Studies have found that inflammation in older people—a condition known as “inflammaging”—interferes with the immune system and fuels cancer growth. 

This week, Betsy McKay reports on researchers' efforts to test whether existing anti-inflammatory medications can slow cancer in older patients.

Dr. Miriam Merad, an immunologist and oncologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has spent years studying why people over 50 account for nine in 10 cancer diagnoses in the U.S. She and other researchers are testing whether anti-inflammatory drugs—usually used to fight rheumatoid arthritis or allergy conditions like asthma or eczema—can slow cancer in older patients. They’re also searching for new drugs.

The idea of using drugs on cancer patients that damp inflammation is counterintuitive, says Dr. Andy Minn, who is scheduled to become chair of a new immuno-oncology program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in August. Immunotherapies, which rev up the immune system to attack tumors, have transformed cancer care over the past several years.

Treatment in the future will involve using technology to figure out when to fire up the immune system or quiet it, says John Teijaro, professor of immunology and microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.

More on this topic:

• Inflammaging is chronic, stealthy and can be a serious threat to your health. (Read)
• 🎧 Electricity is the next frontier to treat cancer. (Listen)
• New tests promise to reveal the secrets in your blood. (Read)

🤔 What do you think about recent findings on the impact of "inflammaging" on the health of older people? Send me your thoughts, questions and predictions by hitting "reply" to this email.

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Last week, we reported on AI-powered scribes that are expanding in healthcare. Readers shared their thoughts on whether they’d use this technology to document their conversations with doctors:

• “I’m a veterinarian, and man do I love my ambient listening app. I used to spend hours writing records, and they were horrible. Now they’re way more complete and accurate. Sometimes I even catch stuff I missed because the client was talking while I was trying to examine their pet. It frequently gets names wrong and isn’t perfect, but there’s no way I’d practice without it anymore.”—Louis N. Lembo, Tennessee
• “I recently experienced a visit with a specialist utilizing an AI listening tool. The physician, knowing I had a technical background, let me see what the software had interpreted and transcribed from the visit. Let me summarize: It was terrible! I talked about a swelling in my leg, causing a depression in my skin where my socks were, and the software wrote that I suffered from depression. Good grief, you could not be more wrong.”—Alec Wilder, Virginia
• “AI's presence during a physician-patient conversation would be helpful if it could separate and analyze a patient's symptoms from their personal information and suggest, rather than decide, diagnosis and treatment. A patient's unique body language offers invaluable information and insight...but perhaps AI can capture this too.”—Alice Refvik, Illinois
• “AI has the potential to help improve health care, but I worry about privacy and accuracy. I’d support AI producing a clinical note of medical visits only if it can be done locally, not by sending information to another location or the cloud. I also fear doctors will come to rely on AI-generated information indiscriminately, and fail to see hallucinations and misinformation AI may have generated. If that occurs, we’ll be worse off than before AI was employed!”—Joseph F. Lombardo Jr., Virginia
• “While I tend to be very much of an AI skeptic, given its issues with the environment, income inequality, energy consumption and hallucinations, I DO feel this is compatible with the biomedical uses of AI that have already turned out to be valuable in many contexts. This is especially so when the alternative is a clinician barely able to focus on what you're saying because they’re staring at the computer and typing while supposedly ‘listening.’”—David Caploe, California

(Responses have been condensed and edited.)

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Thanks for reading The Future of Everything. We cover the innovation and tech transforming the way we live, work and play. This newsletter was written by Conor Grant. Get in touch with us at future@wsj.com.

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