They told us this would happen

Over time, “the average magnitude and duration of monkeypox epidemics will increase.”

That’s what British scientists wrote in 1988 in a paper called “The transmission potential of monkeypox virus in human populations.” With smallpox eradicated, they saw an opening for monkeypox — the smallpox vaccine is only about 75 percent effective against its milder cousin.

(The paper wasn’t a warning, though. Its point was that monkeypox was a minor threat, so it was safe “to cease routine smallpox vaccination in monkeypox endemic areas.”)

CDC doubles the warning

On that note, though, the CDC has raised its general travel warning level from 1 (“Have fun!”) to 2 (“Have slightly less fun”).

It offers this bit of advice: “Travelers should AVOID: Close contact with sick people, including those with skin lesions or genital lesions.” Indeed.

An oil-based new gel helps the medicine go down

Do you not like to swallow? You’re not alone, but now a new “drug-delivering gel” might make it easier for people who have a hard time with pills or capsules.

The gels, made from plant-based oils such as sesame oil, can be prepared with a variety of textures, from a thickened beverage to a yogurt-like substance.

“What about suspensions?” I hear you ask. Those require clean water, which isn’t available everywhere. Besides, this gel — developed at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital — can be used with meds that don’t dissolve in water, plus it’s shelf stable without refrigeration. (And they even worked with “a consulting firm that specializes in consumer sensory experiences” to choose the best-tasting oils.)

Men, women, and pot

Here’s one of those stories worth a raised eyebrow and setting aside for future reference: Women, it seems, respond differently to cannabis in several ways than men do. Most notably, they get a stronger high and a better sex life, thanks (it seems) to the way THC affects and interacts with certain hormones (e.g., estrogen and prolactin).

Breaking through defenses

A different kind of cancer vaccine

T-cells and natural killer cells can attack cancer, but tumors can cleave those cells off their surfaces, like barnacles off a ship. An international team, though, has developed a cancer vaccine that works against a wide variety of tumors — it interferes with that cleaving process, leaving the tumor vulnerable to the body’s attack.

It’s been tested (successfully) on mice and rhesus macaques, so human trials are around the corner.

TB shrugged

Tuberculosis has a nasty habit of ‘shrugging off’ antibiotics (as Rockefeller University put it), but biologists there have made a breakthrough. They’ve figured out just how the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria does that shrugging.

They ultimately identified 1,373 genes that, when silenced, rendered Mtb vulnerable to antibiotics and another 775 genes that had the opposite effect—when the latter genes were silenced, the bacteria developed stronger resistance.

So not only might this lead to better drug therapies, the military can also use it to create weaponized TB. Huzzah!

Fancy yourself a writer?

Michael Crichton — famous for The Andromeda Strain and Eaters of the Dead (plus some books about dinosaurs) — was a medical doctor before beginning his literary career.

Are you the next Crichton? Probably not, but you might be the next winner of the New England Journal of Medicine’s annual short-medical-fiction contest.

Entries will be evaluated by NEJM editorial staff, and finalists will be judged by a panel of all-star writers of medical fiction: Perri Klass, Abraham Verghese, and Daniel Mason. The winning entry will be published in the Journal.