at the ovary's postmenopausal function.

A survey redesign that drops disability questions

STAT also reported that a proposed redesign of the National Health Interview Survey would remove several disability-related questions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics proposed the overhaul in August. The survey has collected a broad range of Americans' health data since 1957. The adult questionnaire would shrink from 482 questions to 150. Questions on hearing aids, fatigue, cognition and mobility supports such as wheelchairs and scooters would be struck from the form. Roughly 25,000 households would receive a mailed questionnaire under the redesign. A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson declined to say why the disability questions were removed, but indicated the changes were driven by a push to lower data collection costs.

Katy Neas, CEO of the advocacy group The Arc, called the changes a "head-scratcher."

"If we don't have the government as a trusted source of data, asking questions about real people and what their real experiences are, we're never going to get better [health outcomes]," she said. Scott Landes, a sociology professor at Syracuse University, put it more bluntly: "You're making us choose between bad and worse." A recent paper co-authored by CDC statisticians suggests past surveys may have missed 75% of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Jean Hall, a disability scholar and professor emerita at the University of Kansas, told STAT the change would mean less is known about who is disabled in America and what their experiences are.

AI coding and a near $1 billion question

Also on 1 October, CNBC reported that the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association estimated hospitals' use of AI-assisted medical coding contributed to close to $1 billion, or $942 million, in additional costs for its health plans between 2023 and 2025.

BCBSA said much of the increase came from secondary diagnoses that moved patients into higher-paying reimbursement categories. Roughly 70%, or $653 million, was tied to additional diagnoses not accompanied by a change in care. "There is a clear disconnect between coding and treatment," the insurer's analysis stated. Luke Chalker, BCBSA's senior vice president of product and data science, told CNBC that multiple factors contribute to coding intensity, but that the findings suggest AI-enabled coding and documentation tools are playing a role. Christopher Whaley, a health economist at Brown University who studies hospital coding, said AI appears to be "accelerating, and in some sense making it easier to capture, the existing and underlying billing incentives that are in the system." He added that in many cases the diagnoses are legitimate and were not previously captured, while others "clinically just don't really matter and don't influence the patient's care." Endpoints News also covered the question on 1 October under the headline "Is AI jacking up healthcare costs?"

Small study, tentative signal on ultra-processed food

A small preliminary study from UC San Francisco published on 23 September in JAMA Psychiatry found that people with depression who sharply cut ultra-processed foods reported moderate to large improvements across three measures of depression. Anxiety scores improved modestly. The pilot included only 20 participants, with an average age of 44, and 70% were female. Participants cut their intake of ultra-processed foods by more than 85%.

Senior author Andrew Krystal said the study "successfully established the viability of carrying out this research in a larger-scale trial." Corresponding author Nyasha Chagwedera pointed to a possible mechanism: a "leaky, out-of-balance gut" that may create low-grade chronic inflammation. "In other words, junky processing may harm your gut in ways that ripple up to your brain," she said. Enrollment for a phase 2 study was expected to begin soon, according to ScienceDaily's write-up on 1 October.

Two other recent studies round out the picture. Research led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, published in JAMA Psychiatry and reported by ScienceDaily on 24 September, analyzed more than 2.1 million children and adolescents in Denmark. It found that young people diagnosed with ADHD or autism now resemble the general population more closely than those diagnosed a decade earlier. The gap for low birth weight, for example, fell from 54% to 17% over the study period.

Germany began issuing digital criminal record certificates on 1 October, heise reported. The PDF arrives in the BundID mailbox with a qualified electronic seal and a QR code. It costs the same 13 euros as the paper version and still cannot carry an apostille for use abroad. The Federal Office of Justice said some phone models, including the Samsung Galaxy A36 5G and A13 5G, have restrictions with the verification app.