Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Sept. 8, 2025–Sept. 12, 2025.
Scammers using AI to impersonate physicians, fraudulently sell unproven health products
The New York Times (9/5, A1, Myers, Callahan, Rosenbluth) reported videos powered by artificial intelligence are imitating physicians and their voices to present medical information. The posts are “part of a global surge of frauds hijacking the online personas of prominent medical professionals to sell unproven health products or simply to swindle gullible customers, according to the doctors, government officials and researchers who have tracked the problem.” While health care has “long attracted quackery, AI tools developed by Big Tech are enabling the people behind these impersonations to reach millions online—and to profit from them. The result is seeding disinformation, undermining trust in the profession and potentially endangering patients.”
Prevalence of mild, moderate, and severe OSA in U.S. adults are each expected to rise by 2050, research suggests
Healio (9/8, Hornick) reports, “The prevalence of mild, moderate and severe obstructive sleep apnea in U.S. adults are each expected to rise by 2050, according to” research. Through the use of “an open cohort dynamic population simulation model that factored in changes in age, sex and BMI, researchers found an expected 34.7% relative rise in mild OSA...prevalence by 2050,” which “means 76.6 million U.S. adults aged 30 to 69 years in the U.S. will have mild OSA.” Meanwhile, “in terms of more severe OSA, the study reported a 37.3% expected relative rise in moderate OSA...by 2050...and a 44.1% expected relative rise in severe OSA...by 2050.” The findings were published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
Online blood pressure measurement images are often inaccurate, study finds
HealthDay (9/9, Thompson) reports, “Folks figuring out how to take their blood pressure at home might be tempted to use online stock photos to see how it’s done—but they really shouldn’t, a new study warns.” Investigators “analyzed more than 1,100 images found on 11 major online stock photo sites using the term ‘blood pressure check.’” Just “14% of those images depicted people properly checking their blood pressure in the correct posture and with the right device.” The findings were published in Hypertension.
You may also be interested in: 4 big ways BP measurement goes wrong and how to tackle them.
Study finds chronic disease deaths have fallen globally, despite slowed progress
The New York Times (9/10, Agrawal) reports a study published Wednesday in The Lancet found that global deaths due to “noncommunicable” conditions like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes “have been declining in most countries—but the pace of that decline, including in high-income countries like the United States, has slowed in recent years. The probability of dying from a chronic disease between birth and age 80 dropped in about 150 countries from 2010 to 2019.” But compared to the prior decade, “there was a widespread slowdown—in some cases, even a reversal—in progress.” Notably, the overall probability of dying from a chronic disease in the U.S. “fell markedly between 2001 and 2010 but remained nearly flat over the following nine years. Among younger adults (20 to 45 years old), this probability increased—a rarity among high-income countries. The chance of dying specifically from neuropsychiatric conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and alcohol and drug use disorders also rose in the United States during this period.”
CNN (9/10, Howard) reports that overall, the data “showed that from 2010 to 2019, chronic disease deaths declined in about 80% of the world’s countries, home to more than 70% of the global population.” Among the 25 high-income Western countries in the study, “Denmark had the largest decline in chronic disease deaths, while the United States had the smallest, and Germany did only slightly better than the United States.”
Single exercise session can increase levels of molecules that slow breast cancer cell growth, study shows
The Washington Post (9/11, Reynolds) reports, “Exercising muscles pumps out substances that can suppress the growth of breast cancer cells, according to an important new study of exercise and cancer.” The study “involved 32 women who’d survived breast cancer. After a single session of interval training or weightlifting, their blood contained higher levels of certain molecules, and those factors helped put the brakes on laboratory-grown breast cancer cells.” Furthermore, the study “offers clues about the specific types of exercise that may be most effective against malignancies and underscores just how potent a single session of exercise can be for health.” They found that “the cancer-fighting impacts were greatest with the blood drawn after interval training,” likely because “this blood contained the highest concentrations of certain, beneficial myokines, especially IL-6.” The study was published in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.
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