For how we live.
In nearly 40,000 UK women, abnormal blood pressure six weeks after a hypertensive pregnancy roughly doubled later cardiovascular disease. A Dutch cohort shows pregnancy history sharpens risk prediction.
A final rule amends 80 FDA standards of identity so makers can replace some or all added salt with substitutes, part of a push to cut sodium tied to high blood pressure. It takes effect 14 December 2026.
A notice sets out how the agency intends to designate every US area for the 9.0 microgram 2024 fine-particle standard. Comments close 5 November; a court has ordered final designations by 6 February 2027.
ACHIEVE-4 found the non-peptide GLP-1 pill non-inferior to insulin glargine for major cardiac events over two years, with less severe hypoglycaemia but far more gastrointestinal upset. Lilly funded it.
A final action moves the Serious-area deadline for the Los Angeles-South Coast fine-particle area from December 2025 to December 2030, after California showed on-time attainment was impracticable. Effective 2 November.
A final order classifies the flushing and storage solution for vascular autografts as Class II with special controls, codifying a 2023 De Novo decision on Marizyme's DuraGraft and setting the bar for future copies.
Garlic supplements modestly lower blood pressure in hypertensive people, and may nudge cholesterol down a little. The cold-prevention evidence rests on a single trial, and no study shows garlic prevents heart attacks.
For people without coeliac disease, a large cohort found gluten intake was not linked to heart disease — and cutting it often means fewer whole grains, the foods tied to lower cardiovascular and mortality risk.
"Superfood" is a marketing word, not a scientific one. Blueberries carry real evidence for the heart and, tentatively, the ageing brain — but most of it is observational or short-term markers, not hard outcomes.
Pooling 58 randomised trials, about 3.5g a day of oat beta-glucan lowered LDL cholesterol by 0.19 mmol/L. A separate meta-analysis of 28 trials found 0.25 mmol/L. Small per person, but consistent.
A 21,442-person trial of cocoa flavanol extract missed its main heart target. The blood-pressure effect is real but small — and nearly half of dark chocolate products exceeded a strict lead limit.
Cohort data link green tea drinking to lower cardiovascular death, but trials show only surrogate changes and concentrated extracts have caused liver injury at everyday catechin doses.
No long-term trial has tested an all-meat diet. The best direct data is a self-reported survey where people felt better but ran markedly high LDL cholesterol — the signal that should give pause.
Two meta-analyses of dozens of randomised trials agree that about 3 grams a day of oat beta-glucan lowers LDL cholesterol by a small, real amount. The effect is genuine, modest, and dose-dependent.
Across 23 cohort studies and 441,199 people, large weight fluctuation was linked to a 41% higher risk of death. Whether the cycling itself does harm, or reflects who cycles, the data cannot fully separate.
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.
Randomised trials show a Palaeolithic diet trims weight and risk markers in the short term. A two-year trial found the early edge over an ordinary healthy diet had mostly faded — and that people struggled to stick to it.
A 2024 trial randomised heart-risk patients to a dozen eggs a week or almost none. Over four months, blood cholesterol barely moved — echoing an earlier year-long trial in people with diabetes.
A harmonised meta-analysis of over a million adults found high sitting time raised mortality — but about 60 to 75 minutes a day of activity erased that risk. Being inactive, not the chair itself, did most of the damage.
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.
The agency is repealing the carbon-capture-based standards at the heart of the 2024 rule, saying compliance-cost savings outweigh the emission cuts. It takes effect on 16 November 2026.
The sugar alcohol in many 'keto' and sugar-free foods is generally recognised as safe. But newer studies tie high blood levels to cardiovascular events and show it makes platelets more prone to clotting.
Observational studies robustly link the diet to lower mortality. The best randomised trial measured fewer heart attacks and strokes, and the strongest review finds the evidence for a survival benefit weak.
Sugars bond to proteins to form advanced glycation end products that accumulate with age and stiffen tissue. Low-AGE diets nudge metabolic markers, but no trial shows they slow ageing.
In a tightly controlled feeding trial, swapping high-GI for low-GI carbohydrate inside a healthy diet did not improve insulin sensitivity, cholesterol or blood pressure. The wider evidence rates the GI case as weak.
In a 711-patient phase 2b trial, the myeloperoxidase inhibitor mitiperstat did not improve symptoms or walking distance in heart failure with preserved or mildly reduced ejection fraction.
Higher whole-grain intake is consistently linked to lower rates of heart disease, cancer and early death, with benefit rising up to about seven servings a day. Refined grains show no such signal.
Cohorts link both to modestly higher rates of heart disease and early death, on low-certainty evidence. A 2019 guideline then told people to keep eating them — and split the field over how to weigh nutrition science.
