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Back near the start of this century, before the full damage of Andrew Wakefield’s debunked study linking measles vaccine and autism became clear and social networking sites turbo-charged the disruptive power of vaccine opponents, some experts believed the world was ready to rid itself of measles once and for all. These days, with massive outbreaks in the Philippines and Ukraine, more than 80,000 cases in the past year in Europe, and ongoing epidemics in New York, Washington, Texas, Illinois, and California, measles does not feel like an endangered virus. (Branswell, 3/26)

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that some children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, can outgrow their diagnosis. This isn’t unqualified good news: Experts caution that those children often continue struggling with other conditions. The latest evidence was published this month in the Journal of Child Neurology. It demonstrated that among 569 children diagnosed with autism between 2003 and 2013, 38 children—or about 7%—no longer met the diagnostic criteria. (Reddy, 3/25)

Geneticist Dr. Esteban Burchard was studying asthma at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston years ago when, he recalled, “a black teenager died of an asthma attack right outside the hospital entrance. Which is ridiculous. There are 20 hospitals in Boston!” The death reflected a harsh reality in the United States: Asthma hits African-Americans particularly hard, and the health care system often fails them. An estimated 15.3 percent of black children have the disease compared with 7.1 percent of white children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, African-Americans are nearly three times as likely to die from asthma as white people. (McQuaid, 3/26)

The claim was extraordinary. More than 20 U.S. diplomats in Cuba had "suffered significant injuries" in a series of attacks that seemed to target the brain. Or at least that's what State Department officials told reporters during a briefing in September 2017. A couple of weeks later, President Trump went even further. "I do believe Cuba is responsible," he said during a Rose Garden news conference. (Hamilton, 3/25)

Avoid fast food, eat vegetables and exercise. It sounds like generic health advice, but they're tips supposedly tailored to my DNA profile. The suggestions come from 23andme, one of the companies offering to point you toward the optimal eating and exercise habits for your genetics. As with most dieting schemes, the idea is appealing because it implies there's an elusive reason why you can't get in shape — in this case, your genes. (3/25)

Older Americans are having fewer heart attacks and surviving them longer than ever before. For a study published in JAMA Open Network, researchers analyzed records of 4.3 million Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized for heart attacks from 1995 through 2014 in 5,680 hospitals across the country. The number of people hospitalized declined by 38 percent over the period, 30-day mortality decreased by 38 percent, and recurrent heart attacks within a year declined by 28 percent. (Bakalar, 3/26)