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Metabolism, weight, and chronic disease.
In a 98-patient French trial, six-monthly rituximab did not extend remission beyond daily azathioprine in this rare eosinophilic vasculitis — and recipients had more severe infections.
GSK's PD-1 blocker won accelerated US approval on 19 October for previously untreated stage II/III dMMR rectal cancer. In the single-arm AZUR-1 trial, most patients avoided surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
A Global Burden of Disease analysis finds the share of female breast-cancer deaths tied to high fasting plasma glucose rose from 1990 to 2023 and is projected to keep rising — but the design cannot prove causation.
In 143 people with poorly controlled type 1 diabetes, a system that prompts injections through glucose-sensor alerts was non-inferior to standard monitoring — and acting on the alerts drove the benefit.
A six-site randomised trial of point-of-care high-sensitivity troponin cut emergency-department length of stay by 47 minutes, with no change in 30-day heart attacks or cardiac deaths.
In 1,429 high-risk breast-cancer patients, a 16-dose regimen covering the internal mammary nodes matched the standard 25-dose course for recurrence and caused far less severe skin damage.
In 947 Chinese children followed for ten years, those with insulin resistance despite normal blood sugar had a 4.3-fold higher risk of later dysglycaemia, and six amino acids helped predict who would develop it.
In 1,095 high-risk abdominal-surgery patients, targeting each person's own cardiac index during the operation left the rate of major complications essentially unchanged — 44.3% versus 46.9%.
The FDA approved Tecentriq on 8 October, with chemotherapy, for Stage III mismatch repair deficient colon cancer after resection. In ATOMIC, adding it cut disease-free survival events, hazard ratio 0.50.
On 13 October the FDA extended Velphoro (sucroferric oxyhydroxide) to children aged 6 to 9 on dialysis and added a 250 mg chewable tablet, widening an iron-based binder previously limited to patients 9 and older.
SLOWH, a 102-patient randomised trial, compared cutting flow first, oxygen first, or both at once when weaning critically ill adults off high-flow nasal cannula. Success rates of 94%, 81% and 77% did not differ.
A 60-woman phase 2A trial found the dual PPAR agonist reduced liver fat by nearly 15 percentage points more than placebo over 24 weeks — an early, small signal in a group usually left out of fatty-liver drug trials.
A 9 October labelling supplement folds results from two post-marketing rheumatoid-arthritis safety studies into the JAK inhibitor baricitinib's boxed warning, and revises its infection and cardiovascular sections.
An Israeli records study of 181,000 adults found people now diagnosed are older and sicker, but start with better glucose and cholesterol, and far more leave the clinic on SGLT2 or GLP-1 drugs.
Hovilpri (pritelivir), a helicase-primase inhibitor, was approved on 9 October for immunocompromised adults whose herpes lesions resist aciclovir. In its trial, 63% healed by day 28 against 34% on comparator therapy.
An observational study of 8,127 UK women on GLP-1 drugs, almost all tirzepatide, reported 16.1 kg average loss at six months and 91.4% retention. There was no control arm.
On 14 October the FDA extended nogapendekin alfa inbakicept-pmln, with BCG, to BCG-unresponsive papillary-only disease - a first for that group - without a new trial, by extrapolating from its carcinoma-in-situ data.
Teva's subcutaneous depot is built to avoid the post-injection sedation that hobbled the first olanzapine shot. It cleared the FDA on 8 October; in the phase 3 SOLARIS trial it beat placebo on symptoms at eight weeks.
In the phase 3 VERIFY trial, 77% of patients on the hepcidin-mimic drug avoided phlebotomy over weeks 20–32 versus 33% on placebo, and far more kept their haematocrit under control.
In 4,299 people with type 1 diabetes and 17,196 matched controls, the death rate was 131 vs 35 per 100,000 person-years. The excess risk was far larger in women, though absolute mortality was higher in men.
The pill joins trastuzumab and pertuzumab as maintenance after induction. In the 654-patient HER2CLIMB-05 trial it stretched median progression-free survival to 24.9 months from 16.3, a hazard ratio of 0.64.
The phase 3 RT CHARM trial found a three-week course of radiation after mastectomy was no worse than the standard five-week course for reconstruction complications, at 12.3% versus 10.2%.
Rhapsido becomes the first drug labelled for the itchy welts raised by scratching or pressure. In the RemIND trial, 29.3% on the pill cleared the provocation test at week 12 versus 14.0% on placebo.
The FDA logged the recall of the RED 62 reperfusion catheter, part of the Penumbra System used to pull clots from the brain, on 7 October. Manufacturing problems mean the device may fracture; 43 units are affected.
In 204 patients already on standard therapy, pressing a seed on one ear point three times daily left 56.9% clear or almost clear at 8 weeks versus 35.3% with a sham point — a single-centre result needing replication.
Among 7,579 pregnancies in people with migraine, anti-CGRP antibody use early in pregnancy carried a 42% higher adjusted risk of spontaneous abortion; propranolol showed no increase. The data are observational.
A 96,000-woman registry emulation found pre-conception GLP-1 or GLP-1/GIP therapy in PCOS tracked with lower pregnancy risk than metformin. It is not a trial, and says nothing about use during pregnancy.
In a 134-patient phase 3 crossover trial, deucrictibant — the first oral bradykinin B2 receptor blocker — brought symptom relief in a median 1.28 hours, against more than 12 hours on placebo.
A single-centre study used continuous glucose monitoring to fine-tune insulin in people fed intravenously overnight. Time-in-range and weight improved — but with 12 patients and no control group, it is proof of concept.
In a 348-patient trial, patients in sustained low disease activity who stepped down their biologic kept it almost as often as those who stayed on full dose over 24 weeks — but some measures still favoured continuing.
In a 12-month trial of 89 older adults with vascular cognitive impairment, strength training did not slow whole-brain white-matter lesions overall — but it did in women, and in two specific brain regions.
Across 27 trials and 88,830 people, each 10-mmHg drop in systolic pressure cut cardiovascular events whether or not the kidneys were impaired — while aggressive lowering nudged up short-term markers of kidney decline.
In a 462-person phase 3 trial, a synthesised copy of semaglutide, HD1916, cut body weight 13.1% over 44 weeks against 14.4% for the branded drug — inside the margin set for calling them equivalent.
A randomised trial enrolled 3,259 underserved people referred for lung cancer screening. Adding free medication to standard advice did not raise quit rates; adding financial incentives roughly doubled them — to 8.8%.
The UV-free TransVitD patch raised vitamin D in animals and lab-grown skin. In a randomised trial of 108 volunteers it was safe but did not lift blood levels beyond what a small oral dose would.
AbbVie's once-daily pill cleared the FDA on 25 September as a new molecular entity. Across three phase 3 TEMPO trials it beat placebo in early Parkinson's and as an add-on to levodopa.
In the phase 3 SYNCHRONIZE-2 trial, the glucagon/GLP-1 dual agonist beat placebo on weight over 76 weeks. The effect was solid but smaller than the class leaders manage, and the maker funded it.
Two phase 3 trials put the oral drug safiglipron ahead of placebo and non-inferior to dapagliflozin on HbA1c. Both ran only in China, were maker-funded, and showed dose-dependent gut side effects.
ZUPREME 1 tested a once-weekly amylin analogue that works differently from GLP-1 drugs, finding up to 9.4% weight loss at 28 weeks and gastrointestinal side-effects close to placebo. Zealand Pharma funded it.
Merck's sotatercept gained an FDA efficacy supplement on 21 September. In the phase 3 ZENITH trial, a composite of death, transplant or hospitalisation hit 17.4% on the drug versus 54.7% on placebo.
In TRIUMPH-1, a triple hormone-receptor agonist produced a 25% average weight loss at the top dose over 80 weeks, and also eased knee pain and sleep apnoea. The trial was funded by Eli Lilly.
The FDA approved PTC Therapeutics' sepiapterin in July 2025. In the phase 3 APHENITY trial, responders saw a 63% fall in blood phenylalanine over six weeks against roughly no change on placebo.
In the phase 3b STRIDE trial, people with peripheral artery disease and type 2 diabetes walked 13% farther at 52 weeks than on placebo (treatment ratio 1.13; p=0.0004). The gain is modest; Novo Nordisk funded it.
A randomised trial at eight South Korean hospitals found pulse methylprednisolone no better than a non-pulse regimen for surviving an acute exacerbation of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
A Swiss investigator-led trial tested whether isolating the back wall of the left atrium on top of pulsed-field pulmonary vein isolation cuts arrhythmia recurrence. The primary answer was no.
The FDA logged the recall of 8,939 StatStrip Glucose and B-Ketone meters on 23 September, after a software flaw let a scanned barcode linger and file a reading to the wrong patient. It is the agency's most serious tier.
In the phase 2 KRAKEN trial, muvalaplin lowered lipoprotein(a) by 47.6% to 85.8% over 12 weeks on an intact-particle assay. Eli Lilly funded it, and the trial was not built to measure heart attacks or strokes.
In the GSK-funded phase 3 MATINEE trial, the anti-IL-5 antibody lowered moderate or severe exacerbations from 1.01 to 0.80 a year — but symptom and quality-of-life endpoints showed no significant benefit.
The FDA logged the recall of 2,718 Medline convenience kits on 23 September: sterile applicators in some lots could grow the mould Aspergillus penicillioides, and contaminated skin-prep risks infection or sepsis.
In a phase 2 trial in people whose hidradenitis suppurativa had already failed anti-TNF drugs, two lutikizumab doses beat placebo at 16 weeks. A third did not, and the placebo response was high.
In the phase 3 LIBerate-HR trial, lerodalcibep lowered LDL cholesterol 56.2% more than placebo at 52 weeks on top of statins. It won approval in 2026; no outcome trial has yet reported.
Eli Lilly's oral Inluriyo gained an FDA efficacy supplement on 18 September. In the phase 3 EMBER-3 trial, adding abemaciclib lifted median progression-free survival to 9.4 months from 5.5.
The oral histone deacetylase inhibitor cleared the FDA in March 2024. In the phase 3 EPIDYS trial, boys on givinostat still lost function over 72 weeks — just less of it than those on placebo.
A single-surgeon randomised trial of 180 knees found small but statistically supported gains for robot-assisted functional alignment over conventional mechanical alignment at two years.
In EMPACT-MI, the SGLT2 inhibitor missed its primary endpoint: 8.2% of patients had a heart-failure hospitalisation or died versus 9.1% on placebo (hazard ratio 0.90; p=0.21). Boehringer and Lilly funded it.
Emcitate cleared the FDA on 28 September as a new molecular entity. In an open-label trial of 45 patients, the drug lowered the high serum T3 that drives MCT8 deficiency by about two-thirds.
In the DIABIL-2 trial, low-dose interleukin-2 hit its immune target in people newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, yet failed to preserve insulin-producing cells at one year.
The PURE study measured airflow obstruction in adults across 25 countries and found most cases had never been labelled, with the largest undiagnosed share in lower-income settings.
Bristol Myers Squibb's mavacamten gained an FDA efficacy supplement on 30 September. In the pivotal EXPLORER-HCM trial, 37% on the drug met the primary endpoint versus 17% on placebo.
