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The World Health Organization (WHO) recently announced that the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, a country located high in the Himalaya Mountains in southeast Asia, has eliminated rubella as a public health problem.

Rubella, or German measles, is a vaccine-preventable disease that is a highly contagious viral infection. It is severe for pregnant women as infection can lead to a range of lifelong and debilitating congenital disabilities, says the WHO.

“Nepal’s success reflects the unwavering commitment of its leadership, persistent efforts of the health care workers and volunteers, and unstinting support of engaged and informed communities, for a healthy start for babies and a future free of rubella disease,” said Dr Catharina Boehme, Officer-In-Charge WHO Southeast Asia, in a press release on August 18, 2025.

Unfortunately, this disease eradication success has not translated to the Japanese Encephalitis (JE), a flavivirus transmitted by mosquitoes that is often contracted from infected pigs and sheep.

As of August 2025, JE infections are the leading cause of viral encephalitis in 24 countries in the WHO Southeast Asia and Western Pacific/Oceania Regions, exposing more than 3 billion people to infection risks.

In Nepal, Japanese Encephalitis has been a significant public health concern since 1978, especially in the Terai region, an area that borders India.

JE is also a vaccine-preventable disease. The WHO indicated in August 2025 that Nepal’s national JE vaccination coverage surpasses 95%. The government integrated JY vaccinations beginning in 2015.

However, as of August 19, 2025, the Health Ministry’s data show 33 JE cases and three fatalities this year.

In 2024, 23 people died, and 80 others were infected with the JE virus.

The WHO and the U.S. CDC recommend that international travelers visiting Nepal consider vaccination. Proven JE vaccines are available in the United States, commercially offered at various travel clinics and pharmacies in 2025.

OKLAHOMA CITY – Amylin, a hormone that controls appetite and blood sugar by activating three different receptors in the brain, could be the basis for the next blockbuster obesity drugs. A University of Oklahoma study published today in the journal Science Signaling reveals a new understanding of how amylin receptors react upon being activated, an advancement that will be crucial to the field of drug development.

“This paper shows the new biochemical and pharmacological methods we developed that will enable the field, for the first time, to understand exactly what drugs in development do at each of the three amylin receptors,” said the paper’s senior author, Augen Pioszak, Ph.D., an associate professor of biochemistry and physiology at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. “Amylin receptors are very complicated, and each has very different and unique properties. What we have discovered has eluded researchers for many years, and we believe our findings will advance drug development.”

Amylin is secreted from the pancreas, along with insulin, after a person eats. Amylin receptors in the brain are in the same family as GLP-1 receptors, which are targeted by pioneering drugs like semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovy).

“There has been a lot of interest in the pharmaceutical industry for developing new obesity drugs,” said Sandra Gostynska, a doctoral student in Pioszak’s lab who is the lead author of the paper and made the seminal findings. “What we have done is given the field new tools for understanding how a drug can affect amylin receptors.”

Their findings are two-fold:

• The three amylin receptors share a core component but have differing accessory subunits, as if they wear common attire but dress it up with different accessories to make each a distinct fashion. Understanding how to target that distinctiveness may be important for creating a drug that best controls appetite and brings about the most weight loss with the fewest side effects. Gostynska developed a laboratory procedure to arrive at that understanding.
• Drugs have the potential to pull the subunits together or push them apart. This, too, could be important for drug development because the drugs may act differently depending on whether they push or pull.

Pharmaceutical companies are already developing drugs based on amylin. Pioszak said his lab’s research provides clarity for what occurs when a drug targets a complicated set of receptors.

“We believe our findings will further the study of drugs because what pharmaceutical and biotech companies want to know is what their drug does at each amylin receptor,” Pioszak said. “Now we have a method of answering those questions that were previously unanswerable.”