Dengue is spread when someone is bitten by an infected female Aedes mosquito. The viral disease kills around 40,000 people every year, with up to 400 million infected annually. Bangladesh and Kenya are among the countries battling a deadly outbreak. Although most adults survive their first brush with the disease, people who are exposed to a second, different strain of dengue virus often develop more severe symptoms. This unusual quirk has complicated dengue vaccine development. Now, a human challenge trial that exposed 45 people to a modified mild strain of dengue virus is beginning to reveal the immunological underpinnings of dengue's second wind, according to a study published in Science Translational Medicine on 28 October1. Understanding the biology behind dengue's infection pattern could help researchers to develop better vaccines, says study co-author Leah Katzelnick, an epidemiologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. Part of the problem with existing dengue vaccines is that even the immunizations can trigger secondary infections. This issue caused concern in the Philippines when some children contracted severe dengue infections after a major public vaccination effort started there in 2016....

During its annual meeting on Oct. 19, the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) announced election of 100 new members, including MIT faculty member Michael Yaffe and six MIT alumni: Steven Allen Abrams '79; Susan L. Ettner PhD '91; Diane Medved Harper '80, SM '82; Albert Icksang Ko '81; Jennifer Lewis ScD '91; and Alexander Marson PhD '08. Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service. Michael Yaffe, David H. Koch (1962) Professor of Science, is the founding director of the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, as well as a professor in the MIT departments of Biology and Biological Engineering and a member of the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He is also an attending surgeon and intensivist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he specializes in injury and surgical oncology, and was recently appointed as senior advisor to the director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for the NCI Intramural Research Program....

The future of psychedelics is looking bright, after some dark times. Just two years ago, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rejected an application to use MDMA ' the active ingredient in the party drug ecstasy ' to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. With that refusal, the whole field seemed to stall. But now, billion-dollar investments and more clinical-trial data suggest that the field is forging ahead. The FDA refusal 'stimulated a lot of thought and conversation', says Rachel Yehuda, a neuroscientist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. 'But it didn't make people want to give up on these medicines. Everyone can see that loud and clear.' In July, the drug giant Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, Indiana, announced plans to acquire AtaiBeckley, a psychedelic-medicine development firm in New York City, for up to US$3.8 billion. The company's lead asset, BPL-003, targets treatment-resistant depression, a condition affecting millions of people around the world. Eli Lilly's bet is one of the largest so far. And it comes on the heels of other big investments, such as Illinois-based AbbVie's $1.2 billion acquisition in 2025 of bretisilocin, a short-acting psychedelic being developed by Gilgamesh Pharmaceutical in New York City....

Microsoft's AI diagnostic system correctly diagnosed complex medical cases in a simulation more than twice as often as generalist physicians, according to a study published Thursday in Science. Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI's CEO, called the result a step toward 'medical superintelligence.' In a simulation using complex cases from the New England Journal of Medicine, it was correct 83% of the time. Primary care doctors and general internists, working individually with reference materials, were correct 36% of the time. One note: Cases this complex are usually handled by specialists or physician teams, who weren't part of the comparison. 'There is something very substantial and exciting here,' Dominic King, vice president of Health at Microsoft AI, told TechCrunch. 'The biggest challenge in healthcare delivery at the moment is the growing mismatch between demand and supply of medical expertise.' Microsoft measured DxO on cost as well as accuracy, meaning the estimated cost of running the AI on each case. On its own with a short, basic prompt, GPT-5 scored 78.9% on complex cases at about $8,400 per case. DxO cut that cost by about $3,000 but raised accuracy by only about four points. On emergency department cases, there was little improvement in either accuracy or cost improvement between GPT-5 on its own and with the assist from DxO....