The FDA logged the recall of 1,640 AVID single-shot epidural trays on 23 September, because they hold sodium-chloride ampules caught in a separate Class I sterility recall that warns of possible infection.
AMPLIFIED enriched for early rheumatoid arthritis patients thought to respond best to abatacept, then compared it head-to-head with adalimumab. At week 24 the two drugs were indistinguishable.
The FDA logged the recall of 5,232 Automated Impella Controllers on 23 September, citing a possible purge-pressure sensor failure that can leave the console unable to recognise the pump's purge cassette.
One lot of Vitruvias's 1/2-grain Thyroid Tablets — 1,955 bottles sold nationwide — was pulled after testing showed the tablets carry more hormone than the label states. The FDA calls it its most serious recall class.
Rezzayo's once-weekly echinocandin can now be used in adolescents with candidaemia who have few other options. The expansion rests on adult data and modelling, not on studies in children.
Two 2026 Class I recalls cover Omnipod 5 insulin pods whose soft cannula can be damaged in manufacturing, letting insulin leak instead of reaching the user. The FDA ties under-delivery to a risk of DKA.
BeiGene's PD-1 antibody, added to the HER2 drug zanidatamab and chemotherapy, lifted median overall survival to 26.4 months from 19.2 in the HERIZON-GEA-01 trial. The gain concentrated in the strongest HER2-expressers.
A cluster-randomised trial in nearly 2,000 US nursing homes found fewer confirmed influenza outbreaks with a recombinant vaccine in a moderate flu season, but no difference in a near-flu-free one.
A small crossover trial found 5 mg of melatonin worsened glucose handling and cut early insulin secretion in people carrying the MTNR1B risk variant, but not in non-carriers.
In the LOSE-AF trial, an eight-month low-calorie programme cut weight by 9.7% in older adults with AF. It did not change their symptoms, their AF burden, or their need for further rhythm treatment.
Cleared on 10 July under NDA 218579, the Provepharm agent fluoresces in near-infrared light to map vessels, perfusion and lymph nodes during surgery. Efficacy rests on studies of an earlier formulation.
The FDA logged a Class I recall of 35,883 boxes of the simethicone antigas product on 17 June, after softgels were contaminated with a propylene glycol-based coolant that leaked from packaging machinery.
Approved on 24 June under NDA 220436, the Avyxa Holdings product is a ready-to-infuse form of the NK-1 blocker fosaprepitant, cleared on studies of an earlier intravenous version of the drug.
A Spanish registry followed 166 patients with treatment-resistant epileptic encephalopathies for a year. Median seizure frequency fell 68.8%, though the design cannot match a placebo-controlled trial.
Added to an SGLT2 inhibitor, the aldosterone-synthase inhibitor cut office systolic pressure 7.5 mm Hg and albuminuria about a quarter in 59 adults with CKD. Kidney function dipped slightly; the maker funded it.
A pooled analysis of four trials found depemokimab roughly halved exacerbations, yet it did not significantly improve asthma control or reach the threshold for a meaningful quality-of-life gain.
The FDA logged the recall of 145,464 bags of 0.9% sodium chloride in 500 mL Viaflex containers on 9 September, after fiberglass particulate matter was found. It is the agency's most serious recall tier.
In the phase 3 Bax24 trial, the aldosterone-synthase inhibitor cut 24-hour ambulatory systolic pressure 14.0 mm Hg more than placebo over 12 weeks. AstraZeneca funded it, and three patients developed high potassium.
Ruxolitinib cream beat a placebo cream for cutaneous lichen planus over 16 weeks, but the phase 2 trial randomised only 64 patients and was funded by the drug's maker.
The Class I recall covers 625,500 prefilled syringes. Cartons labelled morphine sulfate 2 mg/mL hold a Dilaudid (hydromorphone) syringe of 0.5 mg/0.5 mL instead — the wrong opioid at the wrong dose.
Regeneron's activin A antibody, brand name Pasatru, cleared the FDA on 19 August. In the pivotal 63-patient trial, new abnormal-bone lesions fell by 90% or more against placebo over 56 weeks.
The FDA classified the nationwide recall Class I, its most serious tier. About 31,935 multi-dose vials are affected, with particulate identified as nylon, glass and other materials, plus broken and leaking units.
The Scholar Rock antibody cleared the FDA on 11 September. In the phase 3 SAPPHIRE trial, apitegromab plus standard therapy beat placebo by 1.8 points on a motor-function scale at 12 months.
Two-year blinded data and open-label follow-up from the ELATIVE trial show the drug kept improving liver blood tests in primary biliary cholangitis — but the endpoint is still a surrogate, and the trial is industry-run.
In the company-run CONDOR trial, brolucizumab injections outperformed panretinal laser for proliferative diabetic retinopathy over 54 weeks — while intraocular inflammation was far more common in the drug arm.
In 3,000 patients eligible for blood thinners, the device maker's trial found left atrial appendage closure noninferior to anticoagulant drugs, and superior for non-procedure-related bleeding at three years.
LOGICAL randomised 1,840 unresponsive adults in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland to conservative or liberal oxygen in intensive care. Favourable outcome at 180 days was 38.2% against 39.7%.
In the phase 3 INDIGO trial, weekly obexelimab roughly halved the risk of a flare in this rare fibroinflammatory disease and spared patients steroids — a positive result in a condition with no approved drug.
VICTORY randomised 238 adults with severe burns to intravenous vitamin C or placebo. It was stopped early: 28-day mortality was 15.0% versus 7.6%, and the trial crossed a prespecified harm threshold.
Both raise blood sugar, but for opposite reasons. Type 1 is an autoimmune loss of insulin; type 2 is the body resisting the insulin it makes. Type 2 accounts for 90 to 95 percent of cases.
An overactive thyroid speeds the body up; an underactive one slows it down. But no single symptom is reliable — in one large screening study, individual thyroid symptoms were poor at flagging who actually had a problem.
REPLENISH randomised 381 patients with relapsed polymyalgia rheumatica. Sustained remission at 52 weeks reached about 41% on secukinumab versus 20.4% on placebo. Novartis funded the trial.
In the 1,658-person PUSH trial, a behavioural programme with financial incentives raised urine volume but left symptomatic stone recurrences unchanged over two years — 19% against 20% with usual care.
A fine tremor everyone has — worsened by caffeine, stress, tiredness or some drugs — is the usual cause. Essential tremor is the commonest tremor disorder; a shake at rest is the one that points elsewhere.
"Brain fog" is a lay term for trouble concentrating and remembering, not a disease. Common drivers include poor sleep, low mood, the menopause transition, thyroid or B12 problems, and the tail of an infection.
A limb that has "gone to sleep" is brief pressure on a nerve and clears in minutes. Tingling that is persistent or spreading can mean carpal tunnel, diabetes or low B12; sudden one-sided numbness is an emergency.
In midlife women the usual cause is the menopause transition, where hot flushes and night sweats last a median of seven years. In older adults they are common, mostly benign, and rarely a mortality signal.
A brief swim of light-headedness on standing is usually orthostatic hypotension: a fall in blood pressure as gravity pulls blood to the legs. It is common, rises with age, and often traces to dehydration or medication.
For most adults who bruise more than they used to, the cause is thinner skin from ageing, sun or steroids, plus the aspirin and anticoagulants many older people take. A few patterns point elsewhere.
When adults see a doctor for new fatigue, fewer than one in ten turn out to have clear physical disease. The common, treatable and often-missed exception is iron deficiency, which drains energy before it causes anaemia.
Feeling cold when others are comfortable can point to an under-active thyroid or iron-deficiency anaemia. Fingers and toes that turn white then blue in the cold are usually Raynaud's, a blood-vessel spasm.
Nail changes can hint at systemic disease — clubbing, spoon-shaped nails, splinter haemorrhages. But the everyday worries, like lengthwise ridges and little white marks, are usually harmless.
Two Cochrane reviews put numbers on it: oral terbinafine and azoles cure far more toenail infections than placebo, while newer topical solutions work but cure a minority — over nearly a year of daily use.
TEMPLE, an AbbVie-funded phase 3b trial, is the first direct test of the CGRP blocker atogepant against topiramate — a long-used preventive many patients cannot tolerate.
Acute otitis externa is usually treated with ear drops, not tablets. In trials antibiotic-steroid drops cured most people, and guidelines say not to start with oral antibiotics for an uncomplicated case.
SINGLE-AF randomised 1,803 South Koreans with borderline stroke risk to a direct oral anticoagulant or nothing. The drug lowered a composite of stroke, bleeding and death at two years, from 1.5% to 0.5%.
Some heart attacks leave scar on an ECG or MRI but were never felt as one. In a long US cohort they made up more than 45% of heart attacks — and they still shortened survival.
The flaky, red patches on scalp, brows and nose folds are an inflammatory reaction, not poor hygiene. Ketoconazole cream cut treatment failure 31% against placebo, and short steroid courses tripled clearance.
In PHOENYCS GO, dapirolizumab pegol lifted the share of lupus patients reaching a composite response at 48 weeks to 50% from 35% on placebo — a real but modest 14.6-point gain.
Losing weight lowers resting metabolism and keeps it low — Biggest Loser contestants ran hundreds of calories below baseline six years on. But that brake slows loss; it does not store fat.
The brown facial patches come from overactive pigment cells in sun-aged skin. Triple-combination cream beats hydroquinone alone (risk ratio 1.58) and tranexamic acid helps, but relapse is the rule.
The bumps are plugged hair follicles, not dirt or a deficiency. Keratolytics help modestly and temporarily: lactic acid cut lesions 66% and salicylic acid 52% over 12 weeks, but they return when you stop.
Insulin resistance usually causes no symptoms you can feel, which is why it is found through blood tests rather than how you seem. The visible clues are subtle — and it rarely travels alone.
The crushing chest pressure is real and common. But in a registry of more than a million patients, 42% of women arrived without chest pain, against 31% of men — and the gap was widest in the young.
Open-angle glaucoma steals side vision so slowly that half of people who have it don't know. There is no way to prevent it — but a placebo-controlled trial showed pressure-lowering drops preserve vision.
In heart patients, randomised trials link influenza vaccination to fewer cardiovascular events and deaths. The effect is clearest in the highest-risk patients, and the largest trial stopped early.
Floaters are usually ageing changes in the eye's gel. But among people who suddenly develop floaters and flashes, about 14% turn out to have a retinal tear — which can lead to permanent vision loss if left.
Eye exercises won't sharpen blurry sight or cure nearsightedness — glasses and surgery do that. But one focusing problem, convergence insufficiency, does respond: an office-based programme helped 73% in a trial.
Danger lies at both ends. Below 70 mg/dL blood sugar is too low; sustained highs can tip into ketoacidosis above 200 mg/dL or a hyperosmolar crisis above 600. Both extremes are medical emergencies.
When fingers and toes turn white then blue in the cold, it is often Raynaud's phenomenon. A Cochrane review finds the standard drugs — calcium channel blockers — cut attacks only modestly.
Chronic hives are mast-cell driven and usually have no external trigger. Antihistamines clear some cases; at 12 weeks omalizumab cut a weekly itch score by 9.8 points at 300 mg, against 5.1 on placebo.
