Researchers at Boston University have completed the largest study to date characterizing the cognitive symptoms of NFL players with confirmed chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) who underwent neuropsychological tests while they were alive. CTE is the neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated head impacts that cannot yet be diagnosed accurately during life in part because its specific symptoms need to be determined.

Men diagnosed with nonmetastatic prostate cancer can generally expect to live for many years after their diagnosis. However, cardiovascular disease and other cancers remain important threats to their long-term health. For many survivors, this raises an important question: What can I do to live a longer, healthier life? A new study published in JAMA Network Open suggests that the type and source of dietary fat they consume may make a difference.

The study, co-led by researchers from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (The Institute) and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, included nearly 5,000 men with nonmetastatic prostate cancer and followed them for a median of 12.8 years, drawing on data collected over more than three decades. The researchers found that the type and source of fat consumed after diagnosis were associated with long-term survival. Higher saturated fat intake, as well as higher animal fat consumption (a major dietary source of saturated fat), were associated with greater all-cause mortality. These associations were driven primarily by deaths from cardiovascular disease and, to a lesser extent, other cancers—not by prostate cancer itself.

A genetic marker already used to flag risk of a life-threatening reaction to the antibiotic vancomycin also identifies patients at risk of that reaction to lamotrigine — and it is missing from the gene panels clinicians order before prescribing the drug, Vanderbilt Health-led researchers report Sept. 2 in JAMA Network Open.