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Last week, another Canadian diplomat was diagnosed with a mysterious disease so weird it’s been referred to in some circles as “the thing.” The illness afflicts only government employees from the United States and Canada. Sufferers report feeling pulsing or hearing a ringing in their ears. Then headaches, dizziness, trouble concentrating and struggles to remember basic words and facts. (Erickson, 12/3)

If you are divorced, widowed or never married and develop cancer, watch out. You may get less aggressive treatment than your married friends. We’ve often heard about studies showing that married adults are more likely to survive cancer than singles. But buried in those same studies is another finding that hasn’t made the headlines. When surgery or radiotherapy is the treatment of choice, patients with spouses are more likely to get it. (DelFattore, 12/1)

The placenta may be dismissed as “afterbirth,” deemed an afterthought in discussions about pregnancy and even relegated, literally, to the trash bin. But at long last it is beginning to get its due. In the past three weeks, scientists have published three significant studies of this ephemeral organ. One gave a detailed analysis of all the genes expressed, or converted into functioning proteins, in the placenta; another experimented with a way to silence that expression when it causes trouble. In the third, researchers created mini-placentas, three-dimensional clusters of cells, or organoids, that mimic the real thing in the lab, and can be used as models for studying it. (Mandavilli, 12/3)

The holiday shopping season is underway, and the nation’s pediatricians have some advice for the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and others who plan to buy cutting-edge digital toys for the young children in their lives: Don’t do it. Sure, these toys may promise to boost a little one’s brain development, or to give them a head start in school. They may come in packages that feature endorsements from “experts.” In all likelihood, they come with a price tag that implies they are of great value. (Kaplan, 12/3)

A taxi driver named Roy Kim recently became the eighth professional driver to die by suicide in New York over the last year. The city’s taxi commissioner, Meera Joshi, has characterized the deaths as an epidemic. The stories have drawn attention to the economic despair in the industry and prompted the City Council to weigh new legislation to help taxi owners reduce their debt and to increase driver wages. (Fitzsimmons, 12/2)

In the days after the NRA tweet, doctors around the nation and even some around the world began posting sometimes-graphic, sometimes-poignant messages that shined a light on just how gun violence spills into their practices and why they are invested in seeing it prevented. Their rebuke to the NRA coalesced into trending themes #ThisIsOurLane and #ThisIsMyLane, prompting hundreds of thousands of retweets and more than 500,000 likes. (Anderson, 12/2)

For many of us, especially those without family nearby, spending time with friends can be a meaningful way to celebrate the holidays. As fewer people opt for marriage, friendships have become more than social relationships: Friends are proxy families, and they may be better than the real ones. Researchers have found that these personal connections may be more beneficial to one’s health and well-being than family relationships. And at a time when loneliness has become a public health crisis with young adults saying they feel lonelier than older generations, studies show that investing in friendships pays off. According to the Mayo Clinic, these bonds can help reduce stress, increase happiness and bolster self-confidence. (Fraga, 12/2)

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have developed a bandage that harnesses a body's own energy to speed up wound healing through gentle electrical pulses. Initial testing on rats shows the low-cost wound dressing dramatically lowering healing times from nearly two weeks to just three days. (Jones, 11/30)

Family history DNA tests are pegged to be hugely popular gifts this Christmas – but are they worth it if you're one of the 30 percent or so of Americans with ancestors who didn't come from Europe? Today, the answer is a qualified maybe. People of color generally aren't going to get the same specificity of ethnicity estimates as white Americans, though the results are slowly getting more precise for those with ancestors from Africa, Asia and the Americas. Even so, experts suggest collecting DNA from your oldest relatives now, wherever they come from, because one day it's going to be a genealogical gold mine. (Weise, 12/2)

With more than $12 billion in sales this year, the industry is booming and, according to the market research company, Grand View Research, is on track to sell billions more by 2025. But do we really need all this supplemental protein? It depends. There are pros, cons and some ho-hums to consider. (Neighmond, 12/3)

When the World Health Organization declared Dec. 1 World AIDS Day in 1988, the disease was already a global pandemic. By the end of that year, 82,362 cases of AIDS had been reported in the United States, and more than 61,000 people had died nationwide. In the 30 years since, the disease has killed an estimated 35.4 million people in all, including more than 700,000 in the United States. Today, there are still some 36.9 million people living with H.I.V. and AIDS around the world. The war is far from over in the United States. If current trends continue, half of all black gay and bisexual men will be living with HIV during their lifetimes. The epidemic is hitting hardest in the South, the region of our country with the fewest resources to combat it. (12/1)

If part of a hospital stay is to recover from a procedure or illness, why is it so hard to get any rest? There is more noise and light than is conducive for sleep. And nurses and others visit frequently to give medications, take vitals, draw blood or perform tests and checkups — in many cases waking patients to do so. (Frakt, 12/3)