For how we live.
Trials, journals, oncology, genomics, and the long work of proving things.
I-SPY2.2 tested trastuzumab-deruxtecan plus rilvegostomig before surgery in high-risk HER2-negative breast cancer. In immune-positive tumours 54% had a complete response, and most of them avoided anthracyclines.
A Markov model of one U.S. birth cohort projects 255 chronic hepatitis B infections under universal birth-dose vaccination, rising 19% if the dose is deferred and 83% under shared decision-making (modelled).
In 120 older adults with acute myeloid leukaemia, adding midostaurin to two-drug therapy did not raise remission rates overall (72% vs 68%), but a small FLT3-mutated subgroup lived longer.
In 108 people with Parkinson's, diffusion MRI found that damage to cholinergic pathways running from a deep-brain nucleus tracked worse cognition — and was most marked in those with dementia.
Pooling 19 studies, researchers found all-cause mortality raised about 1.7-fold in people with ADHD, with suicide and injury deaths most elevated — while those on ADHD medication had lower all-cause mortality.
In a 17-person phase 2a trial, once-weekly inhaled SPL84 lifted lung function in up to 70% of treated patients with the 3849+10 kb C→T mutation — a first reported clinical signal for an RNA-targeted inhaled therapy.
A cohort of 102 children born very preterm found epigenetic age acceleration linked to higher cognitive and motor scores at three — even, unexpectedly, in those with severe brain injury.
In 7,186 Korean adults followed up to 20 years, people flagged by fasting glucose, glucose tolerance and HbA1c all at once had a 15.3-fold higher risk of type 2 diabetes than normal controls.
LOTIS-9 tested loncastuximab tesirine plus rituximab in unfit and frail older adults with untreated DLBCL. Complete responses reached 53% and 42%, but severe side effects, including 11 deaths, ended the trial early.
Among 287 people with REM sleep behaviour disorder followed about four years, 15.7% developed a synucleinopathy. Higher coffee intake was linked to a lower risk of progression.
In the 17,701-person E.mbrace trial in adults 60 and older, the nine-valent ExPEC9V vaccine showed 14.63% efficacy, with a confidence interval spanning zero. It stopped early for futility; development is discontinued.
A detailed safety analysis of the 12,254-patient OCEANIC-STROKE trial found no significant rise in major bleeding with the factor XI blocker, though lower gastrointestinal bleeding was more frequent.
The phase 2 ROXAMI trial gave the oral HIF stabiliser roxadustat to 158 STEMI patients after stenting. Infarct size at 30 days was no smaller than with standard care. Later remodelling findings were exploratory.
RINGSIDE phase 2 tested three doses of oral varegacestat in 42 adults with progressing desmoid tumours. The lowest daily dose gave the deepest shrinkage and was carried into phase 3. No comparator arm.
In 221 male childhood-cancer survivors, FSH levels during puberty tracked adult testicular function. Radiotherapy damage persisted into adulthood, while alkylating-chemotherapy effects often recovered.
In a 28-patient single-arm phase 2 study, disitamab vedotin with tislelizumab produced a complete response in 73% of evaluable HER2-positive bladder cancers that could not be resected. There was no comparator.
A prespecified analysis of 131,276 older adults found RSVpreF cut RSV hospitalisations overall. In the immunosuppressed, baseline risk was nine times higher — but the subgroup was too small to prove it helped them.
ESO-T01 builds cancer-killing T cells inside the body, skipping the cell harvest and chemo prep normal CAR-T needs. All four responded — but the cells faded, and median progression-free survival was 4 months.
A 37-hospital registry tracked 17,602 adults whose hearts stopped while admitted. CPR usually started within a minute, yet only 9.1% survived to discharge — and after-care lagged far behind the initial response.
A phase 1/2 trial gave mosunetuzumab plus polatuzumab to 101 older, unfit or frail people with untreated large B-cell lymphoma. The end-of-treatment response rate was 61.4%, with a complete response in 56.4%.
A single-arm phase 2 trial added glofitamab to pola-R-CHP in 41 people with newly diagnosed B-cell lymphoma. The best complete-response rate was 95%, cytokine release stayed grade 1, and no neurotoxicity was reported.
In preregistered trials of more than 90,000 patients, telling people an algorithm flagged them as high-risk lifted vaccination by a few points — and saying the algorithm was involved changed nothing.
