Gonorrhea Is On The Verge Of Becoming Unstoppable By Antibiotics. But A Vaccine May Offer Hope.

Bloomberg: An Age-Old Sexually Transmitted Disease Faces A New Foe
New Zealand managed to quell an infectious child-killer with the help of a new type of vaccine. A decade later, scientists in the South Pacific nation found it may be critical combating an age-old, sexually transmitted infection that’s making a comeback: gonorrhea. That’s spurring optimism that the fast-spreading disease could be slowed using a vaccine already on the market to prevent its bacterial cousin -- a strain of the so-called meningococcal bacterium notorious for causing potentially deadly meningitis epidemics in college dorms, such as the recent ones on campuses in San Diego and Massachusetts. While gonorrhea isn’t life-threatening, it’s now on the verge of becoming unstoppable due to antibiotic resistance. (Paton, 11/15)

NPR: Fish Oil And Vitamin D: Your Questions Answered
Nearly 19 million Americans take fish oil supplements and some 37 percent of us take vitamin D. Many may be motivated by research that has suggested these pills can protect heart health and prevent cancer. On Saturday, NPR published a story on long-awaited research on both supplements that called those claims into question. (Neighmond, 11/15)

The New York Times: Blacks Are Twice As Likely As Whites To Experience Sudden Cardiac Death
The rate of sudden cardiac death in African-Americans is twice as high as in whites, and no one knows why. Sudden cardiac death is an unexpected fatality from cardiac causes that happens within an hour of the onset of symptoms, usually with no known cause. (Bakalar, 11/15)

NPR: Nebula Genomics Aims To Speed Research And Lower Cost Of Genome Sequencing
A startup genetics company says it's now offering to sequence your entire genome at no cost to you. In fact, you would own the data and may even be able to make money off it. Nebula Genomics, created by the prominent Harvard geneticist George Church and his lab colleagues, seeks to upend the usual way genomic information is owned. (Harris, 11/15)

Bloomberg: Harvard Researcher's Startup Offers Genome Analysis For Free 
What Google has done with Internet searches and Facebook with sending birthday wishes, a Harvard professor is ready to do with genome sequencing: make it free. Nebula Genomics, devised by geneticist George Church to allow people to sell their DNA data for drug research and other uses, will provide complete DNA decoding at no charge for customers who answer a series of questions about their own health. The company begins offering its service Thursday and anyone is eligible to use it, Church said. (Lauerman, 11/15)

The New York Times: The ‘Geno-Economists’ Say DNA Can Predict Our Chances Of Success
In 1999, a trio of economists emerged from a conference at the University of California, Los Angeles, squinting without sunglasses in the unfamiliar sun, and began a slow walk through the hills overlooking the city. The three of them — a Harvard economist-in-training, Daniel Benjamin, and the Harvard economists Edward Glaeser and David Laibson — were reeling. They had just learned about a new field, neuroeconomics, which applies economic analysis to brain science in an effort to understand human choices. Now they were strolling through the taxonomy of midday joggers and dog-walkers in Los Angeles, talking all the while about how people become what they are. Benjamin recalls feeling very out of place. “Everyone was so beautiful,” he says. (Ward, 11/16)

Los Angeles Times: A Gut Bacterium As A Fountain Of Youth? Well, Let’s Start With Reversing Insulin Resistance
Move over Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus. There’s a new health-promoting gut bacterium in town, and it’s called Akkermansia muciniphila. You will not find its benefits at the bottom of a yogurt cup. But a new study has identified more than one way to nurture its growth in the gut, and offered evidence that it may maintain — and even restore — health as we age. Published this week in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the new research found that in mice and monkeys whose metabolisms had grown cranky with age, taking steps to boost A. muciniphila in the gut reduced the animals’ insulin resistance. (Healy, 11/15)

Georgia Health News: CDC Says South Still Center Of New HIV Infections
The HIV epidemic remains centered in the South, health officials say. And the region must overcome several factors before this disease burden will ease, they add. More than half of the new HIV diagnoses in 2016 – about 20,000 — were in the South, a CDC official told an Atlanta conference last week. (Miller, 11/15)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: As Epidemic Of U.S. Mental Illness Worsens, So Does The Funding Gap To Provide Care
When it comes to America's escalating epidemic of psychological disorders, odds are you either know someone or you are someone. One in five adults have a mental health condition — which can range from post-traumatic stress to chronic anxiety to bipolar disorder — equivalent to more than 46 million Americans — spanning all ethnicities, geographies and economic classes. (Schmid, 11/15)

Kaiser Health News: Women Applaud Michelle Obama’s Decision To Share Her Trauma Of Miscarriage
Miscarriage is “lonely, painful, and demoralizing,” Michelle Obama writes in her new memoirs. Yet, by some estimates, it ends as many as 1 in 5 pregnancies before the 20-week mark. The former first lady’s disclosure that she and former President Barack Obama suffered from fertility issues, including losing a pregnancy, has sparked conversations about miscarriage, a common but also commonly misunderstood loss. (Huetteman, 11/16)