東京慈恵会医科大学
医学部 英語
2025年度 解答・解説

• 3つの英文は，すべてTMPS医学館のオリジナルです（人物・大学・団体・数値は架空）。本番の英文より短く作ってあります。
• 選択肢は番号（1〜4）で答える。語数・行数の指定がある問題は，指定を守ること。

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

Researchers at Halden University and the Fenwick Institute for Digestive Science say they have built a "resilience score" from a single stool sample. It may be a better guide to how quickly you will recover from an infection than your age, your weight, or how many vegetables you say you eat. "Two people can catch the same cold and have very different weeks," said Dr. Mara Olsen, the study's lead author. "Our gut bacteria seem to explain part of that gap."

The gut is home to trillions of microbes. In a healthy person, they help digest food, train the immune system, and crowd out harmful species. When this community loses its variety, the balance can tip. A narrow, unstable microbiome ( A ) the risk of long infections, allergies, and digestive disease. Until now, however, no everyday test could measure that instability.

The Halden team recruited 2,400 adults between 2015 and 2020. Their samples were ( B ) a panel of 60 bacterial species, and the volunteers reported every illness they had during the following year.

A machine-learning method then boiled all this data down to a single ( C ) that the team named the resilience score. Higher numbers meant a more varied and stable microbial community. Volunteers in the top fifth of scores recovered from respiratory infections three days faster, on average, than those in the bottom fifth.

To check that the score meant something, the team tried three tests. First, they followed 180 volunteers aged 70 or older for two years and found that a low score at the start predicted more hospital visits. Next, they examined samples from a rural village in northern Spain where many residents live past 90; the villagers' scores were, on average, equal to those of people thirty years younger. Finally, they turned to the Linden Health Study, a separate group of 5,000 adults whose samples had been stored but whose illnesses were never recorded. Their scores ( D ) significantly with the number of sick days the volunteers had taken from work.

Diet has long been ( E ) as the main driver of gut health, and the new study agrees in part: a fibre-rich diet raised scores. But one habit mattered more than any food. People who went to bed within an hour of the same time each night had scores about 12 percent higher than people with irregular sleep, even when they ate similar meals.

Olsen cautions that the score is not yet ready for the clinic. All 2,400 original volunteers were healthy city dwellers, and the score has not been tested in children or in people with chronic disease. "We want a doctor to use this the way she uses blood pressure," Olsen said. "We aren't there yet, but a simple test that shows who needs extra care early would be a real step forward."

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

Most students believe that the best way to prepare for an exam is to read the material again and again. A new study has ( A ) that this popular habit may be a poor investment. For the study, researchers at Corvale University asked 120 first-year students to read a 600-word passage about volcanoes. "Ours is the first ( B ) comparison of re-reading and self-testing in a university classroom," said psychologist Dr. Hannah Reiss, who led the project.

It has long been known that people forget new material quickly, and that cramming the night before an exam works only for a short time. Teachers have therefore tried many remedies, from colour-coded notes to longer lectures. But research now suggests that the key is not how often students see information but how they use it.

In the experiment, the students were split into two groups of 60. Group A read the passage a second time for ten minutes, ( C ) Group B closed the book and wrote down everything they could remember. Both groups then took a test five minutes later and returned one week later for a second test.

The results surprised the researchers. On the first test, the re-readers did better, recalling 83 percent of the key facts compared with 74 percent for the self-testers. They also felt far more confident, rating their own knowledge 7.8 out of 10 against 5.1 for the other group. One week later, however, the pattern reversed: Group B remembered 64 percent of the facts, but Group A remembered only 42 percent.

Reiss believes that re-reading creates an illusion of knowing. A page that has been seen before feels familiar, and familiar text is easy to read, so students mistake ease for learning. Trying to recall information is harder and sometimes frustrating, but the effort of pulling facts out of memory helps ( D ) the traces that hold them. Self-testing also gives learners honest feedback about their own ( E ), showing them what they do not yet know.

Reiss does not claim that re-reading is useless; a quick second look can help just before an exam. She recommends that students close their books after each chapter and write down what they remember. "It feels worse while you are doing it," she said, "and works better afterwards." The team now plans to test whether the same advice helps school children, whose study habits are still forming.

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

In many countries, giving blood is a quiet public duty. Nobody is paid, nobody is thanked in the street, and yet hospitals depend on the supply. In 1971 the economist Lena Hartmann argued that a nation that pays for blood risks losing something that money cannot replace.

Some economists find this arrangement puzzling. If a good is scarce and valuable, they say, the sensible response is to pay for it. Higher prices would bring more donors, shortages would disappear, and nobody would be harmed. ( A ) because the donor chooses freely and the patient receives safe blood.

But what is troubling about putting a price on blood? What is the problem X? Why shouldn't donors be paid like any other workers?

Hartmann's answer was that payment changes the meaning of the act. When money enters, people who once gave out of concern for strangers begin to ask what they will receive. Worse, those most willing to sell are often the ones who most need the money, and some may hide illnesses to avoid being turned away. In several countries paid donation has ( B ) a rise in contaminated supplies.

Supporters of payment reply that modern screening makes such risks small. They add that unpaid systems ( C ) shortages whenever demand rises sharply, as it did during the pandemic.

A middle path may exist. Several hospitals now thank donors with a day off or a small gift card instead of cash. Such rewards are harmless, defenders say, ( D ) the amount stays small enough that no one gives blood only for the prize. Critics reply that the line between a thank-you and a wage is hard to draw.

Blood is not like other goods. It comes from a living body and carries a stranger's hope. To ask whether it should be sold is to ask whether some things should stay outside the market — or whether, as one broker is said to have claimed, blood is simply ( E ).

Choose the most appropriate option from the ones given below and write the number in the space on the answer sheet.