This prospective, multicenter, observational study shows 30-day outcomes for a composite end point (death, venous thromboembolism, reintervention, or failure to be discharged from the hospital within 30 days after surgery) among consecutive patients undergoing bariatric surgery. The overall risks of death and adverse outcomes were low but were increased among patients who had the highest body-mass index and certain coexisting conditions. The short-term safety of bariatric surgery should be considered in conjunction with both the long-term effects and the risk of living with extreme obesity.

Artemisinin therapy is a first-line approach to malaria treatment in many parts of the world. Resistance to this class of agents is an emerging threat to malaria treatment and control. In two studies conducted in Thailand and Cambodia, P. falciparum was found to have reduced in vivo susceptibility to artesunate, characterized by slow parasite clearance.

The need for an effective malaria vaccine is great, and the current lead strategy undergoing advanced testing is based on the use of the circumsporozoite protein. In this early-stage investigation, the authors followed a different strategy, using an attenuated Plasmodium falciparum sporozoite vaccine based on the NF54 strain, delivered through mosquito bites. This vaccine was found to protect against a homologous challenge.

Five patients with acute myelogenous leukemia received hematopoietic stem-cell transplants from a haploidentical donor. They also received T cells from the donor. All five patients had a relapse, and at the time of relapse, genomic HLA typing of leukemic blasts could not detect the recipient's HLA haplotype that differed from the donor's. The loss of the haplotype was due to uniparental disomy. In vitro, the donor's T cells reacted against leukemic blasts obtained at the time of diagnosis, not against blasts obtained at relapse. The results indicate the presence of a mutation that allowed the leukemic cells to escape the immunosurveillance of the donor's T cells.

This study shows that a variant of mitochondrial aspartate–glutamate carrier isoform ME 1 (AGC1), a molecule thought to be important in providing energy for neurons of the central nervous system, is associated with developmental arrest, hypotonia, seizures, and hypomyelination.