I believe the children are our future … if our future includes malaria

It seems that kids have a secret superpower: They can carry the malaria parasite, be asymptomatic, and then pass it on to mosquitoes.

If you’re thinking, “Ha! Serves those skeeters right!” don’t. “Since this disease is passed from humans to mosquitoes and then back again, rather than from person to person, this finding is worrisome.”

The diabetes risk that sticks around

Gestational diabetes: Women who’ve had it are at high risk for type 2 diabetes even after 20 years (according to Finnish research).

The good news: Their risk of type 1 diabetes only lasts seven years.

Chromosomes: ready for their close-ups

If you woke up this morning and thought, “Yeah, but what do chromosomes really look like?” I’ve got some great news for you. Using multiplexed fluorescence in situ hybridisation and super-resolution microscopy*, Harvard researchers got some lovely 3-D images of chromatin. And it doesn’t look like what your high school bio text said it does.

Another excuse to release a new, more expensive textbook

* As one does

No one expects the insurance information

In a surprise move, CMS will require health insurers not only to tell patients how much their out-of-pocket drugs costs will be, but also how much they pay for the drugs.

The idea is that it will be easier for patients to consider alternative, less-expensive medication, and ” may even enable health plans to buy drugs more cheaply for their members.”

It’s the departing Trump administration’s most ambitious effort to illuminate the complex, secret and lucrative system of prescription drug pricing, in which health plans, drug manufacturers and pharmacy benefit management firms agree on prices.

Caveats:

• The new rule does not apply to Medicare or Medicaid.
• It will not require plans to disclose rebates and other discounts they negotiate with drugmakers and pharmacy benefit managers.
• It won’t take effect until 2022.

10 seconds of good news

The rate of HIV-related deaths in the U.S. fell a whopping 48 percent from 2010 to 2017, according to the CDC.

Right auditory cortex, right auditory cortex, what do you hear?

Lots of people suffer from tinnitus, but here’s the thing: No one has found the physical reason it actually happens, so we all just take one another’s word that “my ears are ringing.”

Until now. Maybe. Scientists in Australia — where it’s critical to hear any of the thousands of deadly predators sneaking up on you — think they’ve found the first way to ‘see’ and measure tinnitus.

It’s called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and it “allows scientists to measure brain blood flow activity related to sound.” And there, in the right auditory cortex, seems to be the smoking gun.

Unfortunately, “An objective measurement may not change the reality for many patients today, but it could help those in the future get help sooner.”

Two potential cancer fighters

Sertraline, found Belgian researchers, seems to inhibit the growth of cancer cells. Many cancers secrete and then become “addicted” to serine and glycine, which stimulates tumor growth. But sertraline “inhibits the production of serine and glycine, causing decreased growth of cancer cells.”

People who took vitamin D supplements, found Harvard researchers, “had a significant reduction in advanced cancers” — but only among people who weren’t overweight.

…and a pancreatic cancer breakthrough

Pancreatic cancer is a nasty beast that creates connective tissue that can protect the tumor from attack. But now researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philly made an interesting discovery. It seems a protein called Netrin-G1, which is important for brain development, is (for some reason) also produced by pancreatic cancer cells — and those cells seem to need it to spread.

So not only could this mean earlier diagnosis of pancreatic cancer (via monitoring Netrin-G1 levels), it “could provide the starting point for the design of new treatments in a type of cancer that is in dire need of effective therapies.”

When scientists get bored

They recreate the smell of 16th-century Europe. (Hint: sweat, manure, and despair.)

“I find it particularly interesting to make the audience get acquainted with a whole range of scents such as a stinky canal,” said Caro Verbeek, a scent historian at The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.