In the investigator-led CAVIAR trial, adding the PCSK9 inhibitor alirocumab to a statin after heart transplant more than halved LDL cholesterol but did not slow coronary plaque growth at one year.
By age 80 most people have a cataract or have had one removed. You can lower some risks, but the antioxidant vitamins tested in a 4,629-person trial did not slow them, and surgery is the only cure.
Carpal tunnel syndrome is median-nerve compression at the wrist. Cochrane reviews find steroid injections clearly help for about a month, while surgery beats non-surgical care at three and six months.
An 840-child US trial gave the antibiotic to toddlers with moderate-to-severe wheezing in the emergency department. Symptom scores were no better than placebo, and the study was stopped for futility.
The Essilor-designed HAL lenses cut two-year myopia progression by 71% versus ordinary glasses in 159 American children. The company employs the study's authors, and the result backs the device's US clearance.
A four-image bitewing set delivers about 5 microsieverts, a panoramic scan 14 to 24. A cone-beam CT can be tens of times higher. The dose is small, but technique and how often you scan drive it more than anything.
A Cochrane review found no evidence that antibiotics ease the pain of an inflamed tooth nerve. The best trial evidence points to ibuprofen, with paracetamol added — but only a dentist fixes the cause.
Face, arm, speech, time is the message that saves lives. But in one US stroke centre 14% of ischaemic strokes had no FAST sign at all — and every minute of delay costs an estimated 1.9 million neurons.
There is no single number. Normal depends on which test is used and whether you have fasted — and the cut-offs that define prediabetes and diabetes are lines drawn on a continuous scale.
The occasional held bladder is not going to burst or poison you. The real concern is habit: routinely ignoring the urge, or being unable to empty at all, which is a medical emergency.
Stifling a sneeze is usually harmless, but doctors have documented rare, serious injuries — a torn throat and a fractured voice box — when the trapped pressure has nowhere to escape.
Hoarseness affects nearly a third of people at some point. Most cases are viral and settle on their own; voice therapy helps persistent ones, and a voice change lasting weeks needs a look at the vocal cords.
No study shows that eating sugar worsens cancer, phones do not damage genes, and biopsies rarely spread it. A guide to what the National Cancer Institute actually concludes about the most persistent myths.
Most lumps are not cancer — swollen glands usually signal infection, and most breast changes are benign. A few features shift the calculus: hard, fixed, growing, or paired with night sweats or weight loss.
With influenza, virus shedding starts within a day of infection, peaks on day two and lasts about five days on average — often before you feel your worst. Nearly a quarter of infections cause one symptom or none at all.
Cochrane reviews found no trials specific to acute neck pain, and only moderate evidence that targeted exercise helps the chronic kind. Manipulation and mobilisation come out roughly even.
Mostly how concentrated it is: pale means well-hydrated, dark means less so. But a few colours — especially red or pink — are signals to get checked rather than to interpret at home.
A six-month randomised trial found liver-fat improvement tracked weight loss and lower ultra-processed food intake, not whether people were assigned a Mediterranean or low-carbohydrate pattern.
US preventive guidance recommends against a resting or exercise ECG in symptom-free adults at low cardiovascular risk, and finds the evidence insufficient at higher risk. The tracing rarely changes treatment.
Open-label follow-up of the phase 3 LUNA3 trial shows rilzabrutinib's platelet responses were durable and sometimes appeared in people who had not responded at first — but a minority reached the mark.
Fluoride toothpaste is the home foundation, with a Cochrane prevented fraction of 24%. At the dentist, fluoride varnish and resin sealants have the strongest trial record — but the evidence is only moderate.
Lying down soon after a meal will not harm most healthy people, but it is not neutral. It reliably worsens acid reflux, and habitually eating late shifts the body's metabolism in a direction tied to weight gain.
HPV drove 71.7% of US oropharyngeal cancers in the most recent period studied, and incidence in men rose 2.7% a year through 2017. Vaccination cuts the oral infections behind them.
Two randomised UK trials tested giving the vaccines together. Systemic reactions stayed mostly mild and immune responses held up, though one trial saw more sore arms and a dip in COVID antibodies with co-administration.
The honest answer is that early type 2 diabetes usually has no signs you can feel. The classic symptoms arrive late, and damage can be under way years before the diagnosis is made.
The injected vaccine contains no live virus. In a Cochrane review, inactivated vaccines raised fever only from 1.5% to 2.3%, and a randomised crossover trial found no excess systemic symptoms over saline placebo.
Yes — the hormones released under stress push glucose up, which is why steroids and severe illness cause hyperglycaemia. Whether everyday stress raises long-term diabetes risk is a smaller, murkier effect.
Colds come from viruses, not cold air. But chilling the body and breathing cold air can blunt the nose's antiviral defences enough to tip a lurking infection into symptoms.
In people with no heart disease, aspirin's benefit was small or absent and bleeding rose across three large trials. US guidance now advises against starting it at 60 or older.
It is not a routine test for everyone — the USPSTF finds the evidence insufficient. Cardiology guidelines back it for one group: intermediate-risk adults weighing whether to start a statin.
Consistent condom use cuts HIV transmission by about 80% and sharply reduces genital HPV, but offers only about 30% protection against genital herpes. The gap is about how each infection spreads.
If a choking person can still cough or speak, let them cough. If they cannot, the guideline sequence is five back blows then five abdominal thrusts, repeated — and new data suggests bystander action changes who survives.
A French study of 11,558 patients without heart failure linked atenolol to fewer cardiovascular events than bisoprolol. It is observational, so it shows an association, not proof one is better.
The stitch has a clinical name — exercise-related transient abdominal pain — and decades of study. It is probably not trapped wind or a cramping diaphragm, and a big meal beforehand makes it far more likely.
Overactive bladder means urgency, often with frequency and night-time waking. Guidelines start with bladder training and fluid habits, and reserve drugs and procedures for when those fall short.
The commonest cause of spinning dizziness is loose inner-ear crystals. In trials the Epley manoeuvre cleared vertigo in 56% of people versus 21% with a sham, and guidelines advise against reaching for drugs.
US preventive guidelines back a blood-sugar test for adults 35 to 70 who carry extra weight; the main diabetes body would test every adult from 35. The gap is about how wide a net catches enough real disease.
A 2006 Cochrane review found the classic ingredient, potassium, only patchily convincing. A newer network meta-analysis of 32 trials is firmer: stannous, potassium and arginine toothpastes can be recommended for pain.
A Cochrane review of 24 trials found surgery beats non-surgical care at stopping an ingrown toenail coming back; adding phenol to the operation cut recurrence from 41% to 14% in the one head-to-head study.
At one year, 79% of newly diagnosed patients given early infliximab plus an immunomodulator were in steroid-free, surgery-free remission, versus 15% treated conventionally.
A meta-analysis of four small trials found zilebesiran lowered office systolic pressure by 7.16 mmHg versus placebo, with wide confidence intervals, a hint the effect wanes by six months, and more hyperkalaemia.
Commercial full-body scans promise early detection to people with no symptoms. The data show they find something to chase in nearly half, and cancer in about one in a hundred.
Stones form when urine gets too concentrated. The best-tested defence is dull: drink enough that urine stays dilute. In one trial, that alone roughly halved recurrences.
Triglycerides are the lipid panel's fourth number, and most of what raises them is modifiable. Here is where the thresholds sit — and the point at which a very high level becomes a medical emergency.
Progressive resistance and impact training raised bone mineral density in trials, and a landmark study found heavy lifting safe for women with low bone mass. Calcium and vitamin D did not lower fracture risk.
Topical diclofenac and ketoprofen beat their carrier gels for knee osteoarthritis pain, with about 60% of users reporting much less pain. A large network meta-analysis now rates topical diclofenac a first-line option.
The first randomised head-to-head trial of the two obesity drugs gave 751 adults the maximum tolerated dose of each for 72 weeks. Tirzepatide cut weight by 20.2%, semaglutide by 13.7%.
A randomised trial and a 21-study meta-analysis found thyroid hormone normalised the blood test but left tiredness and symptom scores unchanged. A guideline now advises against routine treatment.
H. pylori infection and NSAIDs are the two most common causes of peptic ulcers. Treatment now turns on antibiotic resistance, which is quietly reshaping the first-line regimens.
The old RICE drill was never built on strong trial evidence, and newer guidance drops the ice and anti-inflammatories. The durable parts are protection, gentle loading and time.
A Cochrane review of 39 trials found a steroid injection lowered heel pain by about 6 points on a 100-point scale in the first month, and made no difference by six months. Most cases settle anyway.
The evidence-based first move for a burn is unglamorous: hold it under cool running water. A large registry study links proper cooling to fewer skin grafts and ICU admissions; ice and butter belong nowhere near it.
For most of the world the ability to digest milk sugar declines after weaning, set by a single gene variant. About 68 percent of people have lactose malabsorption.
Sun-driven brown patches are hard to shift. A Cochrane review found a triple-combination cream beat hydroquinone alone; newer meta-analyses point to tranexamic acid and PRP, on thinner evidence.
For acute ankle sprains, a review found only two poor trials and no clear benefit from ice. For sore muscles, cold-water immersion helps modestly. For low-back pain, a heat wrap has the best support.
Haemorrhoids affect about 1 in 20 Americans and half of over-50s. A meta-analysis found fibre cut the risk of persisting symptoms by 47 percent and of bleeding by half.
Gallstones affect 10 to 15 percent of Americans, but stones that never block a bile duct cause no symptoms. Here is when a stone stops being harmless and becomes an emergency.
A 503-patient trial found surgery no better than physiotherapy plus a steroid injection for frozen shoulder. A meta-analysis of 65 studies pointed to early intra-articular steroid as the one clear winner.
A pooled study of 1.44 million adults links activity to lower risk of 13 cancers — but not all, and not melanoma. A 2025 randomised trial now shows exercise after colon cancer improves survival.
A Cochrane review of 36 trials found no strong evidence that any spray, gel or lozenge reliably relieves dry mouth. A second review found acupuncture no better than a placebo. The honest answers are narrow.
Artificial tears are still the mainstay, but the trial evidence cannot say which brand is best. A 3,000 mg fish-oil study in 535 people found no benefit over an olive-oil placebo.
The strongest rinse, chlorhexidine, clearly cuts plaque and gum inflammation — but stains teeth, so it is a short-term treatment, not a daily habit. Everyday rinses help less, and always work on top of brushing.
A Cochrane review found lumbar supports do not prevent back pain and their treatment value was unclear. A new French randomised trial found a soft belt added to usual care modestly improved pain and disability.
Two large trials, ETHOS and IMPACT, found adding an inhaled steroid to a two-bronchodilator inhaler lowered exacerbation rates in COPD — at the cost of more pneumonia.
Most bowel symptoms are not cancer. But a 2023 study of early-onset cases identified four signs — rectal bleeding, abdominal pain, diarrhoea and iron-deficiency anaemia — that recur before diagnosis in the under-50s.
The Bristol Stool Form Scale turns an awkward question into a measurable one. Types 3 to 5 are the healthy middle; the shape of your stool tracks how fast it moved through you.
Most acute sinus infections clear without antibiotics — about 46% of people are better within a week regardless. Drugs speed cure in only 5 to 11 per 100, and cause side effects in more.
