Volume 27 Issue 7, July 2021

Misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines often starts life in Europe or the United States but has found fertile ground in Africa, which poses a challenge for local health leaders.

Asian healthcare workers have experienced racism during the COVID-19 pandemic, including from the medical community, with potentially long-term consequences for those affected.

Black people living in Africa must be involved in setting the priorities for global health research, policies and programs that affect their daily lives, in order to move away from a funding culture that fosters colonialism, racism and white supremacy.

Cancer screening with germline genetic sequencing and liquid biopsy could facilitate early cancer detection. But testing if these technologies reduce the burden of cancer mortality will require rethinking how clinical trials are run.

Pay-it-forward programs, whereby someone receives a gift or free service and then gives a gift to another person in return, have expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide an opportunity for healthcare providers to reduce costs, increase uptake of interventions such as testing and vaccines, and promote sustainability.

A prospective cohort analysis finds a link between the ChAdOx1 vaccine and an autoimmune disorder known as immune thrombocytopenia—but questions remain and causality is yet to be established.

Recent studies suggest that neutralizing antibodies could serve as a correlate of protection for vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 in humans.

The first phase 3 trial of amyloid-β-targeting monoclonal antibodies in dominantly inherited Alzheimer’s disease failed to slow cognitive decline in patients. Could it still help to inform future study design and drug development in this setting?

A yeast strain engineered to regulate levels of pathogenic metabolites in the gut provides protection against colitis in mouse models.

Fine-scale population structure can predict complex disease risk within groups better than self-reported race and ethnicity labels.

Decades of scientific accomplishment have transformed diabetes treatment; this Review describes key milestones in our understanding of the insulin molecule and looks to the future of insulin therapy.

In a pilot field study conducted in rural South Africa, deep learning algorithms can accurately classify rapid HIV tests as positive or negative, highlighting the potential of deep learning–enabled diagnostics for use in low- and middle-income countries.

Understanding the ecological drivers of highly transmissible, multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

A longitudinal analysis of humoral immune responses in patients with COVID-19 with varying disease severities reveals that mortality does not correlate with antiviral antibody levels but, instead, with slower seroconversion.

Results from the phase 2/3 clinical trial of gantenerumab or solanezumab in dominantly inherited Alzheimer’s disease reveal no beneficial effects on cognitive measures despite a significant reduction in amyloid plaques and other key biomarkers in those treated with gantenerumab.

Clinical and genetic evaluation of individuals with childhood-onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis identifies a new monogenic cause for early-onset ALS and proposes a specific metabolic mechanism leading to motor neuron disease via sphingolipid excess.

Estimates of the levels of neutralizing antibodies necessary for protection against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 or severe COVID-19 are a fraction of the mean level in convalescent serum and will be useful in guiding vaccine rollouts.

A synthetic yeast-based therapeutic that secretes an ATP-degrading enzyme in response to pro-inflammatory extracellular ATP in the gut reduces intestinal inflammation, fibrosis and dysbiosis in mouse models of colitis and enteritis.

Combined intraocular injection of an adeno-associated viral vector, encoding an optogenetic sensor, with light stimulation via engineered goggles enables partial recovery of visual function in a blind patient.

Analysis of circulating SARS-CoV-2 viruses during the first and second waves of COVID-19 in Amazonas, Brazil, shows successive lineage replacements led to predominance of the variant of concern P.1 and are associated with variable levels of social distancing.

Analysis of single-nucleotide variants and copy number alterations gives a more complete picture of clonal hematopoiesis and its impact on hematological malignancy and cardiovascular disease.

An ex vivo platform of patient-derived tumor fragments enables the assessment of intratumoral immune reactivation after PD-1 blockade that is predictive of clinical outcomes in patients with cancer.

Results from BALANCED, a phase 2a, multicenter, randomized controlled trial testing efruxifermin (a long-acting Fc-FGF21 fusion protein) over 16 weeks, demonstrated significant reductions in the hepatic fat fraction in patients with F1–F3 stage non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.

Results from a phase 2 randomized controlled trial demonstrate improved insulin sensitivity in patients with severe obesity and metabolic syndrome following single-dose fecal microbial transplantation and daily supplementation with low-fermentable fiber for 6 weeks.

A study of hospitalized patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 and who have liquid or solid cancer suggests that hematologic malignancy is an independent risk factor for mortality and that CD8⁺ T cells might limit infection in this setting irrespective of humoral immunity.

New data from the EAVE II cohort in Scotland suggests that a first dose of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine might be associated with a small increase in the risk of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura between 0 and 27 d after vaccination.

An analysis of COVID-19 vaccine allocation frameworks in the United States across 64 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention jurisdictions reveals that, as of 31 March 2021, 37 jurisdictions had adopted disadvantage indices to reduce health disparities. The analysis also highlights the importance of vaccine prioritization based on health and place.