“Watch your back, DEET. There’s a new form of mosquito control in town — one that involves olfactory trickery, genetic engineering and a deadly infectious fungus.

Researchers reported last week in the journal Nature Microbiology that Metarhizium — a fungus already used to control pests — can be genetically engineered to produce so much of a sweet-smelling substance that it is virtually irresistible to mosquitoes. When they laced traps with those fungi, 90 percent to 100 percent of mosquitoes were killed in lab experiments. The scientists say this may provide an affordable, scalable and more ecologically friendly way to quell the bloodsucking insects.”

From New York Times.

“A new academic paper published in The Lancet Global Health provides clear evidence that the global decline in maternal deaths over the past two decades has been driven by improvements in both family planning and maternity care. The paper, ‘Effect of maternity care improvement, fertility decline, and contraceptive use on global maternal mortality reduction between 2000–2023: results from a decomposition analysis,’ re-analysed data from 195 countries and territories to examine the relative contributions of maternity care and family planning on global maternal mortality. Overall global maternity mortality declined by 41% between 2000 and 2023.”

From World Health Organization.

“Today’s anti-fall technology has come a long way from the emergency alert systems of the late 1980s, when Mrs. Fletcher uttered her iconic TV-commercial cry: “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” That kind of pendant or bracelet, or even a voice-activated system, is useless for someone who is injured, unconscious or too weak to trigger it.

Now, the A.I. technology is being rolled out in some of New York City’s high-end senior living facilities, as well as nationwide. (These facilities don’t come cheap: At the Bristal, rates start at $14,500 a month for a studio.) The sensors are typically mounted high on the wall and capture the movements of the person or people inside, sending real-time information to staff members — meaning the residents don’t have to do anything to summon help.

The system also helps identify fall risk using mattress sensors to monitor vital signs like respiration and heart rate, and stores data to keep a record of an individual’s regular movements as a way to identify aberrations. Designated staff members receive daily health information showing statistically significant changes.

At the Bristal, falls have declined by 40 percent since the detection system was introduced several years ago, Ms. Sosnow said. In one case, a woman with a history of falling at home took a tumble within a week of arrival. The system showed she was getting little sleep, so a doctor was able to prescribe something to help.”

From New York Times.

“Late last year, dozens of researchers spanning thousands of miles banded together in a race to save one baby boy’s life. The result was a world first: a cutting-edge, gene-editing therapy fashioned for a single person, and produced in a record-breaking six months.

Now, baby KJ Muldoon’s doctors are gearing up to do it all over again, at least five times over. And faster.

The groundbreaking clinical trial, described on 31 October in the American Journal of Human Genetics, will deploy an offshoot of the CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing technique called base editing, which allows scientists to make precise, single-letter changes to DNA sequences. The study is expected to begin next year, after its organizers spent months negotiating with US regulators over ways to simplify the convoluted path a gene-editing therapy normally has to take before it can enter trials…

Their trial will focus on kids with mutations in one of seven genes, including CPS1, that compromise the ability to process ammonia. They plan to use almost entirely the same base-editing components that were used to treat KJ.

But the researchers will swap out one key component of the base editor: its snippet of guide RNA, which directs the base editor to the DNA letter to be replaced. The sequence of the RNA guide must be tailored to match each child’s specific mutation.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would normally require each new formulation to undergo a separate clinical trial, with safety tests to ensure that the gene-editing components are not toxic. But in this case, the FDA has indicated that it will accept some of the safety data from KJ’s treatment.

With these changes, Musunuru predicts that the team will be able to shrink the time needed to produce a therapy from six months to three or four.”

From Nature.