A double-blind trial gave 17,598 people pantoprazole or placebo for three years and tracked pneumonia, fractures, kidney disease and dementia. Only gut infections rose, and only modestly.
WHO and ILO estimate long hours caused 745,000 deaths in one year. The effect is real but modest per person, and clearest for stroke rather than heart disease.
In FINEARTS-HF, 6,001 patients with an ejection fraction of 40% or more had fewer worsening-heart-failure events on finerenone. Cardiovascular deaths were not lower.
Cold sores heal on their own in about a week, and nothing clears the virus for good. Creams and pills shave hours to roughly a day off an episode — but only if started at the first tingle.
In a two-week trial, 100 adults drank coffee or avoided caffeine on random days. Coffee did not raise the upper-chamber skipped beats it was blamed for — but it nudged up lower-chamber ones and cut sleep.
Most bad breath starts in the mouth. Cochrane reviews found tongue scraping cuts odour compounds only briefly, and the rinses that work best also stain the teeth.
A Cochrane review of 67 trials found topical allylamines and azoles cure far more foot infections than placebo, with allylamines slightly ahead. Oral pills are reserved for stubborn or failed cases.
US guidelines recommend a one-time ultrasound for men aged 65 to 75 who ever smoked, and advise against it for most women. The split turns on who actually benefits from finding a silent bulge in the aorta.
Taken as prescribed, oral PrEP cuts the risk of getting HIV from sex by about 99%, the CDC says. But randomised trials measured 44% to 86% — because the protection depends almost entirely on taking it.
VITAL, with 25,871 adults, and D-Health, with 21,315, both tested vitamin D against placebo. Neither cut cancer incidence or cancer death — and one saw a signal pointing the wrong way.
Cochrane reviews of paracetamol, ibuprofen and aspirin for tension-type headache find each beats a dummy pill for a minority of people — a real but small effect, with side effects no higher than placebo.
SOLARIO randomised 500 patients after orthopaedic infection surgery to short or long systemic antibiotics. With a local-antibiotic carrier in place, the short course was noninferior and caused fewer side effects.
These soft flaps are harmless. Their real interest is metabolic — one study tied them to diabetes with an odds ratio of 1.89 — but a 2026 cohort found no link to prediabetes. Removal is cosmetic, not a home job.
Two Cochrane reviews found that for ordinary acute low back pain, advice to rest in bed is slightly worse than advice to stay active. For sciatica, it makes little difference either way.
An umbrella review of 41 systematic reviews found sitting, standing and 'bad' posture are at most weakly and inconsistently linked to low back pain — and none of it establishes that posture is the cause.
When brief vertigo is triggered by rolling over or looking up, it is usually a loose crystal in the inner ear. A Cochrane review found a repositioning manoeuvre resolved it in 56% versus 21%.
EPoS II randomised 10,799 people with high-risk adenomas to a first surveillance colonoscopy at five years or three. At an interim analysis the colorectal-cancer rates were near-identical.
Prediabetes is a high-risk state, not a diagnosis of diabetes. In the trial that defined the field, lifestyle change cut progression by 58 percent — and returning to normal glucose carried a benefit of its own.
Common advice says scrape a bee stinger out, never pinch it. The actual evidence says the method barely matters — what counts is speed, because venom keeps pumping every second the stinger stays in.
Amycretin, a single molecule that activates both the GLP-1 and amylin receptors, produced up to 24.3% weight loss over 36 weeks in a 125-person study. The primary goal, though, was safety — not weight.
Abaloparatide reliably raises bone density, so it seemed a natural candidate to help fractures knit. A randomised trial found no benefit — and healing numerically favoured placebo.
Chronic hives can flare for months with no allergy to find. A Cochrane review of 9,759 people found modern antihistamines such as cetirizine clear them in a minority, not everyone.
A Cochrane review of 51 trials found powered brushes cut plaque and gum inflammation more than manual ones, on moderate-quality evidence. An 11-year cohort suggests the small edge adds up: fewer teeth lost.
Across 17 randomised trials, blue-light filtering lenses showed no clear benefit for eye strain, vision or sleep. The evening-screen problem they target is real; this is not the fix.
In a company-funded randomised trial, adults who lost weight then took pasteurised Akkermansia muciniphila regained 1.2 kg over 24 weeks versus 3.2 kg on placebo — a modest effect in 90 people.
Pulling out is better than no method but among the least reliable in common use: US data put its first-year failure at 20%. Pre-ejaculatory fluid carried motile sperm in a substantial minority of men studied.
Decades of randomised trials give fluoride toothpaste a prevented fraction Cochrane puts at 24%. Concentration and how you brush change the size of the benefit — but no over-the-counter rival has evidence like it.
In a 142-patient phase 3 trial, 37% reached complete remission on the antibody obinutuzumab versus 6% on tacrolimus at two years. A key kidney-function endpoint was not met, tempering the result.
Inviting people to a single colonoscopy cut 10-year colorectal cancer risk from 1.20% to 0.98%. The reduction in cancer deaths did not reach significance — and only 42% of those invited turned up.
Studies going back decades find no link between habitual knuckle cracking and hand arthritis. One doctor cracked a single hand for a lifetime to prove it — and got arthritis in neither.
In ESSENCE, the first 800 patients with biopsy-confirmed fatty-liver disease were analysed at week 72. Steatohepatitis resolved in 62.9% on semaglutide versus 34.3% on placebo — an interim look at an ongoing trial.
Two trials found low-dose colchicine cut cardiovascular events, and the FDA approved it for heart risk in 2023. Then the largest trial found nothing, leaving the question genuinely unsettled.
Xerosis is a barrier problem, not dirt. Cochrane found moisturisers cut eczema flares 60% and spared steroid use; in care-home residents a twice-daily emollient roughly halved skin tears, on weak evidence.
For adults with no symptoms, the US Preventive Services Task Force recommends against carotid ultrasound screening — a rare 'D' grade, because finding the narrowing does more harm than good.
Pooled across 85 trials, exercise-based cardiac rehab cut later heart attacks and hospital admissions but barely moved death rates within a year — a real benefit, and a narrower one than the usual pitch.
A new analysis of the REDEFINE 1 trial reframes obesity treatment around reaching a normal BMI and waist size, not just percentage lost. The combination beat semaglutide alone on that measure.
In the phase 3 THRIVE trial, veligrotug shrank bulging eyes in 70% of patients versus 5% on placebo. It is the first serious challenger to the only drug approved for the condition.
Swollen ankles are common with age. Chronic venous disease rises steeply over the years, and a very ordinary culprit is medication: calcium channel blockers caused ankle swelling in 10.7% of users versus 3.2% on placebo.
A short course of a first-line antibiotic clears most uncomplicated UTIs. Five-day nitrofurantoin beat single-dose fosfomycin (70% vs 58% resolution), and two-thirds of women recovered on ibuprofen alone.
A single-centre randomised trial found that three cycles of intravenous immunoglobulin on top of high-dose steroids improved muscle disease faster and further — in just 44 patients, at one Dutch hospital.
Additives such as carboxymethylcellulose stabilise processed food. A large cohort links some to slightly higher heart-disease risk, and a small trial shows one disturbs the gut — but proof of harm is not settled.
Losing a little height with age is expected. But marked loss tracks real risk: men who lost 3 cm or more had 45% higher mortality, and women who lost over 5 cm had roughly 50% higher hip-fracture risk.
TRIC-I-HF randomised 360 older patients with severe tricuspid regurgitation. Adding transcatheter repair to medical therapy cut a composite of death or heart-failure hospitalisation through three years.
A cohort of 5.24 million UK adults linked higher BMI to 17 of 22 cancers — strongly for the uterus, weakly or not at all for others, and inversely for a couple. The pattern is specific, not uniform.
A 1,695-patient trial tested whether metoprolol helps people with COPD and no cardiovascular indication. It missed its primary endpoint — but, unlike an earlier trial, showed no signal of harm.
One in five people get chronic itch at some point. When no rash and no cause turn up, a Cochrane review found almost no trials at all — leaving guideline experts to work from indirect evidence.
In QWINT-1, fixed-dose weekly efsitora cut HbA1c about as much as daily glargine in 795 insulin-naive adults — with a lower rate of significant hypoglycaemia and a quarter of the dose changes.
Balance starts slipping after the mid-50s. In 1,702 adults, those who could not hold a 10-second one-legged stance had 84% higher death risk. Specific exercise, done three times a week, measurably restores it.
Twenty-five years of cohort data show the alkaline dust caused an acute cough syndrome and a real, largely permanent drop in lung function, graded by how much each person breathed.
The familiar explanation — dehydration and lost salts — is the weakest part of the evidence. The better-supported idea is that cramping is a failure of nerve control, which is why a mouthful of pickle juice can stop one.
In a 258-patient phase 3 trial, the oral drug reduced transfusion needs in about 30% of adults with transfusion-dependent thalassaemia, versus 13% on placebo.
A large study of energy use across the lifespan found it holds steady from age 20 to 60, once body size is accounted for. The midlife metabolic slump is mostly a myth; the decline comes later.
Registries show a real but narrow signal: a few cancers, led by prostate and thyroid, run high in 9/11 responders, while overall cancer incidence sits at or below the rate expected.
The ORBEX trial gave OM-85 or placebo to 822 young children at high risk of asthma. Wheezing lower-respiratory illnesses were, if anything, slightly more common on the drug.
Self-testing and self-managing warfarin cut clot events by roughly 40%, and self-management also lowered deaths — one of the few at-home tests with randomised evidence of real benefit.
Out-of-office readings predict heart attacks and death better than a clinic measurement, and guidelines now require them to confirm hypertension — but only a validated upper-arm cuff counts.
New at-home molecular tests catch most established colorectal cancers, but find only 13–43% of the advanced precancerous polyps a colonoscopy is meant to remove before they become cancer.
Consumer kits reliably estimate sperm concentration, and a smartphone assay matched lab classification ~98% of the time. But a normal count can't rule out the motility, shape and DNA problems a full analysis checks.
Tozorakimab, which blocks interleukin-33, lowered the rate of moderate or severe COPD exacerbations by about a third against placebo, without an eosinophil requirement to qualify.
Zenagamtide was tested as a weekly injection and a daily pill in type 2 diabetes. Both cut HbA1c against placebo at 36 weeks, and the oral version's side effects rose steeply with dose.
Most sore throats clear on their own within a week. Painkillers and honey ease the pain; antibiotics shorten symptoms by only about 16 hours and are rarely worth it.
Three randomised trials found routine finger-prick testing produced no clinically meaningful change in long-term blood sugar for people whose type 2 diabetes is managed without insulin.
Satralizumab reduced eye-bulging and inflammation in thyroid eye disease across the twin SatraGO phase 3 trials, but the primary proptosis endpoint reached statistical significance in only one of them.
Tranexamic acid cut postpartum haemorrhage in placenta praevia. Dapagliflozin nearly halved acute kidney injury after cardiac surgery. The effect sizes are very different, and so is how much to trust them.
Europe cut its safe intake for BPA by orders of magnitude and banned it in food packaging. US regulators disagree, and the substitutes are less studied.
