Now, a new trial finds antiviral medications, when given soon after a child is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (糖尿病), might help preserve those vital beta (β) cells.

Antiviral drugs could be “used alone, or as part of combination treatment, to rescue insulin (胰岛素) — producing beta cells at diagnosis of type 1 diabetes,” said a team that presented their findings at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, in Hamburg. So-called beta cells in the pancreas (胰腺) can generate insulin. But in some cases, an uncontrolled auto-immune response causes the body to attack its own beta cells, ruining a child’s capacity to produce insulin and cause type 1 diabetes. So people with type 1 diabetes rely on insulin injections to maintain healthy blood sugar levels the rest of their lives.

The researchers have been investigating the root causes of the autoimmune “malfunction” behind beta cell destruction for years, and they discovered that low-grade infections with common germs often occur in the pancreatic cells of people newly diagnosed with type l diabetes. So what if these people were given antivirals — in this case, pleconaril and ribavirin — to rid the pancreas of these infections?

The new trial, led by Dr. Mynarek, sought to answer that question. The team followed96 children aged 6 to 15 who were all diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in the study. The children were randomly selected to receive either the two antiviral medicines or a placebo (无效对照剂) for six months. Mynarek’s group tracked C-peptides levels in the blood, which “mirror the insulin production in the pancreas,” implying that the higher a child’s C-peptide levels on tests, the better their pancreas was producing insulin. According to their findings, while C-peptide levels dropped a full 24% in children who received the placebo, it fell by just 11% in those who got the antivirals. That suggests the treatment helped protect the child’s pancreatic beta cells from destruction.

The researchers concluded that “further studies should be done to evaluate whether antiviral treatment could delay the progression of beta-cell damage leading to clinical type l diabetes.”

Anxiety has now surpassed depression as the most common mental health disease among college students, though depression, too, is on the rise. More than half of students visiting campus clinics cite anxiety as a health concern, according to a recent study of more than 100,000 students nationwide by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State. Nearly one in six college students has been diagnosed with or treated for anxiety within the last 12 months, according to the annual national survey by the American College Health Association.

The causes range widely, experts say, from mounting academic pressure at earlier ages to overprotective parents to engagement with social media. Anxiety has always played a role in the development of a student’s life, but now more students experience anxiety so acute that they are seeking professional help. Like many college clinics, the Center for Counseling and Psychological Services at the University of Central Florida (UCF)— one of the country’s largest and fastest-growing universities, has seen sharp increases in the number of clients: 15.2 percent over last year alone.

Anxiety has become characteristic of the current generation of college students, said Dan Jones, the director of Counseling and Psychological Services at Appalachian State University in Boone, N. C. Because of increasingly pressures during high school, he and other experts say, students arrive at college preloaded with stress. Accustomed to extreme parental oversight, many seem unable to govern themselves. And with parents so accessible, students have had less incentive to develop life skills. “They can’t tolerate discomfort or having to struggle,” Dr Jones said.

More often, anxiety is mild and temporary, the indication of a student under the control of a normal developmental issue-learning time management, for example, or how to handle rejection from a sorority. Mild anxiety is often treatable with early, modest interventions. But to care for rising numbers of severely troubled students, many counseling centers have moved to triage protocols (分诊措施). That means that students with less urgent needs may wait several weeks for first appointments.

Like many college counseling centers, UCF has designed a variety of daily workshops and therapy groups that implicitly and explicitly address anxiety, depression and their triggers. Next fall the center will test a new app for treating anxiety with a seven-module cognitive behavioral program, accessible through a student’s phone and augmented with brief videoconferences with a therapist. It also offers semester-long, 90-minute weekly therapy groups, such as “Keeping Calm and in Control”, “Mindfulness for Depression” and “Building Social Confidence” -for students struggling with social anxiety.

Each year there are at least five million people around the world who develop serious flu (流感), and almost half a million deaths. When someone we know gets the flu virus, we expect them to be very careful not to pass it on to others. Doctors and nurses working with flu patients also need to protect themselves from the virus. But what is the best way to do this? This is the question that flu expert Professor Jonathan

Van-Tam at Nottingham University is trying to answer. He wants to find out how flu is transmitted, so that he can stop doctors and nurses getting sick.

Van-Tam explains their method, "There are 41 volunteers in my experiment. Some healthy volunteers are made to get flu first. When they show symptoms   (症状 )   , other volunteers, usually called recipients(接受者), enter the house. Everyone lives together in the small space for four days. Some of the recipients wear face masks, and wash their hands every 15 minutes, but some have no protection. In this way we can study who catches the flu and which ways of transmitting flu are important. During the four days when they are in contact with the virus, and for the ten days after that, the flu recipients are checked regularly."

The experiment is not simple and it is very expensive. It is difficult to design correctly, and it is also difficult to plan and carry out. Just one study like this takes about 18 months to organize and needs hundreds of people working on it. But Van-Tam believes it is worth because the results will help to decide what type of protection is needed for people working in hospitals with large numbers of flu patients around the world. And perhaps it could reduce the number of deaths from flu each year.