The Handoff: Your Week in Endocrinology News – 7/21/17

The Handoff is a weekly roundup of endocrinology and general medicine news covering various developments in subspecialties, as well as pharmaceutical industry, association, and society news.

–With advancing medical technology, a new realm of legal debate has opened up: how can data collected by our medical devices — implantable or not — be used against us in a court of law? Slate investigates.

–A powerful project from ProPublica shares the narratives of 120 of the estimated 700 to900 US women who died from pregnancy-related causes in 2016. The sprawling effort is collecting obituaries, photographs, and stories to spotlight the failing state of maternal care throughout the country.

—Aldosterone may play a role in alcohol use disorder, according to a study conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, included non-human primates, rats, and humans. In the human study, researchers found that blood aldosterone concentrations were higher in individuals who drank during a 12-week period vs those who did not.

–Even moderate weight gain can increase heart failure risk, according to research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association and reported by AHA News. The study’s senior author emphasized that “any weight gain” can result in “detrimental” changes to the heart.

–A New York Times opinion piece offers alternatives to a $26,000 — often uninsured — weight loss procedure that has been derided by critics as “medically sanctioned bulimia.”

–Following the 2016 International Turner Syndrome Meeting, updated management guidelines have been published in the European Journal of Endocrinology. Five areas, including diagnostic and genetic issues, growth and development, congenital and acquired cardiovascular disease, transition to adult care, and comorbidities and neurocognitive issues, were addressed.