Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of May 19, 2025

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of May 19, 2025–May 23, 2025.

The New York Times (5/18, Nunn) reports a pair of surgeons from UCLA and USC performed the first human bladder transplant earlier this month “on a 41-year-old man who had lost much of his bladder capacity from treatments for a rare form of bladder cancer.” Previously, “most patients who undergo a bladder removal have a portion of their intestine repurposed to help them pass urine” and replaced with an ileal conduit or a pouch “tucked inside the body that attached to the urethra.” One of the most challenging aspects of “transplanting a bladder was the complex vascular infrastructure. The surgeons needed to operate deep inside the pelvis of the donor to capture and preserve a rich supply of blood vessels so the organ could thrive inside the recipient.” The surgeons “plan to perform bladder transplants in four more patients as part of a clinical trial to get a sense of outcomes like bladder capacity and graft complications before pursuing a larger trial to expand its use.”

MedPage Today (5/19) reports a retrospective cohort study found the “use of antibiotics in patients hospitalized with non-severe COVID-19 was not associated with better outcomes.” Researchers observed that “among more than half a million U.S. patients with COVID, those given antibiotics on their first day of hospitalization had a slightly higher rate of deterioration or death compared with those who didn’t receive antibiotics (20.8% vs 18.4%).” They noted the “difference didn’t meet criteria for being of clinical significance. However, a propensity-matched analysis did show a significantly higher odds of poor clinical outcomes for those who received antibiotics.” Researchers concluded, “Hopefully, studies like this will reduce this uncertainty and improve judicious antibiotic use, thus helping in the fight against antibiotic resistance.” The study was published in JAMA Network Open.

Healio (5/20, Buzby) reports, “Increased dietary fiber was associated with reduced likelihood of stroke, especially small-vessel stroke, in addition to reduced all-cause mortality and improved poststroke survival, researchers” found. The investigators came to this conclusion after conducting an analysis that “included participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 1999 to 2018 who self-reported receiving a previous diagnosis of stroke from a health care professional.” The findings were published in Stroke.

You may also be interested in: What doctors wish patients knew about the deadly risk of stroke

HealthDay (5/21, Thompson) reports a study found that “nearly 9 of 10 teenagers have experienced cyberbullying.” According to the study’s survey of nearly 2,700 U.S. middle- and high-school students, “the most common forms of cyberbullying reported by adolescents were mean or hurtful online comments (56%); exclusion (53%); online rumors (53%); embarrassment or humiliation (50%); repeated unwanted contact via text or online (42%); and direct threats through text or direct messages (38%).” The results indicate “that even subtle forms of cyberbullying can cause psychological harm.” Researchers said, “We were surprised to find that no single type of cyberbullying caused more harm than others; all carried a similar risk of traumatic outcomes.” The study was published in BMC Public Health.

CNN (5/16, Howard) reported that the FDA “has given marketing clearance to a blood test to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, making the test the first to get signoff to aid in the early detection of the disease in the” U.S. This “test, called the Lumipulse G pTau217/ß-Amyloid 1-42 Plasma Ratio, is for adults 55 and older who are showing signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, the FDA announced.”

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