Large randomised trials mostly find no cardiovascular benefit from ordinary fish-oil capsules. One high-dose prescription drug is the striking exception, and the case for brain protection is weak.
People who eat nuts have lower rates of heart disease and early death in large cohorts, and a Mediterranean diet with nuts cut cardiovascular events in one trial. Most of the evidence is observational.
For heart disease and death, dairy looks roughly neutral to modestly favourable in large cohorts, and the long-standing warning against whole-fat dairy is not well supported by outcome data.
Health authorities converge on a ceiling — under 10% of daily calories, and lower is better still. Large cohorts single out sugary drinks as the form most clearly tied to dying earlier.
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.
The only long randomised trial of calorie restriction in non-obese adults improved cardiometabolic risk and modestly slowed one measure of biological ageing. Participants never hit the 25% target.
A randomised trial found the Portfolio diet cut LDL cholesterol by about 13%, and a large cohort study links closer adherence to lower cardiovascular risk. Its authors' industry funding belongs in the record.
In UK Biobank participants tracked with wrist light sensors, high nighttime light exposure was tied to thickened, weaker heart muscle and 24–33% higher risks of heart attack, stroke and heart failure.
A twins trial found a vegan diet lowered LDL cholesterol, insulin and weight in eight weeks. The same pattern comes with real gaps — vitamin B12 must be supplemented, and iron stores tend to run lower.
US men die at higher rates than women at almost every age. In younger men the gap is driven by injuries, overdose and suicide; in older men by heart disease — with delayed help-seeking a recurring thread.
No pill in the anti-ageing market has mortality data like physical activity. The largest cohorts show most of the benefit arrives at half the recommended dose, and more brings diminishing returns.
Two controlled-feeding trials found a diet rich in fruit, vegetables and low-fat dairy lowered blood pressure, most in people who already had hypertension, and more still when sodium was cut.
Spain's PREDIMED trial is the strongest randomised evidence that a dietary pattern lowers cardiovascular events. In 2018 its authors withdrew it over flawed randomisation and reissued corrected results.
A WHO data-set analysis shows how mobile and hospital teams split the load of hypertension, diabetes and epilepsy care during the war, while a separate study tracked dialysis capacity falling.
The 2023 heatwave was associated with an estimated 178,486 excess deaths worldwide, a 2025 analysis finds, with climate change responsible for 54%. Europe's share was 47,690, held down by adaptation.
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.
In 2.5 million Swedish births followed to adulthood, mothers' early-pregnancy obesity was linked to a stepwise rise in offspring cardiovascular disease, though sibling analyses temper the size.
In 7,530 people from two long-running cohorts, central sleep apnea with high oxygen overshoot carried elevated cardiovascular risk. The same apnea with low overshoot did not.
A first-in-human trial of Kylo-11 reports 97% reduction at 48 weeks after a single dose. A lepodisiran analysis reports near-total clearance of the oxidised phospholipids Lp(a) carries.
The ESC released updated heart failure guidance plus first-ever guidelines on cardiac rehabilitation and on cardiovascular disease with chronic kidney disease. All three sit behind a paywall.
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.
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.
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.
A 1.5-million-person records study reports lower mortality with GLP-1 drugs than with SGLT2 inhibitors, and the largest absolute gains in people with serious mental illness. The design cannot prove it.
PBAC recommended subsidized listing in November 2025 for adults with obesity and a history of heart attack or stroke. Price negotiations with Novo Nordisk had not concluded.
The national framework tracking First Nations health finds real progress on smoking, education and specific diseases, alongside no movement on infant mortality and worsening suicide.
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.
A study of 9,248 US women published in May 2026 found perimenopausal women twice as likely to fall into the lowest cardiovascular health band. The design cannot show that the decline happens within individuals.
A sibling-controlled cohort of 1.1 million men, a genetic analysis of 712 traits and a UK Biobank study of fitness change converge — and they agree on where the exception is.
Across 89,573 accelerometer-monitored adults and 678 conditions, no disease showed a significant difference between activity concentrated in one or two days and activity spread through the week.
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.
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 national study built for Australia's first Climate Risk Assessment separates the two exposures across ED, inpatient, GP and prescription data. They do not act on the health system the same way.
A case-crossover study of 29,604 arrests over a decade found risk lowest around the 86th temperature percentile and higher at both local extremes, with the cold tail slightly larger.
A harmonised meta-analysis of more than a million people found the association between sitting time and death disappeared in the most active quarter. In the least active, it did not disappear at all.
More than 2,700 people died in England and Wales during the May and June heatwaves. An attribution study assigns roughly 42% of those deaths to warming.
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.
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%.
In 390,124 US adults followed up to 27 years, daily multivitamin use showed no mortality benefit. Randomised trials within COSMOS found a real but modest effect on memory, and none on physical function.
