Body & Brain

Gene therapy for leukemia
Tweaking immune cells to attack cancer cells in leukemia patients can bring about remission, a small study shows. Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania genetically altered immune T cells to target malignant cells in chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients and mass produced the T cells before injecting them into three patients. The modified cells gravitated to bone marrow, where they killed malignant cells. In two of three patients tested the cancer went into remission, and a portion of the genetically modified T cells persisted, possibly as a cadre of defenders on standby. The researchers report the findings in the Aug. 10 Science Translational Medicine. —Nathan Seppa

Gout drug lessens flares
A drug approved in 2010 for treatment of gout has proved its worth, reducing symptoms over six months in many people who had failed to get relief from standard medications. The routine therapy for gout fails in about 3 percent of the 5 million to 6 million people in the United States who have it. A drug called pegloticase, which is given by intravenous infusion over two hours, gained approval last year for chronic gout. Two clinical trials in the United States, Canada and Mexico of people who had failed to improve? on standard drugs now show that of 65 of 169 patients getting pegloticase (Krystexxa) every two or four weeks for six months had reduced uric acid in the blood, a standard measure. The biweekly group had better symptom reduction. —Nathan Seppa

Live longer with exercise
Just 15 minutes of moderate daily exercise seems to extend life. A team of U.S. and Taiwanese researchers kept track of physical activity levels in more than 400,000 adults age 20 and older in Taiwan using questionnaires. Compared with sedentary people who didn’t exercise, those putting in 92 minutes a week — 15 minutes a day on average — were 14 percent less likely to die over an average follow-up period of eight years. The benefits applied to both sexes and to all age groups, the researchers report online August 16 in the Lancet.  —Nathan Seppa

Granddaddy’s stress changes grandson’s brain
What your grandfather experienced in the womb may change your brain. Grandfather mice who were stressed out in utero went on to produce grandsons with more feminine brains, a study in the Aug. 17 Journal of Neuroscience shows. In male descendents of stressed-out grandfathers, genes important for brain development switched their behavior to become more like the gene activity in female mice’s brains. These results may offer a way to link stress and neurological disorders that strike males and females differently, such as autism spectrum disorders, Christopher Morgan and Tracy Bale of the University of Pennsylvania write in the study. —Laura Sanders

Beautiful voices tickle the brain
From Laura: Attractive voices tickle the part of the brain that normally handles visual input, a new study finds. In the study, participants listened to different voices saying “had” and later rated how attractive the voices were. Voices rated more attractive were associated with greater brain activity in a region near the part of the brain that responds to faces, an international team of scientists reports in an upcoming Cerebral Cortex. That the brain detects and responds to vocal beauty suggests that people may be tuned in to hidden, nonverbal forms of communication. —Laura Sanders

Why autistic brains confuse pronouns
The brains of people with autism behave abnormally when grappling with pronouns such as “you” and “I.” While answering a question that contained the word “you,” adults with autism had a weaker connection between two key brain regions than unaffected participants, Akiko Mizuno of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and colleagues report in an upcoming Brain. This weak brain connection vanished when the question omitted pronouns and instead used people’s names. The results help explain why children with autism often have trouble with the concept of self-identity, sometimes referring to themselves as “you.” —Laura Sanders