Author: Gina Kolata

Researchers studied data from a million people and found evidence that a height gene shared by both sexes is amplified in men.Men are taller than women, by an average of about five inches. But why? It’s not a genetic inevitability — there are many species in the tree of life where females outclass males.A new study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that involved genetic data from a million people, has found a partial explanation.It involves a gene called SHOX, which is known to be associated with height. SHOX is present on both the X chromosome — females have two X chromosomes — and the Y chromosome; males have one X and one Y.The researchers suspected that SHOX might explain differences in male and female height, but there was a problem with that hypothesis. Since SHOX is on both the X and Y chromosomes, it would need to have a different effect on each chromosome.Does it, the researchers asked?To investigate the hypothesis, they asked if an extra Y chromosome boosted a person’s height more than an extra X chromosome.There are rare conditions in which people are born with an extra X or an extra Y, or have a missing X or Y. To find people with these conditions, researchers plumbed data from three biobanks, or repositories of deidentified genetic and medical data from individuals. One biobank was from Britain, and the other two were from the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

While prognoses for prostate cancer patients were once measured in months, experts say that advances in treatment and diagnosis now improve survival by years.Prostate cancer experts say that former President Joseph R. Biden’s diagnosis is serious. Announced on Sunday by his office, the cancer has spread to his bones. And it is Stage 4, the most deadly of stages for the illness. It cannot be cured.But the good news, prostate cancer specialists said, is that recent advances in diagnosing and treating prostate cancer — based in large part on research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department — have changed what was once an exceedingly grim picture for men with advanced disease.“Life is measured in years now, not months,” said Dr. Daniel W. Lin, a prostate cancer specialist at the University of Washington.Dr. Judd Moul, a prostate cancer expert at Duke University, said that men whose prostate cancer has spread to their bones, “can live 5, 7, 10 or more years” with current treatments. A man like Mr. Biden, in his 80s, “could hopefully pass away from natural causes and not from prostate cancer,” he said.Mr. Biden’s office said the former president had urinary symptoms, which led him to seek medical attention.But, Dr. Lin said, “I highly doubt his symptoms were due to cancer.”Instead, he said, the most likely scenario is that a doctor did an exam, noticed a nodule on Mr. Biden’s prostate and did a blood test, the prostate-specific antigen test. The PSA test looks for a protein released by cancer cells, and can be followed up by an M.R.I. The blood test and the M.R.I. would have pointed to the cancer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Something was very wrong with Kyle and Nicole Muldoon’s baby.The doctors speculated. Maybe it was meningitis? Maybe sepsis?They got an answer when KJ was only a week old. He had a rare genetic disorder, CPS1 deficiency, that affects just one in 1.3 million babies. If he survived, he would have severe mental and developmental delays and would eventually need a liver transplant. But half of all babies with the disorder die in the first week of life.Doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia offered the Muldoons comfort care for their baby, a chance to forgo aggressive treatments in the face of a grim prognosis.“We loved him, and we didn’t want him to be suffering,” Ms. Muldoon said. But she and her husband decided to give KJ a chance.Instead, KJ has made medical history. The baby, now 9 ½ months old, became the first patient of any age to have a custom gene-editing treatment, according to his doctors. He received an infusion made just for him and designed to fix his precise mutation.Doctors applied a personalized treatment to cure a baby’s genetic disorder, opening the door to similar therapies for others.Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia via Associated Press
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Some doctors say they are surprised the condition was found at all in the former president, given his age.Former President Joesph Biden has what a spokesman described as a “small nodule” in his prostate. How worried a patient should be by such a finding depends on the circumstances, urologists said.In some cases, nodules are caused by inflammation, which can make the prostate feel firmer, or can lead to calcifications in the prostate that feel like nodules. These are benign.They can also result from a common condition in older men, nodular benign prostatic hypertrophy, in which nonthreatening nodules form in the prostate, enlarging it. These also pose no risk.But in the worst cases, they can be cancers.When a urologist feels a nodule in a man’s prostate, it is not always clear what to make of it, said Dr. Scott Eggener, a urologist at the University of Chicago.“There absolutely are times when it is vague and equivocal and you don’t know what it is,” he said, adding that a growth may feel like “a big bulky rock that is almost certainly cancer.”But, Dr. Eggener said, he wonders why a doctor was manually examining Mr. Biden’s prostate in the first place. Perhaps he had a new symptom, like a urinary issue, or pain, or an elevated level of prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, a blood protein whose level rises with prostate cancer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.