Cataract surgery was tied to 29% lower dementia risk in a strong cohort. But the largest hearing-aid trial found no overall effect on cognition. The signal is real; the proof that fixing senses prevents dementia is not.
It takes only a handful of viral particles to infect you, it shrugs off alcohol hand gel, and it survives on surfaces for days. That biology explains why the effective defences are the unglamorous ones.
The procedure breaks the thigh bones and slowly pulls them apart over months. It is major orthopaedic surgery with a real complication rate, not a lifestyle upgrade.
The honest answer is that neither wins outright. Alcohol gel is faster and is the default in hospitals — but it misses a handful of important germs that only soap and water remove.
Substantial, sustained weight loss can return blood sugar to the normal range without drugs in some people diagnosed recently. It is real, it is not a cure, and it fades as the weight comes back.
The chemistry and the exposure are solid. The headline death tolls are model estimates built on assumptions, and they carry uncertainty ranges to match.
MariTide antagonises the GIP receptor that tirzepatide switches on, yet in 592 adults it drove 12–16% weight loss over a year — and it is dosed once a month, not once a week.
Frailty has firm diagnostic criteria and predicts falls, hospital stays and death. It is also, unusually, treatable: resistance training raised muscle strength 113% even in nursing-home residents in their late 80s.
The uncomfortable answer from the studies is that symptoms overlap too much to be sure without a test — and that most of what genuinely helps is prevention, not a cure.
EECOH-1 randomised 211 adults and found the weekly GLP-1 cut HbA1c up to 1.56 points more than placebo over 24 weeks — competitive numbers from a short, single-country, company-run trial.
Sepsis is the body's own response to an infection turning against its organs. It kills an estimated 11 million people a year, and the evidence keeps pointing to how fast it is caught and treated.
A 411,000-patient claims study found adults on GLP-1 drugs who started oxycodone had more severe constipation and bowel obstruction at 30 days than those starting hydrocodone or tramadol.
A systematic review of the randomised trials found no compelling evidence for any remedy. Newer work suggests the hangover is driven by inflammation and metabolites, not just dehydration.
EVAOLD tested whether stress imaging could safely spare patients aged 80 and over an invasive procedure. It was stopped early for futility, and the selective strategy did not prove non-inferior.
A landmark trial cut delirium from 15.0% to 9.9% by addressing six ordinary risk factors together. Drugs, including antipsychotics, have not shown the same clear preventive benefit.
There are more than 18 million cancer survivors in the US, and finishing treatment is not the end of the health story. The strongest evidence for what helps is also the most ordinary.
The claim that striking your face remodels the bone into a stronger jaw has no mechanism and no evidence. Blunt force to the facial skeleton is how oral surgeons see fractures and nerve damage arrive.
Severe dehydration from diarrhoeal disease and sepsis can shut down the kidneys. In a health system with little dialysis, a review argues this is a preventable driver of death that surveillance is missing.
In the Novartis-funded VICTORION-Challenge trial, twice-yearly inclisiran cut LDL 56.3% at day 150 against 15.4% for daily bempedoic acid — an open-label comparison of a surrogate marker, not outcomes.
A transcriptomic sub-study of the CALERIE calorie-restriction trial links 151 genes to preserved leg strength during weight loss, independent of how much body mass was lost.
In a 92-patient Greek cohort, the long-acting PTH replacement normalised calcium and phosphate and freed 58% of patients from calcium and vitamin D pills — echoing the trials, over a short follow-up.
Patients whose carotid plaque contained plastics had a higher rate of heart attack, stroke or death. It is an association in 257 people, not proof of cause.
Hard chewing can enlarge the masseter muscle. But a bigger masseter widens the lower face — which is exactly what cosmetic clinics pay to shrink with botulinum toxin.
Applied to 411,000 UK Biobank adults, the Edmonton staging system and the Lancet Commission's clinical-obesity model classified severe disease alike but diverged on who counts as early-stage.
The technique claims that pressing the tongue to the palate will lift the cheekbones and sharpen the jawline. There is no controlled evidence it changes the adult facial skeleton.
Reviewing and stopping unnecessary drugs in older people is safe in trials and reduces inappropriate prescriptions. Whether it makes them live longer or feel better is far less settled than the enthusiasm implies.
In a randomised trial of 3,102 bypass patients across seven countries, all-cause mortality was near-identical between bilateral and single internal thoracic artery grafting.
A 2,234-patient UK trial gave people with unexplained syncope a 14-day ECG monitor or usual care. A year on, fainting episodes were no fewer — a caution against confusing better detection with better outcomes.
Cochrane reviews rate anti-inflammatory painkillers a very effective treatment for menstrual cramps, roughly doubling the odds of good pain relief. Exercise helps too, but on lower-quality evidence.
Kidney disease is usually silent until it is advanced, and most of it traces to diabetes and high blood pressure. Controlling those two, and getting tested, is the highest-yield protection — not kidney superfoods.
An updated Annals review now covers 38 randomised trials and 25,816 people. Tirzepatide leads the marketed drugs at 19.0% placebo-subtracted weight loss; the experimental multiagonists run higher.
A self-reported cross-sectional study of 599 residents found sharp deterioration across every measured dimension of oral health during the war — a neglected corner of the humanitarian-health picture.
Cochrane found composite resin restorations had almost double the failure rate in children's permanent teeth. The FDA does not recommend removing intact amalgam fillings from anyone.
TARGET-CTCA randomised 3,170 emergency patients whose troponin had cleared them of a heart attack. Outpatient CT angiography-guided care matched standard care on later infarction or cardiac death.
A stool test at home and a colonoscopy are both recommended options with different trade-offs. The starting age fell to 45 because the disease is rising in younger adults.
STAREE randomised 9,971 Australians aged 70 and over to atorvastatin or placebo. Cardiovascular events fell by 30%. Death, dementia and persistent disability, taken together, did not move.
SWITCH-SWEDEHEART randomised regions rather than patients. Over 17,095 people, a default prasugrel policy did not lower ischaemic events against ticagrelor, but major bleeding was lower.
A meta-analysis of 14 studies and 7,465 men found little for the conventional semen parameters, and something more consistent for sperm DNA fragmentation.
In 264 patients in China, the device maker's trial reported clinical worsening in 25.7% versus 51.5% on medical therapy alone (HR 0.49) — but no sham procedure blinded patients.
Twenty-one years of cancer follow-up, multimorbidity data to 2021, and a randomised trial in frail older adults. In each, metformin did not beat placebo. Lifestyle change did.
Pelvic-floor muscle training cured stress incontinence in 56% of women versus 6% on no treatment. Guidelines put it and bladder training first, ahead of medication.
DANISH-CRT randomised 1,000 patients to electrically targeted or conventional left ventricular lead placement. After nearly four years, death and heart failure admissions were the same.
PRAGUE-26 randomised 558 patients across 11 Czech hospitals. The seven-day composite fell from 6.8% to 0.7%, driven by cardiorespiratory collapse, with no clear bleeding penalty.
PREMIUM tested prasugrel alone against aspirin plus prasugrel in 2,216 STEMI patients in Japan. Monotherapy failed to show noninferiority, and the confidence interval sat above one.
At recommended doses it is one of the best-tolerated painkillers. The liver harm concentrates at high doses, and half of the failure cases are unintentional, often from combining products.
A Lancet review triangulates the evidence linking adiposity to multisystem disease and finds robust trial support in a short list — while an expert panel argues the drugs must be lifelong.
Young men are chasing higher testosterone with 'natural boosters' and direct-to-consumer TRT. The supplements are largely unproven; unnecessary therapy carries real costs to fertility.
Cochrane found a clinically important 15.2-point pain reduction across 249 trials. A reanalysis excluding trials with fewer than 70 participants put the effect below the threshold that counts as meaningful.
ABYSS and SMART-DECISION together cover 6,238 stable patients. Discontinuation cleared both noninferiority margins, though the authors say the primary endpoint's composition limits what it shows.
US guidelines recommend routine chlamydia and gonorrhea screening for sexually active women under 25 and older women at higher risk. Self-collected swabs match clinician-collected ones closely.
Guidelines have hedged on anticoagulation for people with one stroke risk factor. SINGLE-AF randomised 1,803 patients in South Korea, and the events it counted were very few in both arms.
A meta-analysis of 90,000 people found these diabetes-origin drugs reduced kidney disease progression by 37% and cardiovascular events by 23%, and the benefit was similar in people who did not have diabetes.
A 740,744-child natural experiment tested a decade-old hypothesis that rotavirus vaccine might prevent type 1 diabetes. It found no protective effect — and no evidence of harm either.
WHO and ILO estimate about 17% of workers face hazardous noise. Their review of whether it causes heart disease found only low-certainty signals — one for heart-attack incidence, little for stroke or blood pressure.
The phase 3 VALOR trial met its primary endpoint at the higher dose of the oral TYK2-JAK1 inhibitor, with more serious infections — a benefit and a safety signal that arrive together.
ACACIA-HCM met both primary endpoints in symptomatic non-obstructive HCM. The gains were real but small, and one in ten patients had a reversible drop in pumping function.
High urate levels track with worsening kidney disease, so treating them seemed a logical way to slow it. Two trials that lowered urate with allopurinol found the kidneys declined at the same rate anyway.
A pooled analysis puts patient-reported rates at 13.9%, 8.0% and 12.0%. All of it is self-report, the heterogeneity is enormous, and the reviewers stop short of recommending avoidance.
A trial of an anti-inflammatory antibody cut cardiovascular events without changing lipids. A genetic study of 194,418 people found the inflammation marker everyone measures is not itself causal.
In half a million people, weaker grip tracked with higher mortality — a strong marker. But it reads out whole-body strength and health, not a number you move by training your hands.
Matched against DPP-4 inhibitors, GLP-1 users had slightly more diabetic retinopathy and more retinopathy procedures. Vision impairment and blindness did not differ — and the coding for those is poor.
Leisure exercise reliably protects the heart. Physical activity done for a living shows mixed or even adverse associations — and some meta-analyses find higher mortality in men with the most physically demanding jobs.
Young men are starting hair-loss drugs early and stacking them with dermarolling and oral minoxidil. Two drugs have decades of evidence; the trend's framing runs ahead of it.
The American Heart Association said so in 2012. A 2026 synthesis of 19 systematic reviews found most pooled associations negligible in magnitude, and a genetic analysis found no direct causal path.
A 2023 network meta-analysis of 270 trials ranked isometric exercise first for lowering resting blood pressure. Two 2026 analyses, using ambulatory monitoring and a larger trial set, rank it among the weakest.
An updated systematic review of 25 randomised trials found small effects, concentrated in neuropathic pain, alongside moderate to large increases in dizziness, sedation and nausea. Long-term data barely exist.
Comparing US adults vaccinated just before and just after the changeover from the live to the recombinant shingles vaccine, researchers found a 9% lower cardiovascular burden over seven years.
Smoking is the leading modifiable cause, and the most common presenting sign is blood in the urine. There is no recommended screening test, which makes that sign the thing to act on.
Hospital admissions for food anaphylaxis in the UK rose 5.7% a year for two decades while the case fatality rate fell. The treatment recommendations have almost no randomised evidence behind them.
