first opinion
The hidden population of young caregivers
LM OTERO/AP
Out of 48 million caregivers in the U.S., an estimated 14 million are younger than 24. The burden of unpaid caregiving is increasingly falling on young people, write two first-year medical students in a new First Opinion essay. They know because they have each been young caregivers themselves.
"One of us helped care for her twin brother with autism, who needs help with various activities of daily living. The other helped care for her grandmother, who lives in the shadows of Alzheimer's disease," they write. "Both of us found these experiences deeply meaningful, but we have also observed ways in which caregiving can be quite challenging." Read more on the impact of "parentification" and how to support young caregivers.
nutrition
Are ultra-processed foods bad for me?
Eating more ultra-processed food (like hot dogs — industrially built, with a bunch of ingredients one might not immediately identify as "food") is associated with higher rates of death, according to a study published yesterday in the BMJ. Researchers analyzed data from over 100,000 health care workers across the U.S. and found that the top quarter of ultra-processed food consumers had a 4% higher mortality rate than the lowest quarter. Their rate of dying from causes other than cancer or cardiovascular diseases was 9% higher.
The connection between these foods and mortality was actually weaker than some previous studies, perhaps because the authors didn't count distilled alcohol in the category; better adjustments for smoking history would further reduce the association, according to an editorial. Most dietary guidelines already advise limiting intake of ultra-processed foods, but the category doesn't need to be banned, wrote authors of both the research and editorial. The global focus, the editorial argues, needs to be on protecting nutritional and public health policies from the influence of powerful food companies.
artificial intelligence
A protein-predicting AI grows up, with an eye on advancing drug discovery
Yesterday Google released AlphaFold 3, the latest version of its artificial intelligence system for aiding in structural biology research and drug discovery. The model's initial breakthrough was to predict protein structure. Now, the creators report in Nature, it's capable of accurately mapping the interaction of a much wider universe of biomolecules — including RNA, DNA, ions, and residues.
Biologists anticipating the model's release said its new capabilities represent a fundamental advance in the plodding work of untangling the mechanisms of disease. But it remains to be seen whether it will significantly advance the precision of drug research, or lower the sky high failure rates of late-stage clinical trials. Read more from STAT's Casey Ross.
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