A Toronto cohort reports that an eight-day antiviral protocol prevented or cleared hepatitis C in all 116 recipients of organs from infected donors, with survival matching recipients of uninfected organs.
In the Nordic SWEDEGRAFT trial, the no-touch vein-harvesting technique left the rate of death, heart attack, or repeat procedures at 19.8% versus 20.4% through seven years — a difference indistinguishable from chance.
In the industry-funded evERA trial, giredestrant plus everolimus delayed progression of ER-positive breast cancer — but the clearest benefit was in ESR1-mutated tumours, and the endpoint was a surrogate, not survival.
Thirteen years on, the independent DiAPREV-IT trial still shows no overall effect from GAD-alum. A 27-child genetic subgroup saw onset delayed — but the other subgroup got worse.
In the phase 3 UKALL14 trial, one cycle of the T-cell drug nelarabine after induction was well tolerated but left event-free survival essentially unchanged in adults aged 25 to 65.
In a 200-patient prospective validation, a DNA-methylation assay reached an AUC of 0.91 and, by one analysis, could have averted about 55% of unnecessary biopsies without missing significant cancers.
A randomised Asian trial in 130 patients found no efficacy gap between the two drug regimens for active lupus nephritis, but serious infections and all three deaths fell in the mycophenolate group.
ROAM/EORTC-1308, an independent phase 3 trial, randomised 157 patients after complete brain-tumour removal; adjuvant radiotherapy improved five-year disease-free survival, but the benefit's confidence interval was wide.
RESOLVE randomised 880 treatment-naive, non-cirrhotic patients to a shorter sofosbuvir–velpatasvir course; cure rates were non-inferior to the 12-week standard, with implications for the cost of elimination programmes.
The PLUSS trial put a steroid directly into the lungs of 1,059 infants born before 28 weeks. Survival free of chronic lung disease barely differed from surfactant alone.
A single-centre, placebo-controlled trial found targeted onabotulinumtoxinA injections cut dystonia-related foot pain without harming movement. The effect was large, but the trial randomised only 33 people.
Final results of the phase 3 IMpassion050 trial show adding the immunotherapy atezolizumab to standard HER2-targeted treatment did not improve event-free or disease-free survival.
In Scottish hospital data, RSV was recorded about 2.3 times as often as human metapneumovirus, but patients admitted with either virus were similarly ill — and the analysis was funded by a maker of RSV products.
GUARDIAN offered parents of 4,000 babies a genomic screen for 156 treatable conditions on top of the standard heel-prick. Most said yes, and sequencing worked in 99.6% of cases.
The phase 3 CLL6 RESIDUUM trial extended progression-free survival by about 22 months in patients left with residual disease, but overall survival did not differ and the drug caused more infections.
The CENTERSTONE trial found a single dose lowered lab-confirmed spread to household contacts by about a third, but spread that made contacts ill was not significantly cut, and resistant virus emerged in some patients.
In the Scandinavian phase 3 ASAC trial, daily aspirin failed to improve disease-free survival after treatment of colorectal cancer liver metastases — and overall survival was worse on the drug.
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.
In the publicly funded SWOG S1600 trial, specialised immunonutrition before and after radical cystectomy left 30-day complication rates essentially unchanged: 62% versus 58% on a standard drink.
A government-funded test-negative study put effectiveness at 86% against emergency visits and 88% against intensive care, though the smallest subgroups carried wide confidence intervals.
A test-negative study across seven paediatric hospitals in Ontario and Quebec, run after a publicly funded rollout, estimated 78% effectiveness against laboratory-confirmed RSV and 97% against intensive-care admission.
The academic MATRix/IELSG43 trial found autologous transplant lifted 3-year progression-free survival to 78% from 51%, but at the cost of more toxicity and more treatment-related deaths.
A phase 1 trial in 288 Chinese children found the experimental injectable vaccine well tolerated and able to raise antibodies. It measured immune response, not whether it prevents disease.
A European registry compared 52 transplanted patients with 79 untreated ones over up to 25 years. The benefit was clearest when transplant came before symptoms, and it did not stop progression entirely.
A Shionogi-funded randomised trial found that giving household contacts a five-day course dropped the rate of symptomatic Covid from 9.0% to 2.9%, with no severe cases in either group.
The publicly funded E4512 trial found two years of crizotinib after surgery did not prolong disease-free survival against observation, with a hazard ratio of 1.08 and no safety upside.
