Clinical AI · Primary care · The Lancet
Google’s AMIE diagnostic chatbot takes histories from real primary-care patients under physician watch (The Lancet, Oct 8)
BIDMC prospective feasibility study: patients chatted with AMIE at home before urgent primary-care visits while a physician monitored every exchange; no sessions had to be stopped. Among 98 who completed chat and visit, AMIE’s top-7 differential included the final diagnosis in 90% (top-1: 56%). Physicians found the transcript helpful for prep in 75% of 44 reviewed cases; one hallucination was flagged.
Caveat: Small, single-center feasibility study funded by Alphabet; one author was a Google visiting researcher; fully supervised, not autonomous use.
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Immune aging · Single-cell · Immunity
GZMK+/GZMB+ effector-memory CD8 T-cell ratio tracks healthy vs pathological immune aging (Immunity, Oct 9)
Single-cell PBMC data from 2,609 healthy people across 8 cohorts mapped age remodeling in 59 immune populations. CD8 T cells drove aging heterogeneity; the GZMK+/GZMB+ Tem ratio separated healthy from pathology-associated trajectories, shaped partly by CMV. A GZMB+ Tem plasma proteomic signature associated with inflammaging, all-cause mortality and cardiometabolic/immune disease risk.
Caveat: Observational associations; not a validated clinical test.
Immunity →
Aging biology · Immuno-oncology · Nature Aging
Lymph node contraction links male-biased naive CD8 T-cell loss to weaker cancer antigen recognition in middle age (Nature Aging, Oct 9)
In mice (with supporting human data), males lost naive CD8 T cells earlier via conversion to virtual memory cells plus thymic involution, shrinking lymph nodes and limiting cancer-antigen recognition. Thymus regeneration by androgen ablation restored naive cells and improved checkpoint-blockade response in male mice.
Caveat: Mainly mouse work; androgen ablation is an experimental tool here, not a recommendation.
Nature Aging →
Clinical AI · Neurology · npj Digital Medicine
EpiScreen: fine-tuned LLMs flag epilepsy vs psychogenic non-epileptic seizures from routine clinical notes (npj Digital Medicine, Oct 8)
AUC up to 0.875 on MIMIC-IV and 0.980 on a University of Minnesota cohort; neurologists assisted by EpiScreen outperformed unaided experts by up to 14.3%.
Caveat: Retrospective; needs prospective, external validation; video-EEG remains the gold standard.
npj Digital Medicine →
