Pope Leo was diagnosed with a common form of lung cancer after surgeons removed a part of his right lung on Tuesday, the Vatican said in a medical bulletin. Read more here.

A drug being developed by First Tracks Biotherapeutics not only reduced symptoms from gluten exposure in patients with celiac disease but also protected against gluten-induced intestinal damage, according to results of a small early-stage trial.

Participants in the 32-patient study had been diagnosed with celiac disease at least a year prior and were following a gluten-free diet, but still had moderate damage to their intestines as seen on biopsies.

Even trace exposure to gluten can cause intestinal damage and debilitating symptoms despite general adherence to a gluten-free diet, the researchers noted.

Patients were given three subcutaneous injections of First Tracks' ANB033 or a placebo at the start of the trial, at week 2 and week 4, followed by two weeks of daily consumption of 6 grams of gluten, or about the equivalent of two slices of bread.

A second set of biopsies done at the end of the study showed patients who received the drug had statistically significant protection against intestinal damage compared with those who got a placebo, according to the company.

Furthermore, ANB033 prevented an increase in symptoms throughout the entire gluten challenge, whereas patients in the placebo group experienced a marked increase in symptoms, the researchers found.

Only 6% of ANB033 patients needed permitted medications to mitigate their gastrointestinal symptoms, compared with 47% of placebo patients.

“It is remarkable to see, for the first time, both statistically significant prevention of symptoms and (intestinal) benefit in the same study,” study leader Dr. Benjamin Lebwohl of New York-Presbyterian/ Columbia University Irving Medical Center said in a statement.

ANB033 inhibits immune cell proteins IL-15 and IL-2, two key drivers of inflammation that damage the intestine, with IL-2 closely linked to symptom development, Lebwohl noted.

As part of the same trial, the researchers are assessing intestinal healing and symptom severity at 12 weeks in a second group of patients, with initial results expected early next year.

They expect to present the full results of the study at the International Celiac Disease Symposium in Melbourne, Australia, next month.

Two recent studies challenge the idea that cannabis helps to improve sleep.

For one study, researchers reviewed data from nine trials involving 537 adults with insomnia who were randomly assigned to treatment with medical cannabis, a placebo or an antidepressant.

Medical cannabis showed little to no clinically meaningful improvement in sleep quality and satisfaction, total sleep time, or daytime functioning compared with placebo or the antidepressant, the researchers reported on Tuesday in The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

However, the various trials used different cannabis products, none of them followed participants for more than 12 weeks, and the overall quality and certainty of the evidence were rated very low to low because of possible bias and other limitations, the researchers noted.

Therefore, the findings cannot reliably answer whether medical cannabis helps people with insomnia, they said.

“Rather than viewing the findings as either an endorsement or a rejection of medical cannabis, clinicians and patients should recognize the uncertainty and consider individual circumstances while better evidence is generated,” study leader Dr. Luis Garegnani from Universidad Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires in Argentina said in a statement.

A separate study that followed 1,266 participants from young adulthood into middle age found long-term cannabis use was linked to lower sleep quality as measured by wrist-worn monitors.

The findings, published in JAMA Network Open, also suggested that cannabis-related sleep disruptions may go unnoticed by users themselves.

“The wearable device detected more nighttime disruption among participants with long-term cannabis exposure, but the participants themselves generally did not report worse sleep,” study leader Dr. Thanh-Huyen T. Vu of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine said in a statement.

“This study challenges the common belief that cannabis helps people sleep better,” she added. “Our findings suggest cannabis may actually be associated with poorer sleep quality, even if people don't perceive those changes.”