In the investigator-led Danish DALIAH trial, pegylated interferon-alfa and hydroxyurea produced similar molecular responses by intention-to-treat, but far more patients stopped interferon.
Against 304 carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii isolates from six countries, the experimental drug zosurabalpin kept low MICs — including against metallo-beta-lactamase producers. This is laboratory data, not a cure.
There is still no licensed Lyme vaccine. In a phase 2 trial of VLA15, a second yearly booster revived antibody levels against all six OspA serotypes, with more sore arms but no new safety signals.
A bird-flu virus from British Columbia poultry carried the H275Y mutation that blunts Tamiflu and peramivir. In the lab it stayed vulnerable to zanamivir and baloxavir — and was less virulent in mice.
Gilead's phase 3 trial in 539 patients was terminated after the CD47 antibody failed to improve remission or survival and caused more fatal adverse events than azacitidine alone.
A US analysis of the 2025-2026 vaccines targeting the LP.8.1 lineage found both an mRNA-1283 and a BNT162b2 shot reduced COVID hospitalisation in older adults, with the strongest effect in those aged 75 and over.
In 20 healthy young adults, closed-loop acoustic stimulation of slow waves boosted word recall, and the benefit tracked a shift in how sleep spindles nested within slow oscillations.
The final analysis of Roche's phase 3 trial found the anti-TIGIT antibody did not significantly extend progression-free or overall survival when added to atezolizumab in 521 patients.
The VITAL trial randomised 2,508 patients aged 50 and older to propofol-based or inhaled anaesthesia and found no difference in days alive and at home at 30 days, or in death, delirium or major complications.
The TRACK trial was stopped early for futility. The blood thinner failed to reduce a composite of cardiovascular events, while major bleeding rose by half. Bayer, which makes the drug, was a listed collaborator.
In the phase 3 TenCRAOS trial, intravenous tenecteplase given within 4.5 hours did no better than aspirin at recovering sight, and carried more bleeding — including one fatal brain haemorrhage.
The NIH-funded STArT trial in children and young adults was halted for futility: time to crisis resolution was 60.8 hours with arginine versus 65.8 with placebo, well within the range of chance.
SOLARIS, a publicly funded phase 3 trial, tested vitamin D3 added to chemotherapy after a promising phase 2 signal. Progression-free survival was 11.8 versus 10.3 months — not a significant difference.
A double-blind Danish trial gave the drug or placebo during resuscitation at 21 hospitals. Restored circulation occurred in 39% versus 37% — no meaningful difference — and bicarbonate raised blood alkalosis and sodium.
In the SNAP platform trial, cefazolin was non-inferior to flucloxacillin or cloxacillin for 90-day survival in methicillin-susceptible S. aureus bacteraemia, and caused notably less acute kidney injury.
In the phase 3 SWOG/NRG S1914 trial, adding atezolizumab to stereotactic radiotherapy for high-risk, inoperable early lung cancer left 2-year survival at 82% in both groups and caused more serious side effects.
In the industry-funded ADVANCE OUTCOMES trial, the once-daily prostacyclin-pathway drug more than halved the risk of a first worsening event, but drove far more treatment discontinuations for side-effects.
The PROPOSITIS trial put babies on high-flow oxygen face-down or on their backs. Escalation of care was 15% versus 21% — a difference that did not reach significance, and the authors call the study inconclusive.
In GASTRIC-PICU, 4,700 ventilated children were randomised to routine gastric residual checks or none. Dropping the checks was non-inferior for survival and ventilator-free days, and improved nutrition.
Ceperognastat, an oral OGA inhibitor, showed no benefit on the primary cognitive endpoint at 100 weeks. The higher dose progressed 32% faster than placebo and had more serious adverse events.
In the SOLARIO trial, patients who got local antibiotics at surgery did no worse on a short systemic course than a long one, and reported far fewer side effects. The comparison was independently funded.
In a single-arm trial, children with vanishing white matter given guanabenz kept walking longer than matched historical controls. The design was uncontrolled and hallucinations were common early on.
In the publicly funded EPoS II trial, waiting five years before the next colonoscopy was no worse than the recommended three at an interim look, with near-identical cancer rates. Ten-year data are still to come.
About a quarter of people sneeze on stepping into bright light. It runs in families, has been tied to specific gene variants, and looks like visual signals spilling into the sneeze circuit.
