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New cancer drugs that unleash the immune system on tumors are all the rage, getting credit for curing former President Jimmy Carter’s advanced melanoma and inspiring tech billionaire Sean Parker to pledge $250 million to cancer research. Behind the excitement, however, is the hard truth that these therapies work in only a minority of patients. Now scientists are finding hints of a solution in an unexpected place: Older, out-of-favor cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation may make the cutting-edge immune-based drugs effective against more cancers — even hard-to-treat ovarian and pancreatic tumors. (Begley, 8/4)

People who carry a gene for sickle cell disease might not have an elevated mortality risk, according to a study released today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Sickle cell disease occurs in 1 out of every 365 black people born in America, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They carry two copies of a gene for sickle cell disease. Those who carry only one copy of the gene are said to have sickle cell trait. About 1 in 13 black Americans have sickle cell trait. An earlier study found that sickle cell trait may lead to an increased risk of sudden death, but the new study comes to a different conclusion. (Beachum, 8/3)

Sleep just doesn't make sense. ... "If evolution had managed to invent an animal that doesn’t need to sleep ... the selective advantage for it would be immense," [Gero] Miesenböck said. "The fact that no such animal exists indicates that sleep is really vital, but we don't know why." But Miesenböck is part of team of sleep researchers who believe they are inching closer to to an answer. In a paper published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, they describe a cluster of two dozen brain cells in fruit flies that operate as a homeostatic sleep switch, turning on when the body needs rest and off again when it's time to wake up. (Kaplan, 8/3)

Risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and stroke increase more quickly than expected in the years preceding menopause, according to new research, and the risk factors seem to be more prominent in black women. Metabolic syndrome describes a constellation of risk of factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease, including a large waist, high triglyceride levels, high blood pressure and high blood sugar when fasting. It has been known that metabolic syndrome is more common in women post-menopause, but it wasn't clear when the symptoms start to kick in. (Beachum, 8/3)

Many people swear by cranberry juice as the natural remedy to fight off urinary tract infections, also known as UTIs. Curious to see if the folklore held up, researchers at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and University of Massachusetts Dartmouth set out to find out what makes it so good for UTIs. (Masih, 8/4)

Stitches commonly used to sew up a pregnant woman’s cervix and prevent early labor can backfire — dramatically increasing her risk of premature labor and pregnancy loss. A specific type of thick, braided suture frequently used to stitch up the cervix can breed bacteria that seem to disrupt the vaginal microbiome and spur early labor, according to a study published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine. Women who got those sutures were at three times the risk of pregnancy loss, and twice the risk of preterm labor, than those who got another type of suture, which is thinner and flatter. (Thielking, 8/3)

The study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital suggests that inflammation may be the key to previous findings of a link between eating nuts and lower rates of chronic disease. The study, led by Dr. Ying Bao, an assistant professor at the Brigham and Harvard Medical School, looked at over 5,000 people and found that participants who ate tree nuts or peanuts at least five times a week had lower levels of biomarkers — proteins in the blood — for inflammation. Inflammation has been linked with chronic conditions including heart disease and type 2 diabetes. (Michaels, 8/3)