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Older men and women are more likely than young ones to have a child with autism, according to multiple studies published in the past decade. Especially regarding fathers, this effect is one of the most consistent findings in the epidemiology of autism. The link between a mother’s age and autism is more complex: Women seem to be at an increased risk both when they are much older and much younger than average, according to some studies. Nailing down why either parent’s age influences autism risk has proved difficult, however. (DeWeerdt, 12/16)

Every holiday season, families and friends convene to share affection, kindness and experience. In the ideal holiday atmosphere, one often depicted in commercials and media, such get-togethers are events of warmth, appreciation and general happiness. If you find yourself in such a family, count yourself lucky and blessed. (Joyce, 12/17)

Twenty Americans die every day waiting for transplants. Now researcher Harald C. Ott thinks he’s found a way to save lives and meet the demand for replacement organs. WSJ's Jason Bellini takes a look, in this latest episode of Moving Upstream. (Bellini, 12/18)

The spread of some sexually transmitted infections could potentially be dramatically reduced by instructing people who have had unprotected sex to take antibiotics within 24 hours after the intercourse, a new study suggests. But such a strategy, which was tested in a population of men who had frequent unprotected sex with a number of male sex partners, could spark a controversy over the use of antibiotics and the general threat of growing antibiotic resistance. (Branswell, 12/18)

When 29-year-old Carly Bastiansen was diagnosed in January 2016 with advanced pancreatic cancer, doctors told her a clinical trial was her best shot at slowing the notoriously quick-killing and hard-to-treat disease. She found one that appeared promising and went through the screening process. But the trial would not accept her. “Participating in a clinical trial is really my only chance at living longer,” Bastiansen, a children’s librarian in Baltimore, said this fall as she was growing weaker. “To have had that option taken off the table was devastating.” (Swartz, 12/17)

Older brains may forget more because they lose their rhythm at night. During deep sleep, older people have less coordination between two brain waves that are important to saving new memories, a team reports in the journal Neuron. "It's like a drummer that's perhaps just one beat off the rhythm," says Matt Walker, one of the paper's authors and a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. "The aging brain just doesn't seem to be able to synchronize its brain waves effectively." (Hamilton, 12/18)

Who hasn’t been in a relationship we know is bad for us, but one we just can’t quit? For many people, it’s like that with sugar. Breaking up is hard to do. “People generally know that sugar isn’t good, but they don’t appreciate how powerfully negative it really is,” says Donald Hensrud, medical director of the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program. “If you look at all the things in our diet we can change, pulling away from refined or added sugar will do more good than anything else.” (Cimons, 12/16)

Amy C. Hughes was looking forward to a rare luxury: a leisurely weekday lunch with a friend at a restaurant near her suburban Philadelphia home. Hughes, an engineer at Merck, had taken off the week after Christmas 2015 to spend time with her husband, Kevin, and their two children. The couple’s son, Rion, then 13, had come down with a cold on Christmas Day and complained of a headache. A few days later, his pediatrician suspected a sinus infection and prescribed a three-day course of antibiotics. (Boodman, 12/16)

Mayo researchers gave Apple watches and mobile phone apps to 300 cancer patients and asked them to report how they were feeling on a standard zero-to-10 scale but also on a new five-face emoji scale — from really smiley to a big frown. Early results for the first 115 participants suggest that emojis are just as reliable in providing doctors with meaningful health information. (Olson, 12/16)