IDH-mutant glioma, caused by abnormalities in a specific gene (IDH), is the most common malignant brain tumor among young adults under the age of 50. It is a refractory brain cancer that is difficult to treat due to its high recurrence rate. Until now, treatment has focused primarily on removing the visible tumor mass. However, a Korean research team has discovered for the first time that normal brain cells acquire the initial IDH mutation and spread out through the cortex long before a visible tumor mass harboring additional cancer mutations forms, opening a new path for early diagnosis and treatment to suppress recurrence.

A new study suggests that the connection between coronary artery calcification — a measure of calcium buildup in the arteries — and bone mineral density may be driven in part by shared genetic factors, rather than one directly causing the other. By highlighting the biological pathways that influence both vascular and bone health, the findings provide researchers with new directions for understanding age-related changes in the heart and skeleton.

Maternal prenatal stress related to natural and human-made disasters can lead to epigenetic modifications in offspring, according to a narrative review published in Harvard Review of Psychiatry, part of the Lippincott portfolio from Wolters Kluwer. The review appears in a special issue on preventative psychiatry.

About The Study: This study found that maternal influenza and tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccinations were associated with reduced influenza- and pertussis-related hospitalization or emergency department visits in infants younger than 6 months. Given the low vaccination coverage, it is crucial to implement maternal vaccination campaigns to enhance infant health outcomes.

About The Study: In this interim reporting of respiratory syncytial virus prefusion F (RSVpreF) vaccine safety in a large cohort of pregnancies with vaccine-seeking behavior, this study found no statistically significant increases in any prespecified safety outcomes compared with unvaccinated pregnancies.

A commentary coauthored by IIASA experts and senior representatives from the UN and the international statistics community discusses the implications of recent changes to the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) program and highlights the importance of integrating citizen science more fully into official data systems.

The Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Center (TCC) has launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) platform to help connect more cancer patients across the Mount Sinai Health System to life-saving clinical trials. The platform, which was created by the AI company Triomics, is called PRISM, and is powered by Triomics’ OncoLLM, a large language model-based pipeline built especially for cancer care. As an early adopter of this new technology, Mount Sinai becomes the first National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in New York City to deploy this oncology-specific AI tool for systemwide clinical trial matching.