Tackling blood diseases, immune disorders and other top stories.

• Tackling blood diseases, immune disorders

  Harvard University has completed a license agreement with Magenta Therapeutics, a startup company recently launched in Cambridge, for a portfolio of technologies with the potential to transform blood stem cell transplants from a “treatment of last resort” into a safer, more efficient therapy for patients with blood diseases and immune disorders. To date, even at the cutting edge of hematopoietic (blood) stem cell transplantation, the severe side effects and mortality risk involved in conditioni..

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• Parents prefer time-outs over spanking children for discipline - Las Vegas Review

  

  Spanking and hitting children to discipline them has become much less common in recent decades as more parents choose non-physical approaches like “time-outs” instead, a U.S. study suggests.Since 1988, the proportion of middle-income mothers who think physical punishment is appropriate has dropped from 46 percent to 21 percent, the study found.Over that same time, the share of mothers endorsing time-outs surged from 41 percent to 81 percent.“Support for corporal punishment has been falling at le..

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• Chinese scientists use gene-editing techniques in humans for first time

  

  On October 28, genetically modified cells were injected into a patient at the West China Hospital in Chengdu with aggressive lung cancer, according to the scientific journal Nature. The team of scientists, led by Lu You of Sichuan University, extracted immune cells from the patients and edited them using CRISPR-Cas9.The technique knocks out a gene that normally acts as a check on the cell's ability to launch an immune response and prevents it from attacking healthy cells. The modified cells were..

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• Ebola Might Not Make Some People Sick, Study Finds

  

  The Ebola virus may not make some people sick, researchers reported Tuesday. It shouldn't be surprising — most viruses can cause silent infections in at least a few people. But Ebola is so notorious for causing horrific symptoms, and for being so very deadly, that no one had taken the time to see if it might not always be so bad. Nubia, a baby who survived Ebola, at the Doctors Without Borders Ebola clinic in Conakry, Guinea. Tommy Trenchard / Doct..

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• Thailand finds 33 new cases of Zika, says health ministry

  

  BANGKOK –  Thai health officials on Wednesday said 33 new Zika virus cases have been detected in the country as officials step up screening for groups at high risk from the disease such as pregnant women. "We confirmed 33 new cases last week and have detected the virus in two further provinces," Ministry of Public Health spokesman Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai told Reuters. Suwannachai said health campaigns warning travelers about Zika have been increased as many Thais flock to the capital..

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• Amgen cholesterol drug reduces artery-clogging plaque in study

  

  By Bill Berkrot NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Amgen Inc's potent new drug Repatha, when added to statin therapy, not only took "bad" LDL cholesterol down to extremely low levels but caused declines in artery-clogging plaque in a majority of high-risk heart patients after 18 months of treatment, according to data from a clinical trial. Amgen had previously announced the study was a success. But the percentage of patients who experienced a decrease of the substance that is the unde..

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• Past depression tied to worse breast cancer survival odds

  

  By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) - Women with a history of depression may have lower survival odds with breast cancer than patients without past mental health problems, research in Denmark suggests. In the study of more than 45,000 women with early-stage breast malignancies, 13 percent of patients previously treated with antidepressants died within five years of their cancer diagnosis, compared with 11 percent of women who hadn’t ever taken medication for depression. “W..

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• More than 1 billion people globally are living with high blood pressure

  

  In most countries, men were found to have higher blood pressure than women.The study highlighted a stark contrast between where people are most affected, with high-income countries showing a sharp decline in blood pressure among their populations in recent decades, while low- and middle-income countries have seen numbers spike -- particularly in South Asia and Africa.The difference was made more evident by that fact that half of the world's adults with high blood pressure in 2015 were living in ..

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• DIY breast reconstruction: Device lets women do part at home

  

  This might be the ultimate do-it-yourself project: Doctors are testing a device that would let women do part of their own breast reconstruction at home. It's aimed at not only making treatment more comfortable and convenient, but also giving women a sense of control — something cancer often takes away. More than 100,000 women each year in the United States have surgery to remove a cancerous breast, and many of them choose reconstruction with an implant. To make room for a permanent one, many of..

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