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After you are far away from the first person who rolls down social media clips → Game changer → Size 20 pipeline, I played my first game of Dungeons & Dragons last weekend. (It was fantastic.)
That reminds me – by how much fantasy themed buildings there are at Epic Systems headquarters (yes, THAT Epic) and the fantasy-themed costumes, CEO Judy Faulkner contributes to Epic’s annual meetings, I’m convinced there should be plenty of DnD games for Epic employees.
Are you or do you know someone who is part of Judy’s DnD campaign? Email me: [email protected]
How early exposure to sugar affects long-term health
Through this candy IQ quizI learned that kids getting a sugar high from sweets is a myth. In other Halloween-esque sugar news, a new Science study examines a natural experiment: the health outcomes of babies born before and after Britain’s World War II sugar rationing rules.
The daily sugar ration was the equivalent of about 6 to 7 teaspoons of sugar, an amount comparable to current World Health Organization dietary guidelines. After rations were lifted in September 1953, sugar consumption almost doubled, from 41 grams to 80 grams per day.
Researchers found that people who consumed less sugar in utero or in toddlerhood during the rationing era had a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and hypertension than those who consumed more sugar before and after birth. Those from the low-sugar cohort who developed diabetes and hypertension did so four and two years later, respectively, than their high-sugar counterparts.
For more details on the findings and what that means for us today in a world of ultra-processing Nerd Gummy Clusters And Ghost Toast KitKatsread Liz Cooney’s story in STAT.
What stem cells do after a transplant
Doctors have been performing stem cell transplants, also known as bone marrow transplants, for decades. But there are still many unanswered questions about what happens in a recipient’s body after the transplant and how the transferred cells fare.
In one new study in Natureresearchers sequenced the stem cells of transplant recipients, as well as those of their siblings who donated to them, to see how they differed. The ten transplant recipients in the study had received the cells between nine and 31 years earlier.
The study found that 10 times more stem cells entered transplant recipients if the donors were younger at the time of transplant (18-47 years) rather than older (50-66 years). The researchers also found that the transplant recipients’ blood systems were about 10 to 15 years older than those of their matched donors, mainly due to lower diversity in their stem cells.
Better understanding what factors allow stem cells to thrive in transplants will help improve the success of future transplants, the researchers said.
Should science keep out of party politics?
In the post-Covid election, when trust in science and scientists is lower than ever, should scientific journals issue presidential endorsements?
STAT’s Anil Oza looks at how Nature, Science, JAMA, NEJM and others have covered the election, what their reasoning is and why – while always political – experts say science should not be biased. Read more here.
On a similar topic, don’t miss STAT’s First Opinion Podcast with Scientific American Editor-in-Chief Laura Helmuth and Editor-in-Chief Megha Satyanarayana (herself a former STATIan), who explain why the magazine chose to endorse Harris.
And if you missed our special edition of the DC Diagnosis newsletter earlier this week on what to expect in healthcare no matter how the presidential election goes, you can read it here. Our DC team will have another special edition next Wednesday after the election, so register today! (It’s free!)
Dr. Google: Better than nothing
In one perspective in NEJMHarvard Medical School and Boston Children’s faculty member Isaac Kohane argues that we should conduct clinical trials that compare medical advice from ChatGPT not with doctors, but with something more realistic: not going to the doctor.
Kohane couldn’t find a primary care physician to recommend to a new colleague, even in physician-heavy Boston, because of the (somewhat artificially created) physician shortage. Medicine is increasingly turning to AI to alleviate the shortage by deploying tools that save doctors time, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of AI in medicine, he argues.
Patients already use tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude 3 to ask about their health complaints. Rather than assuming that patients will take the chatbots’ caveat to heart and ask a medical professional, “shouldn’t we compare the health outcomes achieved through patients’ use of these programs with the outcomes in our current system of general practitioners and physicians?” he asks.
Read more in STAT about how hospitals train residents to think about ChatGPT, how well it works for diagnosing patients, and a Microsoft executive’s warning that ChatGPT should not be used for diagnosis.
When doctors assess patients
Surveys show that most adults admit to hiding information about everything from their exercise habits to their medication regimen from their doctors. While it’s easy to say that people just need to be more forthcoming, Samantha Kleinberg, Farber chair professor of computer science at Stevens Institute of Technology, says her research shows that the responsibility lies with doctors, who view their patients negatively.
Kleinberg says doctors need to change their mindset to focus on empathy and education, allowing patients to share more freely. Open communication is not only important for patients’ health, but can also help uncover unexpected side effects of medications, as was the case when the drug combination fen-phen was discovered to cause heart damage.
Read more about Kleinberg’s findings in this STAT First Opinion.
What we read
- Is there any pop left in California’s battle against soda? Politics
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Throw away your black plastic spatula, The Atlantic Ocean
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Some states make miscarriages and stillbirths criminal cases against women. The Marshall Project
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Yes on abortion, no on Tester? A Democratic senator’s struggles underscore his party’s conundrum: STAT
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Slime: It’s snot what you think, New York Times
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To reduce drug shortages, a new study suggests we look to Canada, STAT