A dose-response meta-analysis of 94 cohorts and more than 30 million people found the steepest part of the curve sits between zero and the recommended weekly dose, with small and uncertain gains above double it.
A meta-analysis of 44 cohorts covering 1,864,274 people found the risk signal attached to naps of 30 minutes or more. Below that threshold, no significant risk appeared.
Pooled biomarker data from 30 studies in 13 countries link higher linoleic acid to lower cardiovascular risk. The randomised evidence, 19 trials and 6,461 people, is null and rated low quality.
Canada says two drinks a week. The US still says up to one or two a day. The gap is not a dispute about data — it is a dispute about where to draw a line on a continuous curve.
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 2025 meta-analysis of 57 studies found the mortality curve bending at about 7,000 steps a day. The 10,000 figure traces to the trade name of a Japanese step counter sold in 1965.
A registry study spanning 4.9 million people separates where the most deaths occur from where the inequality is largest. Heart disease and lung disease give different answers.
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 first consolidated audit of PBS and PHARMAC cardiovascular listings from 2023 to 2025 finds a widening access gap between two neighbouring countries with similar disease burdens.
Lipfendra cut LDL cholesterol by more than half in two trials. Its significance is less the number than the format: a once-daily tablet where every prior PCSK9 inhibitor required a needle.
Maricopa County runs some of the most detailed heat mortality surveillance in the US. A distributed lag model applied to the same five years put the toll far higher — and the gap is the method, not a scandal.
A Global Burden of Disease comparison puts the 2023 US maternal mortality rate at 33.8 per 100,000 live births, alongside cardio-kidney-metabolic risk burdens several times those of other high-income countries.
Three cohorts, 147,374 people, 30 years and 35,798 deaths. The dose-response curve flattened above 120 minutes per week, and the cancer signal appeared at the low end, not the high end.
The first large-scale policy evaluation of medically tailored meals covers 1,866 recipients across 11 health systems. It is quasi-experimental, not randomised — and that is the finding's main limit.
The ESC Atlas reports 68 million disability-adjusted life years and more than three million cardiovascular deaths a year, with middle-income countries carrying roughly double the mortality of high-income ones.
Stroke is the world's second-leading cause of death and third-leading cause of disability. The new resolution asks countries to build stroke-ready emergency systems, not just treat risk factors.
A meta-analysis spanning two decades of research found extreme cold carried a higher relative risk of death than extreme heat or heatwaves — even as warming shifts public attention toward summer temperatures.
A rapid attribution study finds human-caused warming made this month's record Southwest heat wave far more likely, and doctors warn the early timing caught people unacclimatized.
In 30,446 Malmö residents followed for decades, each step up in soot exposure was tied to 15% higher cardiovascular mortality — a stronger, steadier signal than total fine particles or traffic gases.
A wavier jet stream delivered severe cold to three continents in a month that was 1.47°C above pre-industrial globally. Two new studies quantify what cold still does to mortality.
A UK Biobank analysis finds high step counts do not offset short sleep. A US cohort finds one-minute bursts matter. And in older adults, most step-count differences vanish after adjusting for age and sex.
A January study forecasts particulate pollution across six Gulf states and reports Qatar highest at 87.90 µg/m³. The modelling is careful; the input data is annual, national and thirty-one points long.
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.
A December survey found getting stronger is the leading 2026 health goal. The best meta-analysis of muscle-strengthening and mortality finds a benefit that plateaus at around 30 to 60 minutes a week.
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.
A UK Biobank analysis of 96,365 people found a dose-response relationship between lifetime night-shift exposure and cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic disease — amplified in those who also slept short.
Emergency restrictions came into force on 13 December when the index passed 450. The more telling number is how many days the city has now spent in a category that was meant to be exceptional.
Berkeley researchers followed older Californians for a decade. Cumulative smoke exposure predicted death better than the number of smoke days did — which is not how air quality is usually reported.
The 2025 Lancet Countdown Latin America report tracks 41 indicators across 17 countries. Heat-related deaths are up 103%, and fewer than half the region's governments have finished a vulnerability assessment.
PISCES randomised 1,228 haemodialysis patients in Canada and Australia. The headline hazard ratio of 0.57 counts every event, not just the first — and that choice explains part of the gap.
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.
In 24,223 Swedish workers followed to 2018, insomnia and long sleep raised cardiovascular risk only when accompanied by daytime impairment — and rising sleep duration preceded disease.
A 50-year attribution study separates two trends that usually get modelled as one: rising temperatures and a population that has become less likely to die in them.
Deaths during combined heat and ozone days in Hong Kong, preterm births projected across Chinese cities to 2100, and a seasonal flip in Japan's ambulance demand from winter to summer.