Opinion | ‘Melatonin Is Not Equivalent to a Warm Glass of Milk’: What We Heard This Week

“Melatonin is not equivalent to a warm glass of milk.” — Pieter Cohen, MD, of Cambridge Health Alliance in Somerville, Massachusetts, discussing the high rate of mislabeled melatonin gummies.

“Doctors were much more neurotic than the other groups.” — Mehdi Ammi, PhD, health economist of Carleton University, in Canada, after finding that doctors tended to be more neurotic than patients and the general population, but were also more agreeable, conscientious, and extroverted.

“So that goes against the sort of narrative that cities are these dangerous places.” — Paul Reeping, PhD, of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City, discussing firearm death rates in rural and urban areas.

“So there’s patients who are out there thinking, ‘Gee, that’s a lot of money. Can I get by with something less expensive?'” — Richard Casaburi, MD, PhD, of Harbor UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California, on over-the-counter portable oxygen concentrators.

“This is disappointing, especially because there were a lot of policy and clinical efforts to maintain and expand access to buprenorphine during the COVID-19 pandemic.” — Kao-Ping Chua, MD, PhD, of the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, on how buprenorphine initiation rates flattened from 2016 to 2022.

“To be blunt: it feels like we are being punished for having a union.” — Aliza Grossberg, MD, MPH, third-year resident in psychiatry at Mount Sinai, after non-unionized residents got a 6% raise that unionized residents didn’t receive.

“I could imagine a risk of abnormal blood vessel or other undesired tissue growth in the eye after using such drops due to growth factors in the drops.” — Paul Knoepfler, PhD, of the University of California Davis, discussing the FDA’s safety communication about amniotic fluid eye drops being improperly marketed for dry eye disease.

“Establishing maximum wait times and secret shopper surveys to check on which providers are taking patients are both exciting steps.” — Joan Alker, MPhil, of Georgetown University, on the CMS’ new rules to bolster transparency and access to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.