The equation converting A1c to average glucose was built from 507 people. In carriers of sickle cell trait the reading runs about 0.3 percentage points low for the same measured glucose.
In people who already have kidney disease, cutting salt reduced albuminuria by about 36% and lowered blood pressure. High salt also blunts standard kidney-protecting drugs — though long-term outcome trials are missing.
A Cochrane review found women doing pelvic floor muscle training were eight times more likely to report their stress incontinence cured than untreated women — with the strongest evidence for that one condition.
The disease is lethal largely because it is found late. That is also why guidelines recommend against screening the general public — the evidence says it would do more harm than good.
The glucagon and GLP-1 dual agonist, already approved in China, cut bodyweight 18.1% at 16 mg and 15.6% at 10 mg over 32 weeks versus 0.9% on placebo in a US phase 2 trial.
Global mean intake was 4,278 mg a day in 2021 against a recommended limit under 2,000. A week of low-sodium eating moved blood pressure in most people; a five-year trial of salt substitute cut strokes.
Hepatitis C is usually silent for years and is the reason for much chronic liver disease. A short course of antiviral pills cures more than 95% of cases, which is what changed the screening advice.
A meta-analysis of 116 randomised trials found weight, waist and body fat falling steadily up to 300 minutes a week. In one 24-week trial, 48% of participants compensated by about 308 kcal a day.
Among 17,508 notified cases from 2007 to 2021, 1.49% died of Chagas and 5.83% of other causes — with digestive complications, not cardiac ones, carrying the highest cumulative risk.
Post-bariatric hypoglycemia hits roughly 1 in 12 gastric bypass patients with sudden blood sugar crashes. Avexitide cut severe events by 55% against placebo.
Head-to-head against an ECG chest strap, popular optical wrist devices differed substantially, and one graded test found a smartwatch running a couple of beats low with a 28-bpm spread in its limits of agreement.
Most skin cancers rarely kill; melanoma, about 1 percent of them, causes most of the deaths. There is no proven benefit from routine whole-body screening — which puts the focus on changing moles.
Rezpegaldesleukin works by expanding the immune system's regulatory T cells rather than blocking an inflammatory signal — a new mechanism for atopic dermatitis, tested so far only in a phase 2b study.
In the phase 3 Launch-HTN trial, adults already on two to five drugs fell 9.1 mm Hg further on lorundrostat than placebo — the second aldosterone-synthase inhibitor to post positive data after baxdrostat.
ITACS randomised 955 anaemic adults to intravenous iron or placebo before elective cardiac surgery. Fewer patients needed a transfusion, but the primary benefit was a median of one day alive and at home.
Users were slightly less likely than non-users to attempt suicide in the two to four years after treatment. The FDA's 2005 boxed warning stands, and the analysis cannot explain the direction of the finding.
An umbrella review of the meta-analyses puts the association at RR 1.45. The AUA's guideline treats ED as a risk marker, and classes shockwave, stem cell and PRP therapy as investigational.
Cross-sectional studies from the country's south and east report about a third of respondents vaping, with attitudes — not knowledge — the factor most strongly linked to use.
Pooling 32 trials, researchers found milk, whey, casein, and soy protein lowered LDL and total cholesterol slightly — but the effect shrank once weaker studies were excluded.
Two large randomised trials found low-dose CT screening cut lung-cancer deaths in heavy smokers. The eligibility rules are narrow, and the reason is written into the evidence.
Mice lacking the chaperone GRPEL2 stayed leaner on a high-fat diet and kept better insulin sensitivity — an early mechanistic finding, not a treatment, and so far only in mice.
Cochrane pooled 106 randomised trials in 13,631 people; a phenotype-led update reached 152 studies. The best evidence is feature-by-feature — brimonidine for redness, ivermectin and azelaic acid for pustules.
Low fluid intake is a genuine, well-evidenced stone risk factor. Increasing fluid to produce plenty of urine is the single best-supported way to prevent another stone — better established than any diet tweak.
A Cochrane review of 50 trials found cranberry products lower UTI risk in women with recurrent infections and in children, but no benefit in the elderly, in pregnancy, or in bladder-emptying problems.
A joint AGA and ACG guideline graded ten treatments for chronic constipation. The cheap osmotic laxative and the newest secretagogues sit in the same recommendation tier.
Heavy drinking tracks with weight gain fairly consistently. For light-to-moderate drinking, the evidence is genuinely mixed — and confounded by who drinks that way.
Cochrane found cognitive behavioural therapy cuts the impact of tinnitus by about 11 points on a 100-point scale. Against active audiological care the difference was 5.65 points, below the noticeable threshold.
RACER-Knee masked patients with sham incisions and found a Forgotten Joint Score difference of −1.5 points at 12 months (P=0.62) — while the robotic operation cost more.
In one study of 62,685 women, iron deficiency prevalence ranged from 3% to 15% depending on the ferritin threshold. On treatment, a recent trial found alternate-day iron caused fewer side effects than daily dosing.
Sarcopenia got a formal definition and diagnostic cut-offs. The clinical guidelines that followed back resistance exercise strongly — and are far more cautious about protein powders, vitamin D and drugs.
Three 2025 reviews of the same drugs reach three answers: a matched cohort finds less cardiovascular disease on biologics, a network meta-analysis flags one drug as raising events, and 43 trials find nothing.
Observational studies had linked proton pump inhibitors to fractures, dementia, kidney disease and more. A randomised trial collected all of those outcomes and found only enteric infections.
Adding an inhaled steroid to the as-needed inhaler roughly halved severe attacks against a short-acting reliever, at a fraction of the daily steroid exposure that maintenance therapy delivers.
Across 107 cohort studies and 4.8 million people, the protective effect of moderate drinking disappeared once the comparison group stopped including people who had quit because they were ill.
A 2025 review walked through every study of low-dose rapamycin in healthy adults. The immune findings are real, the outcome data do not exist, and the review's own worked example does not add up.
A decade of eardrum repair delivered on Country across nine Queensland communities produced closure rates below metropolitan benchmarks — and a follow-up rate most urban surgical services do not achieve.
FIMPACT enrolled 210 people, assigned them to real surgery, fake surgery or exercise, and followed them to 2023. The gap between operated and pretend-operated groups was 1.5 points on a 100-point scale.
A Nurses' Health Study II analysis estimated 37% of incident reflux symptoms were attributable to five modifiable factors. Body weight was the largest single one, at 19%.
Orforglipron removes the injection from weight-loss medicine — a real change for people who refused one. Supply, cost, and coverage are the harder problems it does not solve.
The IARC calls night shift work probably carcinogenic. A 2026 meta-analysis of nurses shows why 'probably' is careful: the breast cancer signal appears only after decades, and shrinks to nothing once bias is corrected.
An umbrella review graded 249 effect sizes across 67 risk factors for male infertility. More than half were rated very low certainty — and the review contradicts its own table on one of them.
Adding milk, yoghurt and cheese cut hip fractures 46% in Australian aged-care residents. In the general over-50 population, dietary calcium intake shows no association with fracture risk at all.
A 2025 US Surgeon General advisory put alcohol third among preventable causes of cancer. The global data show light drinking contributes too, not only heavy use.
Observational studies link higher water intake to healthier kidneys. When a randomised trial coached people with kidney disease to drink more, their filtration fell at the same rate as the control group.
A phase 2 trial of dasatinib plus quercetin missed its bone endpoint. A senolytic injected into the eye produced a 5.6-letter vision gain whose confidence interval crosses zero.
Two cohorts published ten days apart. One found the PFAS mixture more than doubling the odds of hypertension at 24 to 28 weeks; the other found lower birth weight, but only in female infants.
A once-daily experimental pill beat placebo in a phase 3 trial and is under regulatory review — yet no study has tested its claimed edge over older dopamine agonists head-to-head.
A meta-analysis of 45 cohorts found risk rising steadily with every 10 beats per minute. A study of 92,457 wearable users found one person's normal can differ from another's by 70 beats.
One found PFAS mixtures associated with lower kidney filtration, with blood lipids mediating much of it. The other found the lipid association weaker in people with healthier habits.
Cochrane pooled 47 randomised trials in 5,290 women. The drug most often named alongside minoxidil as first-line — spironolactone — had no randomised evidence, and the review asked for some.
A 2,836-pair analysis of the ECHO cohort found one of four compounds associated with parent-reported sleep problems. A Shanghai study of bone density found opposite directions in girls and boys.
OPAL randomised 347 people in Australian primary care and emergency departments. At six weeks the opioid group's mean pain score was slightly worse than the placebo group's.
Across studies, current NSAID use was tied to about a 73% higher odds of acute kidney injury, more in older people and those with existing kidney disease. The combination with two blood-pressure drugs is the real hazard.
ACHIEVE randomised 977 older adults and measured three-year cognitive change. The difference between hearing aids and health education was 0.002 SD units, p=0.96. One subgroup result is doing a lot of work.
Applying the clinical-versus-preclinical obesity framework to 2,316 surgical patients in four countries found two groups near-identical on BMI and different on almost everything else.
In a trial of 1,643 men, prostate cancer killed 3.1% of the monitored group and 2.2% of the surgery group — a difference the trial could not distinguish from chance. Metastases were twice as common.
Its guideline says antipyretics should be considered when a feverish child appears distressed, not to lower a temperature. In critically ill adults, paracetamol for fever changed nothing.
A network meta-analysis of 24 randomised trials ranks oral dutasteride first on 24-week hair density. The adverse-effect literature behind these drugs is separately, and seriously, contested.
Cochrane reviews find honey modestly eases a child's cough and does about as well as dextromethorphan, while OTC cough medicines have not beaten placebo in children. The honey trials excluded infants under one.
A study of 19,539 patients echoed the randomised CONVINCE trial — but it was observational, and several of its authors work for the dialysis company that owns the data.
Two double-blind crossover studies in people who had put themselves on gluten-free diets failed to reproduce a gluten effect. One found a different wheat carbohydrate did it instead.
Two WHO bodies reported on the same day in July 2023 and reached findings that sound contradictory. Both were right, because they were answering different questions.
Two studies pin down 'holiday heart': one caught alcohol triggering discrete AF events within hours, the other found that quitting cut recurrences by nearly half over six months.
In 2023 declining taurine was proposed as a driver of ageing. Two years later the same journal published human, monkey and mouse data in which taurine rose or stayed flat.
That is the 23-year result from the largest randomised trial. A 2026 Cochrane review of 789,086 men rates the mortality benefit moderate-certainty and the harms largely unmeasured.
Feeding studies find that when fructose replaces other carbohydrate at equal calories, liver fat barely moves. The liver damage tracks the extra energy, not the sugar's molecular identity.
PACE randomised patients across 235 primary care centres and found recovery took 17 days on the drug and 16 days on placebo. For osteoarthritis the picture differs, but not flatteringly.
The first randomised trial to pit surgery against the natural course of big-toe arthritis found fusion cut walking pain to 1.3 on a 10-point scale at one year, versus 5.7 with watchful waiting.
US and UK guidelines converge: a brief seizure during a fever in a young child rarely needs scans or blood tests, and paracetamol and ibuprofen do not stop them recurring.
