The Checkup: New Vaccine for Alcoholism in Development

• Alcoholism, be gone: Scientists from the University of Chile have designed a new vaccine that will give anyone who drinks even a drop of booze an immediate hangover. Yikes, am I right? The vaccine, which sends a biochemical message to the liver telling it not to express genes that metabolize alcohol, would be (irreversibly!) effective for between six months and a year. This is serious stuff. Results: Severe nausea, accelerated heartbeat, and general discomfort every time a vaccinated person takes a swig from the bottle, ensuring a definite aversion to alcohol for at least half of a year. Preclinical trials using mice will begin next month with researchers hoping for human testing in November. Find out more at the Daily Mail.

• Throw your inhalers away, folks! Researchers at the University of New South Wales have developed a compound that has proven to be effective in the prevention of asthma. What’s significant about this discovery is that future doctors would be able to treat the actual cause of asthma, and not simply its symptoms. Read more here.

• You may want to rethink simply buying your snoring partner a box of nasal strips. New research by otolaryngologists at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit found that snoring could reveal serious damage in the carotid arteries, meaning a greater risk of stroke or heart attack. Forbes has the full story.

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