Bill Gates takes on Alzheimer's, Lyme disease mapped, & an unsinkable bacterial boat

Bill Gates to invest $100 million to fight Alzheimer's

He's already taken on malaria and dirty water. Now the world's richest man is taking on Alzheimer's. Bill Gates announced this morning that he plans to pump $100 million into the fight against the disease. Gates said he recently invested $50 million of his own money, not that of his foundation, in the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital firm set up with backing from the U.K. government and several drug companies. He also plans to invest another $50 million in startups taking unorthodox approaches to treating Alzheimer's, though he has yet to identify those companies. In a blog post, titled "Why I’m digging deep into Alzheimer’s," Gates cited his own family history of Alzheimer's as one of his motivations. "I know how awful it is to watch people you love struggle as the disease robs them of their mental capacity, and there is nothing you can do about it," he wrote.

Keep in mind, though: Pharmaceutical companies have invested far more than Gates is now committing without a single new drug approval since 2003, because the disease has proven so hard to crack.

Helping cancer patients better navigate the system

Nurses, patients, and hospital administrators are gathering in Washington D.C. today for a two-day summit on how to better navigate patients through a cancer diagnosis. Patient navigation programs often deploy a nurse or trained volunteer to advise patients on everything from treatment costs to the psychological effects of cancer. There's evidence that these programs can increase patient satisfaction and cut down the time between an abnormal screening and an official diagnosis. But there's still work to do: Panelists at this week's workshop will discuss how to make these programs more cost-effective and how to extend their reach to underserved communities. You can watch the summit — which is being put on by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine — at 8 a.m. ET.

Army accepting more recruits with mental illness history

Seeking to boost recruitment, the Army recently opened the door to more recruits with a history of self-harm, bipolar disorder, depression, and drug and alcohol misuse, USA Today reported. Army spokesman Lt. Col. Randy Taylor confirmed that the Army has expanded the availability of mental health waivers, attributing the move to "the increased availability of medical records and other data” that "allow Army officials to better document applicant medical histories." A small percentage of Army recruits enter the service on a waiver, usually for medical conditions — but in recent years, people with a history of certain mental illnesses generally have not been able to get a waiver. The Army's move follows an announcement by the Air Force earlier this year that it would look to expand its ranks by issuing more medical waivers to prospective airmen who in the past were routinely turned away for health conditions like eczema, asthma, and ADHD.

Addiction treatment centers target union workers

Union members usually have generous insurance benefits that pay for long stays in rehab. And with more and more of them fighting addiction amid the opioid epidemic, union members have become a prime target for treatment center operators and the middlemen who act as brokers for these facilities. But instead of getting the help they needed, many said they felt trapped at these facilities, because they needed a health care provider's clearance to return to work. Meanwhile, their health insurance was billed tens of thousands of dollars. “I felt like a prisoner,” a New Jersey special education aide said of his experience at one such treatment center in Florida. Read the investigation from STAT and the Boston Globe.

8 years of confirmed Lyme disease cases, mapped

THE ACELA CORRIDOR IS GROUND ZERO FOR LYME DISEASE CASES (CDC)

You're looking at a map of each confirmed case of Lyme disease between 2008 and 2015, with each dot placed in the patient's home county. Nationwide, there were more than 30,000 cases — including unconfirmed reports — of the tick-borne illness annually during this period. Although those clusters of cases in the Northeast and the upper Midwest might look a bit alarming, there's good news: Reported rates of Lyme disease contraction have been stable or decreasing in these regions, according to new data from the CDC. Researchers aren't sure, though, whether that's because the disease is actually on the downturn or because of changes in how states report cases.

Inside STAT: This insurer flouts Obamacare's rules

For almost every insurer in the country, the Affordable Care Act made it illegal to turn down people for coverage because they're too sick. But because of a decades-old state law in Tennessee, a small local company known as Farm Bureau doesn't have to play by Obamacare's rules. And with GOP plans to repeal and replace the ACA stalled, many Republicans in Washington see health plans like Farm Bureau's, with fewer regulatory requirements and lower prices, as the cure to Obamacare's ills — and a model for the future. But as popular as Farm Bureau is in Tennessee, it's also making health insurance more expensive for people who don't qualify for subsidies but want and need comprehensive health insurance. STAT's Erin Mershon traveled to Franklin, Tenn., to get the story.

Lab Chat: Bacteria resist attacks like an unsinkable boat

With the rising threat of antibiotic resistance, researchers all over the world are racing to understand how bacteria protect themselves from antibiotics. Now, researchers at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. have solved another piece of the puzzle. Their new study, published in Nature Communications, looked at E. coli, the culprit behind some infections of the urinary track and blood stream. I got on the phone with lead author David Grainger to learn more.

What was already known about how E. coli resists antibiotics?

We were interested in a particular system that can help bacteria protect themselves from antibiotics. It's well characterized that this protein could activate systems that the bacteria use to pump antibiotics out of the cell. The system is a bit like bailing water out of a sinking boat. When this protein becomes activated, it increases the number of people and buckets that are there trying to get the water out of the boat, or the cell.

What's new about your findings?

We found that this system helps prevent the antibiotic from getting in the cell in the first place. It helps to stop the leak, to continue with the boat analogy. The system also helps protect the DNA from damage. So you might think of it like protecting an instruction manual on the boat from water damage.

An effort to keep patients out of the hospital backfires

There's lots of excitement about initiatives to keep patients from being readmitted to the hospital — but a new study raises a cautionary flag. The federal Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, introduced five years ago by CMS, pushes hospitals to reduce their readmission rates of Medicare patients by penalizing them if they didn't do so. A new analysis of its effectiveness, led by researchers at UCLA and Harvard, found that the program did indeed drive down readmission rates of patients hospitalized with heart failure. But the program also seems to have had an alarming effect on the most important outcome: It was associated with more deaths of heart failure patients, according to the new paper in JAMA Cardiology. The authors say that their findings should spur reconsideration of whether patients with heart failure should be encouraged to stay out of the hospital.

Bill Gates to invest $100 million to fight Alzheimer's

Helping cancer patients better navigate the system

Army accepting more recruits with mental illness history

Addiction treatment centers target union workers

8 years of confirmed Lyme disease cases, mapped

THE ACELA CORRIDOR IS GROUND ZERO FOR LYME DISEASE CASES (CDC)

Curing breast cancer: What, how, and what’s next?

Inside STAT: This insurer flouts Obamacare's rules

Lab Chat: Bacteria resist attacks like an unsinkable boat

An effort to keep patients out of the hospital backfires

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