A new analysis has found that if you are on Medicare, it's better to get a female internist than a male. Female internists have lower rates of 30-day mortality and hospital readmission than those patients treated by men.

Obviously it could be a variety of other factors - modern medicine, and its government control, has created a "teach to the protocol environment", and women are more likely to adhere to guidelines -but the authors postulate that female physicians more likely to adhere to clinical guidelines and provide preventive care more often, meaning that even if their careers are interrupted by child-bearing they should be paid more than men.

There remain a lack of safeguards built into the health-care system for fitness trackers.

Personal health wearable devices that are used to monitor heart rates, sleep patterns, calories, and even stress levels have led to new privacy and security risks. Though watches, fitness bands, and so-called "smart" clothing are part of a growing "connected-health" system in the U.S., promising to provide people with more efficient ways to manage their own health, it isn't a Utopia if you aren't a fan of weak and fragmented health-privacy regulatory system.

Newborns with the common virus in the herpes family known as congenital cytomegalovirus have an increased risk of developing acute lymphocytic leukemia, according to a new analysis. The authors say the risk is even greater in Hispanic children, who are already at the highest risk for developing ALL.

Pigs are a main livestock species for food production worldwide and is also widely used as an animal model in biomedical research. Today we know that the many types of bacteria that inhabit the gut are important for health and disease. Knowledge of the genes of these bacteria and their function therefore constitutes the first step towards a more comprehensive understanding of how bacteria in the gut affect health and disease.

An international consortium of researchers from INRA (France), University of Copenhagen and SEGES (Denmark), BGI-Shenzhen (China) and NIFES (Norway) has now established the first catalog of bacterial genes in the gut of pigs. This achievement is published in the latest issue of Nature Microbiology.

Vitamin D, which is produced by the body through exposure to sunshine, helps the body control calcium and phosphate levels, important for healthy bones. It can also be obtained from food sources such as fatty fish and egg yolks but it can be difficult to obtain enough vitamin D from food alone in countries with little sunlight so food is often fortified. 

For the benefit of the never-ending supplement fad industry, some papers have linked vitamin D deficiency with a host of health problems including cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment, autoimmune conditions, and now Vitamin D levels have been linked to an increased risk of bladder cancer, though the source is a systematic review of just seven studies so it may not warrant a panic attack just yet.

A new paper links specific types of intestinal bacteria in the development of colorectal cancer - in animal models, at least. Finding it in humans is another matter.

But if such a link is ever found, and currently these findings are only exploited by people selling something, it could lead to dietary-based therapeutic interventions which may be able to modify the composition of the gut microbiome and reduce colorectal cancer risk.