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After being away from the first person who rolled social media clips → Game changer → Size 20 pipeline, I played my first Dungeons & Dragons game this past weekend. (It was fabulous.)

Which reminds me—how many fantastic themed buildings I’m at Epic Systems HQ (yes, That epic) and CEO Judy Faulkner’s fantasy-themed costumes port to Epic’s annual meetings, I’m sure there must be a lot of Epic employee DnD games going on.

Are you part of Judy’s DnD campaign or someone you know? Email me: (email protected)

How early exposure to sugar shapes long-term health

Through this candy IQ testI learned that kids getting high amounts of sugar from candy is a myth. In other Halloween sugar news, a new scientific study examines a natural experiment: the health outcomes of babies born before and after Britain’s World War II-era sugar ration rules.

The daily sugar allowance was the equivalent of about 6 to 7 teaspoons of sugar, an amount comparable to today’s World Health Organization dietary recommendations. After rations were raised in September 1953, sugar consumption almost doubled, from 41 grams to 80 grams per day.

The researchers found that people who consumed less sugar in the womb or during childhood during the period of rationing had a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure than those who had more sugar before and after birth. Those in the low-sugar cohort who developed diabetes and high blood pressure did so four and two years later, respectively, than their high-sugar counterparts.

For more details on the findings and what this means for us today in an ultra-processed world Clusters of nerd gum and Ghost Toast KitKatsread Story by Liz Cooney in STAT.

What do 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 a lot of unanswered questions about what happens in the recipient’s body after the transplant and how the transferred cells fare.

One new study in Natureresearchers sequenced the stem cells of transplant recipients, as well as those of their donor siblings, to see how they differed. The 10 transplant recipients in the study received the cells between nine and 31 years ago.

The study found that ten times more stem cells mastered in transplant recipients if the donors were younger at the time of the transplant (18-47 years) rather than older (50-66 years). The researchers also found that the blood systems of the transplant recipients were about 10-15 years older than those of their donors, mainly due to a lower diversity of stem cells.

A better understanding of the factors that make stem cells thrive in transplants will help improve the success of future transplants, the researchers said.

Should science stay out of partisan politics?

In a post-Covid election, with trust in science and scientists at an all-time low, should scientific journals provide presidential support?

STAT’s Anil Oza takes a look at how Nature, Science, JAMA, NEJM and others covered the election, what their reasoning is, and why—though always political—experts say science shouldn’t be partisan. Read more here.

On a similar topic, don’t miss out STAT’s first opinion podcast with Scientific American Editor-in-Chief Laura Helmuth and Opinion 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 health care no matter which way the presidential election goes, you can read Here. Our DC team will have another special edition next Wednesday after the election, so sign up today! (It’s free!)

Dr. Google: Better than nothing

One perspective in NEJMHarvard Medical School and Boston Children’s faculty member Isaac Kohane argues that we should conduct clinical trials comparing ChatGPT’s medical advice not to doctors, but to something more realistic: not going to the doctor.

Because of (somewhat artificially created) lack of doctors. Medicine is increasingly turning to AI to alleviate the shortage of using tools that save doctors timebut this is only the tip of the AI ​​iceberg in medicine, he argues.

Patients are already using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude 3 to ask about their health symptoms. Instead of assuming that patients will accept the chatbot’s warning and ask a medical professional, “we should not be comparing the health outcomes achieved with patients’ use of these programs to outcomes in our current depleted primary care system by a doctor?” he asks.

Read more in STAT about what hospitals are like training residents to think about ChatGPThow well it works diagnosing patientsand a Microsoft executive warns that ChatGPT should not be used for diagnosis.

When doctors judge patients

Surveys indicate that most adults admit to hiding information from their doctors about everything from their exercise habits to their medication regimens. While it’s easy to say people should be more receptive, Samantha Kleinberg, Farber Professor of Computer Science at the Stevens Institute of Technology, says her research shows the onus is on doctors, who judge their patients negatively.

Kleinberg says doctors need to shift their mindset to focus on empathy and education, allowing patients to share more freely. Open communication is not only important for patients’ health, but it can also help uncover unexpected side effects of drugs, as was the case with the discovery that the fen-phen drug combination caused heart damage.

Read more about Kleinberg’s findings in this article First State Opinion.

What we read

• Is there any pop left in California’s fight against soda? Political

• Throw away your black plastic spatula, Atlantic

• Some states turn miscarriages and stillbirths into criminal cases against women, The Marshall Project

• Yes to abortion, no to Tester? A Democratic senator’s struggle underscores his party’s conundrum, STATE

• Mucus: It’s not what you think, New York Times

• To alleviate drug shortages, a new study suggests we look to Canada, STATE