HJNO Jul/Aug 2025

60 JUL / AUG 2025  I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS   Healthcare Briefs that doesn’t justify the political power they now wield—or the willingness of politicians to accept it. Why does an industry meant to heal need to line the pockets of lawmakers? And why have we, as a citizenry, accepted a system so easily set up for influence by companies that make billions? Is this why we’re the most medicated population on Earth? In a press conference May 12th, President Trump issued an Executive Order that says he will get drug prices “down 60, 70, 80, 90%. But actu- ally more than that, if you think about it in the way mathematically.” He said he called Senate and House leaders, John Thune and Mike Johnson, to tell them they would have to “score that your cost for Medicaid and Medicare and just basically pharmaceuticals and drugs is going down at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” which will pay for the Golden Dome, to keep us safe. Trump continued, “So today, Americans spend 70% more for prescription drugs than we spent in the year 2000. Think of that. Our country has the highest drug prices anywhere in the world by sometimes a factor of 5, 6, 7, 8 times. It's not like they're slightly higher. They're 6, 7, 8 times. There are even cases of 10 times higher, so that you go 10 times more expensive for the same drug. That's big numbers. Even though the United States is home to only 4% of the world's popula- tion, pharmaceutical companies make more than two-thirds of their profits in America. So think of that. With 4% of the population, the pharmaceu- tical companies make most of their money, most of their profits from America. That's not a good thing.” Trump explained that “middle men,” presum- ably Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), will be cut out by the order. “To accelerate these price restrictions and reductions, my administration will also cut out the middlemen. We're going to totally cut out the famous middlemen. Nobody knows who they are, middlemen. I've been hear- ing the term for 25 years, middlemen. I don't know who they are, but they're rich, that I can tell you. We're going to cut out the middlemen and facilitate the direct sale of drugs at the most favored-nation price directly to the American cit- izen. So we're cutting out probably the middle- men, that's so important, right? They got to do that. They're worse than the drug companies. They don’t even make a product and they make a fortune. Got very smart business people, that I can tell you.” Trump said the U.S. will open to “safe and legal imports of affordable drugs from other countries, putting dramatic downward pressure on prices and, if necessary, we'll investigate the drug com- panies, and we'll in particular, investigate the countries that are doing this and we will add it onto the price that we charge them for doing business in America. In other words, we'll add it on to tariffs if they don't do what is right, which is everybody should equalize, everybody should pay the same price. And special interests may not like this very much, but the American people will. ”I'm doing this against the most powerful lobby in the world, probably, the drug lobby, drug and pharmaceutical lobby. But it's one of the most important orders, I think, that's ever been signed, certainly with regard to healthcare or health in the history of our country,” Trump concluded. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, added remarks about the power of the pharmaceutical lobby: “Congress is controlled in so many ways by the pharmaceutical industry. There's at least one pharmaceutical lobbyist for every congressman, every senator in Capitol Hill and every member of the Supreme Court; some estimates, three pharmaceutical companies, the industry itself spends three times what the next largest lobby- ist spends on lobbying. So this was an issue that people talked about, but nobody wanted to do anything because it was radioactive. They knew you couldn't get it by Congress. We now have a president who is a man of his word, who has the courage. President Trump was taking money from the pharmaceutical industry, too. I think they gave you a hundred million dollars. But he can't be bought, unlike most of the politicians in this country.” While many applauded the thought, industry insiders questioned what teeth an executive order has without legislation. New BrainMapping Technique Sheds Light on Alzheimer’s Development Researchers at Tulane University have created a subcellular map of an area of the brain commonly affected by Alzheimer’s disease. The study, published in Nature Communica- tions , illuminated the genetic mechanisms that cause the loss of brain cells that allow the dis- ease to progress and identified a key protein as a potential target for treatment. The researchers used stereo sequencing to examine a small section of the prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for decision-making and emotional control, in six brains at varying stages of Alzheimer’s. This technology allowed them to “map” the brain tissue at nearly 250 times the resolution of older tools, essentially zooming in to reveal genetic interactions within a single cell and how those shift as the disease progresses. The study found that genetic modules tasked with protecting neurons weaken or disappear in Alzheimer’s patients, allowing harmful proteins linked to the disease to build up and damage cells.Researchers identified a protein, ZNF460, as crucial to these modules’ neuroprotective pro- cesses and as a potential target for treatment. Tulane Researchers Use AI to Improve Diagnosis of Drug-resistant Infections Tulane University scientists have developed a new artificial intelligence–based method that more accurately detects genetic markers of anti- biotic resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculo- sis (MtB) and Staphylococcus aureus, potentially leading to faster and more effective treatments. A Tulane study, published in Nature Commu- nications , introduces a new Group Association Model (GAM) that uses machine learning to iden- tify genetic mutations tied to drug resistance. Unlike traditional tools, which can mistakenly link unrelated mutations to resistance, GAM doesn’t rely on prior knowledge of resistance mecha- nisms, making it more flexible and able to find previously unknown genetic changes. “Current genetic tests might wrongly classify bacteria as resistant, affecting patient care,” said lead author Julian Saliba, a graduate student in the Tulane University Center for Cellular and Molecular Diagnostics. “Our method provides a clearer picture of which mutations actually cause resistance, reducing misdiagnoses and unneces- sary changes to treatment.” n