In the two pivotal dupilumab trials, 36% to 38% reached that endpoint at 16 weeks against 8% to 10% on placebo. A 97-trial network review finds the newer drugs clustered closely together.
Bloating and visible distension are different problems with different mechanisms. The 2025 ESNM/UEG consensus found visceral hypersensitivity, not gas volume, doing most of the work.
The trials that made eye vitamins a standard recommendation enrolled only people who already had substantial disease. In AREDS2, neither omega-3 nor lutein beat placebo on the primary endpoint.
A Cochrane review of six trials found no benefit for the common cold and significantly more adverse effects in adults. Resistant bacterial infections were linked to 4.71 million deaths in 2021.
The label follows people for life, pushes them onto second-line antibiotics, and is associated with higher rates of MRSA and C. difficile. A randomised trial tested a faster way to remove it.
In 555,904 matched adults, screening endoscopy cut gastric cancer mortality in the 50s and 60s. Past 80, or with heavy comorbidity, the association reversed.
A dose-response analysis of 23 cohort studies found hypertension risk climbing steadily with intake. Stopping for a month, a separate study found, dropped systolic pressure by nearly 7%.
A meta-analysis of 16 studies and a daily-temperature cohort agree: tooth eruption brings gum irritation, drooling and fussiness, and at most a slight temperature rise — not a true fever.
Tretinoin beats its own vehicle in randomised trials — though the vehicle does much of the work. In the few head-to-head trials against over-the-counter retinol, both arms improved and tretinoin irritated more.
A generic must prove its absorption matches the brand within a defined statistical window. Across 2,070 FDA studies the average gap was under 5%. Generics are 90% of prescriptions and a fraction of the cost.
A 1,224-person biomonitoring study found four compounds only in firefighter serum. A separate 65-person pilot in Texas asked whether that matters for cognition, and got a partial answer.
The older oral preventives managed 0.44 to 1.4. The larger change is that the new drugs work in people the old ones failed, and are tolerated well enough to stay taken.
A 160-study meta-analysis found real but moderate symptom reductions while patients are on treatment. The evidence for lasting benefit after stopping is much thinner, and rests mainly on grass.
The randomised evidence in older men found a moderate effect on sexual function and none on vitality or walking. A 5,246-man safety trial cleared it on heart attacks and found more fractures.
IARC put bacon in the same category as tobacco in 2015, which says how sure scientists are, not how dangerous it is. The attributable-death figures are three orders of magnitude apart.
A large randomised promotion trial and sibling studies find some real benefits in infancy — fewer gut infections, less eczema — but the sweeping long-term advantages shrink once confounding is accounted for.
Both things are true, and both rest on high-certainty evidence. The phase 3 trial and the meta-analysis that followed it measured different outcomes and reached opposite-sounding conclusions.
GLORY-2 randomised 461 Chinese adults with obesity to a weekly GLP-1/glucagon dual agonist or placebo; weight fell 16.65% versus 1.50% at 60 weeks, alongside high rates of nausea and vomiting.
MASLD is excess fat in the liver unrelated to alcohol, and about 30% of adults have it. The best-evidenced way to reverse the inflamed form is weight loss — and how much you lose tracks how much the liver recovers.
Two 2026 meta-analyses of type 2 diabetes apps found HbA1c reductions of 0.39 and 0.58 points versus usual care — modest, clinically meaningful, and consistent, though the trials vary widely in quality.
A parental history of acne carries a pooled odds ratio of 2.91. Dairy carries 1.25, from observational studies with demonstrated publication bias — and diet appears nowhere in the treatment guideline.
A UK Biobank analysis broke ultra-processed food into 37 specific ingredients rather than treating it as one block. Flavours, colourings, sweeteners and sugars carried the signal; processing aids and added fibre did not.
Cochrane's living review of 104 trials rates high-dose atropine and orthokeratology moderate certainty. The low-dose atropine most widely used sits at very low certainty, and two Western trials disagree.
Dazukibart eased skin and muscle disease within weeks and held up for nearly two years — but the trials were tiny, manufacturer-run, and the makers say a phase 3 is needed to confirm it.
A network meta-analysis found six treatments clearing the clinically important threshold in the short term. It also graded 98.6% of the evidence very low certainty, and found nothing that held up past a year.
Genetic and trial evidence establishes LDL as causal for atherosclerosis. The same kinds of evidence, applied to HDL, found that raising it does not lower heart attack risk.
The FDA's approval bar requires no clinically meaningful difference from the original, and a large switching trial found no loss of control. The savings gap is a market problem, not a safety one.
The FDA's own trials found every chemical filter tested crossing a regulatory threshold after a single application. That threshold triggers safety studies; it is not a finding of toxicity.
Two Cochrane reviews found low- to very low-certainty evidence that floss slightly reduces gum inflammation. Neither found a single trial measuring interproximal decay, the thing flossing is sold to prevent.
The LEAP trial cut peanut allergy in high-risk infants from 13.7% to 1.9%. A second trial found the benefit real but harder to achieve — and only in children who actually ate the food.
The two dominant causes of chronic liver disease are alcohol and metabolic fat. For alcohol, cirrhosis risk climbs exponentially with intake — and in women it was already raised at about one drink a day.
In the phase 3 TORCH trial, following transarterial chemoembolisation with thermal ablation more than doubled median progression-free survival, to 17.7 months from 7.3, in unresectable liver-confined cancer.
A pooled analysis of 1.72 million people found no link between an egg a day and cardiovascular disease. A pooled analysis of six US cohorts found one. A randomised trial in 140 high-risk adults found neither.
A cluster-randomised trial in Guangzhou cut three-year myopia incidence by 9.1 percentage points with 40 extra minutes outdoors a day. The eye's underlying growth barely changed.
Six randomised trials found no benefit from immediate imaging over usual care. A separate review explains the reason: most of what a scan finds is present in people with no pain at all.
The American College of Gastroenterology suggests a positive diagnostic strategy over a diagnosis of exclusion, with two blood and stool tests doing most of the ruling-out that is actually warranted.
The LEAP trial reversed a generation of avoidance advice. A second trial run in the general population missed its primary endpoint, and the distance between those two results is the part usually left out.
American guidelines call 130/80 stage 1 hypertension. European ones call the same reading elevated blood pressure and not yet disease. The measurement did not change. The label did.
Patients in remission who stayed on the JAK inhibitor through a second year flared far less than those switched to placebo — 7.4% versus 59.5% — in an extension of the SELECT-GCA trial.
Pooling under 11,000 pregnancies, a meta-analysis found no statistically significant association either way, with the three underlying studies disagreeing on which direction the risk even points.
In moderate-to-heavy drinkers who stopped for a month, insulin resistance fell by a quarter and two cancer-related growth factors dropped sharply — changes a matched control group did not show.
In the phase 3 CORALreef AddOn head-to-head, enlicitide dropped LDL cholesterol 64.6% at day 56 — far past ezetimibe, bempedoic acid, or the two combined.
A randomised-withdrawal trial showed the antibody-lowering drug kept CIDP patients in remission. A 2026 extension reports lasting benefit, but with no placebo group to measure it against.
Canker sores clear on their own, and nothing reliably cures or prevents them. A Cochrane review found systemic drugs unproven; some topical options may ease pain, but the trials behind them are small and weak.
The viral idea that root-canal-treated teeth seed chronic illness traces to discredited 1920s work. Modern reviews find treated teeth are not implicated in systemic disease, and most survive for years.
Petrelintide, a long-acting amylin analogue given without a GLP-1 drug, reduced bodyweight by up to 8.6% at 16 weeks across two small phase 1 trials and was well tolerated. The finding is early.
Tirzepatide topped weight loss at 14.9%. But only subcutaneous semaglutide showed a mortality benefit — and no drug moved the needle on quality of life or kidney failure.
In 328 patients with third-generation cephalosporin-resistant gut bacteria in the blood, an old, narrow-spectrum antibiotic met its non-inferiority mark, offering a way to spare carbapenems.
Tirzepatide and semaglutide showed comparable psychiatric risk profiles against each other over two years. Against earlier GLP-1 drugs, semaglutide came out ahead on all three measures.
A registry snapshot of 13,455 adults measures how far the biologic era has moved severe asthma toward remission, and finds the inflammation these drugs target still detectable in most patients.
A Swiss cohort was classified by WHO, NIH and EASO criteria at the same time. The share of people with obesity roughly doubled, and the overweight category shrank to fill the gap.
In the head-to-head OVERLORD-MS trial, 92.2% on rituximab and 94.8% on ocrelizumab had no new MRI lesions from months 6 to 24, meeting the prespecified bar for noninferiority.
In DigiSep, adding metagenomic sequencing to standard cultures did not improve the main 28-day outcome, though ventilation time and shock resolution were shorter in exploratory analyses.
Oral paltusotine kept median IGF-I near the normal ceiling through week 207 in an open-label extension, but only 20 of 43 patients remained by then and the study had no comparison group.
REMEASURE randomised 73 patients to Kono-S anastomosis or mesenteric resection after ileocolic surgery for Crohn's disease; endoscopic recurrence at six months was 33% versus 32%.
Gastric bypass patients lost roughly 28% of body weight at three years, against 7-11% for tirzepatide or semaglutide — even among patients who stayed on the drugs continuously for at least a year.
Lilly's oral GLP-1 pill actually lowered liver enzymes on average, and its rate of serious liver-injury criteria matched placebo exactly — six cases in each group, none attributable to the drug.
In 230 adults followed a year, lower heart-rate variability and less moderate-to-vigorous activity at baseline were independently linked to developing hypertension. It is a risk signal, in one unreplicated cohort.
Pooling 2,906 participants, researchers ranked how antidiabetic drugs affect fat versus lean body mass. Exercise blunted liraglutide's muscle loss; metformin, insulin, and DPP4 inhibitors barely moved either measure.
Final ALIGN results show the endothelin blocker preserved kidney function over 2.5 years in a rare kidney disease, yet the difference at week 136 just missed statistical significance (p=0.057).
SYNCHRONIZE-MASLD reports 84.2% of survodutide patients hitting a 30% cut in liver fat at 48 weeks. The trial measured fat on MRI, not fibrosis on biopsy — which is where the harder question still sits.
In two industry-funded phase 3 studies, every child followed at least 16 months met the goal — but all had a grade 3 or 4 event, and one died of a conditioning-drug complication.
In TRANSCEND-T2D-1, the triple-hormone agonist cut HbA1c up to 1.12 points beyond placebo over 40 weeks and trimmed bodyweight 15.3% at the top dose in early type 2 diabetes.
The association held across most demographic subgroups, but not among Black patients, a gap the study doesn't explain. Two-year follow-up limits what it can say about longer-term risk.
In the FIND-CKD trial, non-diabetic patients on finerenone lost kidney function at 3.3 versus 4.0 ml/min/1.73 m² a year — a small edge that extends a diabetes drug to a new group.
In the phase 3 GCAptAIN trial the interleukin-17A blocker did not significantly beat placebo for sustained remission at one year, leaving the IL-6 inhibitor tocilizumab as the proven steroid-sparing option.
After 12 months, HbA1c was 6.5% among people managed by community health workers versus 7.1% among those referred to clinics. With 103 participants analysed, the confidence interval crosses zero.
