By Bruce Japsen

The cost of diabetes, heart disease and back pain are taking a greater toll on the U.S. economy, with these conditions and injuries dominating personal healthcare spending, authors of a new study say.

Creating protective immunity against the early liver stage of malaria infection is feasible, but has been difficult to achieve in regions with high rates of malaria infection. Many current malaria vaccines target the pre-erythrocytic stage of infection in the liver, however in endemic regions, increased blood stage exposure is associated with decrease vaccine efficacy, challenging current malaria vaccine efforts. 

By Tony Kirby

"The last person that I train, I want that training to be in something other than HIV", says Jared Baeten. Speaking to The Lancet Infectious Diseases from the HIV Research for Prevention Conference (HIVR4P) in Chicago, IL, where he brought a 12-strong team of his researchers, Baeten explains: “When that time comes, I want HIV to have been eliminated as public health threat, so we can focus on other diseases”. 

By: Olga Khazan

For the first time since the 1990s, Americans are dying at a faster rate, and they’re dying younger. A pair of new studies suggest Americans are sicker than people in other rich countries, and in some states, progress on stemming the tide of basic diseases like diabetes has stalled or even reversed. The studies suggest so-called “despair deaths”—alcoholism, drugs, and suicide—are a big part of the problem, but so is obesity, poverty, and social isolation.