Global threat from noncommunicable diseases greater than from infectious disease, WHO says

As some of us wonder how we’ll know when the coronavirus pandemic is over, a new report from the WHO called “Invisible Numbers” reminds us that noncommunicable diseases take more lives than infectious diseases (and make Covid-19 worse). To wit: Cardiovascular diseases including heart disease and stroke, cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, and mental illness cause nearly three-quarters of deaths in the world and kill 41 million people every year. Some of the more striking findings:

Every year 17 million people under age 70 die of noncommunicable diseases, 86% of whom live in low- or middle-income countries.
Preventable risk factors include tobacco use, unhealthy diets, harmful use of alcohol, physical inactivity, and air pollution.
NCDs cause 74% of all deaths, but interventions known to work could avert at least 39 million NCD deaths by 2030.

Early research tests an on-off switch for CAR-T

It’s a tantalizing possibility: Make the powerful CAR-T therapy work better in cancer patients by adding an on-off switch to pull when serious, life-threatening inflammation kicks in. Research presented at a conference yesterday from an early-stage trial in nine patients with B cell cancers such as lymphoma showed how adding a trick to typical CAR-T made it possible to quickly and reliably turn CAR-T cells off if harmful side effects developed. Six patients had no signs of cancer after the treatment.

Usually CAR-T takes a patient’s T cells, equips them with a molecule that latches onto proteins on a cancer cell’s surface, and adds those cells back to the patients. The new method uses CAR-T cells that instead recognize a particular antibody that binds to the cancer cells. Take the antibody away, and the CAR-T cells switch off; add it in, and they’re back in action. STAT’s Jonathan Wosen has more.

‘This is not a zero-sum game’: JAMA’s new top editor on health equity

New JAMA editor-in-chief and health equity advocate Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo says she’s always been a “science data nerd.” Still, she moved past bench science to medical school after earning her Ph.D. in the lab of Nobel laureate Harold Varmus because she wanted to see the impact of science on human health. In conversation with STAT’s Usha Lee McFarling as part of a STATUS List series, she also said:

On continuing to see patients: “I think it gives you context to understand why the great science that we produce doesn't always translate into improvements of health — and where all of the barriers are.”
On health equity: “For me, equity is not something that we put to the side and that we also do as, like, the fourth thing that we do on a checklist of many things. … This is not a zero-sum game.”

You can watch here.

Closer look: Public health agencies could take a page from NASA’s book on trust

(nasa via ap)

When you think of NASA, stunning images of faraway galaxies may come to mind. They inspire awe and also trust in the federal agency. That trust had to be rebuilt after seven shuttle crew members died in the Challenger disaster, Judy Monroe, a physician and the president and CEO of the CDC Foundation, writes in a STAT First Opinion. There are lessons in the partnership, resources, scientific rigor, and imagination today’s NASA has deployed to create and launch the Webb and Hubble telescopes.

“Establishing a new era in public health will take these same elements to give the public health system the funding, tools, and workforce needed to protect Americans from unprecedented health threats,” she writes. “NASA embarked on that road by moving from being a hierarchical, closed system that develops its technologies internally to an open network organization that embraces innovation, agility, and collaboration. The U.S. public health system must follow that trajectory.” Read more.

‘Human radar’ helps track Parkinson’s at home

Anyone who’s seen their blood pressure soar in the doctor’s office can understand how something analogous might happen during a test to measure how fast a person with Parkinson’s disease walks. The patient may be exhausted after traveling to see one of the few neurologists around, or do better on a brief test than all day at home. Now a new feasibility study in Science Translational Medicine looks at an alternative: a wireless device the size of a home router — not a wearable — that tracks gait speed at home by gathering radio signals that bounce off water in the person’s body.

Gait speed is important in Parkinson’s to see how a person responds to medication and how the disease progresses. In the one-year, 50-person study, gait speed fell almost twice as fast for the 34 participants with Parkinson’s compared to those without, providing valuable information for their care and potentially for future drug development.

Where did you go to school? The professoriate wants to know

There’s a hierarchy in academic hiring for tenure-track positions at American universities, one that makes the climb toward equity and representation even steeper. That may be no surprise, but this is startling: Just five Ph.D.-granting universities — UC Berkeley, Harvard, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Stanford — train more than 1 in 8 faculty members who earned their degrees in the U.S. And 80% of U.S.-educated professors completed their doctoral training at just 20% of universities.

The numbers come from an analysis in Nature that looked at faculty hiring and retention at U.S. universities from 2011 to 2020. In what may be a case of the rich getting richer, only 5% to 23% of staff were hired by a university more prestigious than where they earned their Ph.D., depending on the field. Although women’s share of faculty positions is going up, that’s largely because more men are retiring.

What to read around the web today

NIH advisers seek tighter oversight of risky pathogen experiments, Washington Post
The controversial embryo tests that promise a better baby, Nature
Can blockchain solve health care’s security problems? The financial industry offers a valuable case study, STAT
Hollywood’s secret new weight loss drug, revealed: The hype and hazards of Ozempic, Variety
Bayer’s venture arm ramps up, seeking to invest $1.3 billion, STAT