The anti-alpha-synuclein antibody did not significantly delay motor progression in the phase 2b PADOVA study, though a non-significant trend and secondary signals keep a phase 3 trial alive.
Two GSK-funded phase 3 trials found roughly 20% of patients on bepirovirsen reached a functional cure at 72 weeks versus none on placebo — alongside more adverse events and liver-enzyme rises.
In the phase 3 DRAGON-01 trial, delivering paclitaxel directly into the abdominal cavity on top of standard chemotherapy raised median survival to 19.4 months from 13.9 in gastric cancer with peritoneal spread.
Two large trials of the anti-ST2 antibody gave discordant results: a modest signal in the phase 2b study, and a missed primary endpoint for the same dose in the confirmatory phase 3.
The nosebleed guideline first move is specific: firm, sustained pressure on the soft lower third of the nose for at least five minutes. Most settle this way; the treatments people escalate to have thin evidence.
For a single missing tooth, implants and conventional bridges have similar, high survival over a decade. The evidence favours neither universally; the trade-offs are about neighbouring teeth, bone and cost.
In the phase 3 Integral-1 trial, cefepime plus the new β-lactamase blocker nacubactam cured 82% of complicated urinary infections versus 61% for imipenem, offering a way to spare carbapenems.
A five-year FAERS analysis found both semaglutide and tirzepatide carry disproportionate ketoacidosis signals in people without diabetes, with roughly three-quarters of reported cases requiring hospitalization.
ATTAIN-MAINTAIN tested orforglipron as a maintenance therapy for people who'd already lost weight on tirzepatide or semaglutide. Those on placebo regained roughly half of what the pill preserved.
A Qatar Biobank analysis derived local cut-points and found WHO's standard numbers misclassified more than half of men and nearly half of women in the sample.
Semaglutide showed a sixfold reporting signal for polycystic ovary syndrome and a smaller but real alopecia signal. Dulaglutide and tirzepatide showed lower or no signal for the same reproductive events.
No study has directly compared injectable tirzepatide with the new high-dose oral semaglutide pill. A statistical technique that adjusts across two separate trials estimates the gap.
The PERTH trial is a 60-person pilot, and its outcome was urinary chemistry rather than health. Within those limits it answered a question people keep asking.
PRoMPT BOLUS, a 9041-child trial across 47 emergency departments, found kidney-injury events at 30 days in 3.4% on balanced fluid and 3.0% on saline (P=0.85) — no meaningful difference.
Cemdisiran, a gene-silencing drug given under the skin once every three months, cut daily-living scores more than placebo in antibody-positive generalised myasthenia gravis, a rare complement-driven disease.
Pooling 24 studies out of 133 screened, researchers found hair shedding tied to rapid weight loss more than to the drugs directly — and a pattern that hits women disproportionately.
Most hiccups stop on their own, and the remedies everyone swears by have almost no trial evidence. The one gadget with published data was studied by its own inventor and funded through the product crowdfunding campaign.
Integrated risk scores combine polygenic data with conventional risk factors. A readiness review lists what would have to exist first — and separately, 36% of older Australians had no skin check at all last year.
Two 2026 reviews describe the same handover: as the virus recedes, obesity-driven fatty liver disease is moving into the space it occupied — in a population where roughly 40% of screened adults met obesity criteria.
In an industry-funded, open-label trial of 3,048 patients with heart disease, targeting LDL below 55 rather than 70 mg/dL lowered a composite of cardiovascular events over three years.
A single-clinic retrospective study in Istanbul followed patients on all three drugs for 36 weeks. The ranking matches what randomized trials have shown — with liraglutide the least tolerated of the three.
New conjugate vaccines replaced a confusing two-shot sequence with a single dose. The efficacy evidence is solid for the older conjugate; the newest ones ride on immune-response data, not their own outcome trials.
In 1,362 Shanghai dialysis patients followed for over three years, hemoadsorption plus haemodialysis lowered all-cause mortality versus dialysis alone — a borderline result from an open-label trial.
Relacorilant kept blood pressure under control when patients who had responded were kept on it rather than switched to placebo. The pivotal trial randomised just 62 people.
In 3,873 middle-aged adults followed with repeated testing, waist-based categories of overweight and obesity showed larger effect sizes than BMI-based ones. The link to actual decline appeared only in men.
In a single-centre trial of 100 patients with decompensated cirrhosis, six months of atorvastatin cut recurrent complications from 72% to 36% — a striking but preliminary result needing larger confirmation.
OCULUS was halted at interim analysis: continuing a GLP-1 or GIP agonist before endoscopy left 25.0% of patients with clinically significant retained stomach contents, versus 3.1% who held one dose.
A survey-based analysis of the European Health Interview Survey puts a price on Europe's obesity-related hospital use, and finds the strongest single association is not with obesity at all.
A 230-patient survey from one US diabetes center found symptomatic hypoglycemia more than twice as common with adjunctive tirzepatide as with semaglutide, though GI side effects were similar between the two.
In the open-label extension of the VIVID programme, remission rates stayed high at 104 weeks — but no placebo group ran alongside, so durability is described, not proven, against nature.
In the COSPIRIT-JIA trial, most children with two stubborn forms of juvenile idiopathic arthritis responded to ixekizumab by week 16 — but the main result had no control group.
In the ALLEGORY trial, 76.7% of patients with active SLE reached the SRI-4 response at 52 weeks on the B-cell–depleting antibody versus 53.5% on placebo, extending a drug already cleared for lupus nephritis.
Bimagrumab targets fat, not appetite. Paired with semaglutide in 507 adults with obesity, the combination out-performed either drug alone at 48 weeks — with its own separate set of side effects.
ACHIEVE-3 randomised 1,698 people to orforglipron or oral semaglutide for 52 weeks. Orforglipron cut HbA1c more at every dose comparison — and produced more side effects and more dropouts.
In its pivotal trials the recombinant vaccine cut shingles cases by about 90 to 97 percent. Guidelines recommend two doses for adults from age 50, and for immunocompromised adults from 19.
SCREESCO randomised Swedish 60-year-olds to colonoscopy, stool testing, or nothing. After a median 4.8 years, overall cancer incidence barely moved; the stage distribution did.
In the LATITUDE trial, monthly cabotegravir–rilpivirine injections cut regimen failure to 22.8% from 41.2% on oral therapy among people with a history of missed doses, prompting an early stop.
An individual-participant meta-analysis of 123,940 people in 19 double-blind trials tested 66 label-listed harms. Four survived correction — none of them the ones patients hear about most.
A network meta-analysis of 41,084 surgical patients over 60 ranked 52 drug interventions. Dexmedetomidine held up after high-risk trials were excluded; almost nothing changed length of stay or mortality.
Efimosfermin, an FGF21 analogue given every four weeks, was well tolerated over 24 weeks in 84 patients with fatty-liver disease — but this trial was designed to test safety, not whether it heals the liver.
A Lancet study across 547,000 adults and 925 infectious diseases finds obesity raises the risk of severe infection across almost every pathogen type. The global estimate rests on modelling, not on the cohorts themselves.
FDA-cleared in September 2025, the feature notifies fewer than half of people with hypertension in Apple's own validation. Hypertension specialists warn the bigger risk is false reassurance.
In a 618-person randomized trial, 27.8% of the intervention group met the sustained-remission endpoint at 24 months against 21.2% of comparators. The confidence interval nearly touches no effect.
An Israeli case-control study found an apparent fourfold risk that vanished once the year before diagnosis was excluded. A Nordic study of 17,232 cancers found no association at all.
An Oxford meta-analysis of 37 studies puts average regain at 0.4 kg a month across all weight-management drugs, and 0.8 kg a month for semaglutide and tirzepatide. Almost none of the newer-drug data runs past a year.
The 2025–2030 edition was released January 7. It is the first to name highly processed foods, and the first whose saturated-fat arithmetic does not obviously close.
FDA cleared oral semaglutide 25 mg on 22 December for chronic weight management and cardiovascular risk reduction. Its self-pay price, not its efficacy, is what may distinguish it.
TRIUMPH-4 tested retatrutide in 445 adults with obesity and knee osteoarthritis. The weight numbers are striking. So are the discontinuation numbers sitting beside them.
A smartwatch bioimpedance sensor tracked body-fat percentage against DXA with about 14% average error — but muscle-mass agreement was weak, and even sitting versus standing shifted the reading.
The ADA's 2026 Standards of Care add guidance on individualising obesity-drug dosing, name two eating patterns for type 2 diabetes prevention, and recommend continuous glucose monitoring from diagnosis.
A meta-analysis of 26 studies put pooled sensitivity at 95% and specificity at 97%. Samsung and Withings devices performed comparably to Apple — but the numbers come from people already suspected of arrhythmia.
Two November burden analyses put diabetes diagnosed before 40 on an upward path to 2050. In the Americas, Central Latin America carried the highest rates and men carried more of the burden than women.
In ATTAIN-2, the highest dose of the oral GLP-1 pill cut body weight 9.6% over 72 weeks in adults with type 2 diabetes, against 11.2% in the earlier trial of adults without diabetes.
Three papers published on 18 November argue the harm is not one ingredient but the replacement of whole-food diets. The evidence they assemble is strongest for diet quality and weakest where causation is hardest.
Head-to-head in US insurance data, the two drugs showed comparable cardiovascular outcomes and comparable rates of severe gastrointestinal events in type 2 diabetes. Neither study was a trial.
CORE and CORE2 enrolled 1,061 patients with severe hypertriglyceridaemia. The pancreatitis rate ratio was 0.15, but the higher dose came with liver enzyme rises and low platelets.
SURPASS-CN-INS randomised 257 adults at 26 Chinese hospitals. The 10 mg and 15 mg doses performed almost identically against placebo, and diarrhoea affected roughly a third of those on the higher doses.
Carriers of loss-of-function MC4R mutations had lower LDL and triglycerides than UK Biobank controls of similar adiposity, and lower cardiovascular risk. The brain sets body weight and lipids separately.
Pooling individual data from 23,340 people in four trials, empagliflozin cut kidney failure by 34% and slowed eGFR decline by 64% — regardless of how big an initial creatinine rise was expected.
Over 17.4 years, high ultra-processed food intake was linked to a 24% higher colorectal cancer risk overall — and a 58% higher risk for right-sided colon cancer specifically.
A pooled analysis of 72,776 Korean adults found an 11% higher type 2 diabetes risk in the top intake quartile. An updated meta-analysis of 17 cohorts put the dose-response at 10% per 10% of intake.
Two phase 3b trials tested semaglutide 7.2 mg against the approved 2.4 mg dose. The extra weight loss was real but modest, and gastrointestinal side-effects and dysaesthesia rose alongside it.
A French prospective cohort followed adults with rare genetic obesity treated with the MC4R agonist in routine care. Weight fell about 20% in the first year and hunger scores dropped 62%.
Sebetralstat was approved on 3 July for patients aged 12 and older. In its pivotal crossover trial, 76% of attacks treated with the 600 mg dose began to ease within 12 hours, against 49% on placebo.
Dapagliflozin beat placebo on liver histology over 48 weeks in six Chinese hospitals. Weeks later, European regulators recommended the first purpose-built drug for the same disease.