Death rates from Alzheimer’s disease are on the rise — jumping 55 percent between 1999 and 2014 — and those deaths are increasingly happening at home. The neurodegenerative disease was the sixth leading cause of death in the US in 2014. The authors of a new analysis published by the CDC say that a handful of factors might be driving the increase: the aging population, an increase in early-stage Alzheimer’s diagnoses, fewer deaths among the elderly from other diseases such as stroke, and better reporting on death records.

And while most deaths from Alzheimer’s disease still occur in a nursing home, the number of deaths that happen at home is on the rise. One-quarter of Alzheimer’s disease deaths happened at home in 2014, up from 14 percent in 1999. The authors say that points to a growing need for resources and support for caregivers providing for loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease at home.

Members of Congress are calling on the FDA to do its part in curbing antibiotic resistance by helping hold pharma companies responsible for pollution. It's been reported that drug manufacturers in India will sometimes dump antibiotics into surrounding waters, which can encourage the development and spread of drug-resistant bacteria. Representatives Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), and Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) have sent the FDA a letter urging the agency to work with its regulatory counterparts in those countries to make sure they're taking action. "Bacteria have no respect for national borders," they warn. "China and India's [problems] today can easily become our problems tomorrow." 

Here's a recall notice you don't see every day: Washington's department of corrections has recalled more than 319,000 pounds of frozen meals produced at one of the state’s prisons. Chicken enchiladas, sloppy joes, salisbury steak, and other meals made at Airway Heights Corrections Center might've been processed with a contaminated water supply. Tests in early May of the drinking water in Airway Heights showed excessively high levels of two fluoridated organic chemicals, PFOS and PFOA. The suspected source: firefighting foam, which the local Air Force base used until last year.

Those chemicals are linked with health issues including low birthweight, early puberty, and cance, though the health risk associated with eating foods processed with the contaminated water is expected to be small. Some of the food made at the prison is served in-house, while other food is sold to other prisons and jails and to nutrition programs for seniors.

(armella leung for stat)

Last month, Mount Sinai Hospital launched what may be the nation’s first hospital-based, free legal service for dying patients who lack family and friends nearby and don’t have the support they need to get their affairs in order. But Dr. Emily Chai, a physician at the hospital, remembers her patients who didn’t have any formal help. One, a 40-year-old woman from Brazil with terminal cancer, wanted to arrange for her own burial in the country where she was born and raised. The doctors said they wished they could help, but couldn’t. But then, a visitor appeared in her room with a promise to make things right. “I’m going to take care of this,” he told her. “I’m going to get you home.” Read her story in a new Endnotes by STAT’s Bob Tedeschi.

Researchers have discovered a genetic variant that seems to protect against cardiovascular disease in members of an isolated Greek population. By and large, people living in Mylopotamos, a small spot on the northern tip of Crete, live long, healthy lives despite eating a diet high in animal fat. That’s long puzzled experts, who say a diet like theirs should cause more health complications than it seems to. So scientists sequenced the genomes of 250 people from Mylopotamos and turned up a new genetic variant that has a protective effect on the cardiovascular system. The researchers think it’s almost completely unique to the population; there’s only been one copy of the variant found in thousands of genome sequences of other Europeans. Their findings will be published today in Nature Communications. 

Adolescents who’ve been hospitalized due to injuries from drinking, drug use, or self-harm are five times more likely to die by suicide in the decade after their injuries than their peers, according to new research out in the Lancet. Previous research has shown self-harm dramatically increases the risk of suicide, but the new study broadens that risk pool. Researchers came to that conclusion after examining hospital data for more than 1 million individuals between ages 10 and 19 who were admitted to an ER in England. The study’s authors say their findings suggest it might be valuable to have mental health professional evaluate young people admitted to the ER for drug- and alcohol-related injuries, which is currently standard practice for young people admitted after self-harming.  

Living cells work, in a way, like computers, constantly processing information to know what to do next. Now, researchers are harnessing CRISPR to work on developing cellular circuits that could be programmed to make cells behave a certain way. Here’s what electrical engineer Eric Klavins of the University of Washington told me about the work. 

What's the need for a programmable “circuit” in a cell?

Let’s say you put in a gene that’s supposed to make a transcription factor in the presence of some small molecule. The amount made will vary from cell to cell and from time to time. It’s fairly unpredictable. With a computer, it’s just a zero or a one. It’s very certain and that’s what makes it work. A cell thinks about if “this” is here, and “that” isn’t not here, and whether it has sensed this molecule for this amount of time. They make enormously complex decisions. We want to learn how to program cells to do this, to do things like create immune cells that can sense and respond to biomarkers in their environment. 

How did you try to do that?

We created these cellular gates with three programmable parts of DNA, two that were inputs and one that was an output. Then, we used CRISPR-Cas9 to target that DNA and make a gate active or inactive. If one gate is active, it tells the Cas9 to make another gate inactive. … [We] were able to make a network of interacting Cas9 transcription factors that form large gene circuits.