In the 142,250-person NHS-Galleri trial, three rounds of screening did not reduce stage III or IV cancers versus usual care. A fall in stage IV cancers alone leaves the case unproven.
It does not. In a Danish cohort of 657,461 children, vaccinated children had a fully adjusted autism hazard ratio of 0.93; a meta-analysis of 1,256,407 children found no link with MMR, thimerosal or mercury.
In the CREST-2 trials, stenting or surgery added to intensive medical treatment left cognition no better at four years than medical treatment alone in people with severe asymptomatic carotid stenosis.
In the 2,137-participant PrEggNut trial, mothers who ate a diet rich in eggs and peanuts through pregnancy and breastfeeding had infants with the same allergy rate as the comparison group.
An independent 2026 meta-analysis of AAV micro-dystrophin trials found small, mostly uncontrolled functional benefits — largest in the youngest boys — set against serious harms including rare deaths.
The reflex that stands body hair on end in the cold or at a stirring piece of music is largely a leftover from furrier ancestors — but new work shows the same wiring quietly keeps hair able to regrow.
The endorphin story is a long-standing guess. When researchers blocked opioid signalling in 63 runners, the euphoria and calm still arrived — pointing to the body's own cannabis-like molecules instead.
In 709 children with high-risk B-cell ALL, swapping two chemotherapy cycles for the T-cell-engaging antibody lifted four-year event-free survival to 83% from 70% and sharply cut serious infections.
In HIMALAYA, 305 people with ALS took the RIPK1 inhibitor SAR443820 or placebo; function fell almost identically in both, and the sponsor is halting the drug in ALS.
Obicetrapib cut Lp(a) by 37% in high-risk patients, a pooled analysis finds, alongside a similar drop in LDL. It reaches a lipid the costly new injectables target, if far less deeply.
The pruning of fingertips in a long bath is an active job done by the sympathetic nerves, not water soaking in. Whether the wrinkles are useful is a genuine, unresolved argument.
Two laboratory studies that dropped food onto contaminated surfaces found bacteria transfer within a second. How much moves depends far more on the food and the surface than on the count of five.
Scans confirmed that adults keep heat-producing brown fat, switched on by cold and linked to better metabolic health. Whether you can build enough of it to matter for weight is far less certain.
LITESPARK-022 cut the risk of recurrence by 28% when belzutifan was added to pembrolizumab after surgery. Survival was no different, and severe side effects nearly doubled.
A Nature study traced stress-driven greying in mice to sympathetic nerves that deplete pigment stem cells. Separate human work shows some grey hairs regain colour.
Adding the immunotherapy to perioperative chemotherapy improved overall survival in resectable gastric and junction cancer — crossing the significance line the interim analysis had missed.
Around 60–70% of infants carry Clostridioides difficile without illness. A Science study finds its toxins remodel the newborn gut in mice — but the direct human evidence is still limited to cells and biopsies.
Using 245,388 genomes from the US All of Us programme, researchers built risk scores for 32 traits. More diversity helped prediction in under-represented groups — but a bigger sample was not always better.
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.
In a phase 3 trial, tambotatug pelitecan extended median survival to 13.3 months versus 9.4 on standard chemotherapy — but the trial was open-label and run entirely in China.
Adding pembrolizumab plus maintenance olaparib to first-line chemotherapy improved progression-free survival — but pembrolizumab added without olaparib did nothing at all.
In PROPEL 3, children on once-daily infigratinib grew 1.74 cm/year faster than those on placebo over 52 weeks. It is a pill, not an injection — but the endpoint is growth speed, not long-term health.
In an 81-child trial, vosoritide raised annualised growth velocity by 2.33 cm a year against placebo in hypochondroplasia, which has no targeted treatment. The endpoint is growth speed, not final height.
Toilet seats and mirrors that read your heart and blood pressure are real engineering. The published validation is mostly small, single-lab or company-run — and outcome evidence is absent.
Two trials of oveporexton, an orexin receptor agonist for narcolepsy type 1, met their wakefulness endpoint and cut cataplexy sharply. Side effects were near-universal.
In the LAIS trial, more patients given intravenous loberamisal recovered with little or no disability at 90 days — a rare positive result in a field littered with failed neuroprotectants.
In half a million Chinese adults, higher exhaled carbon monoxide tracked with lower Parkinson's risk even among people who never smoked. It is an association, not a therapy.
In a 15-patient phase 1 trial, TX103 cells delivered directly into the brain were tolerated and median survival reached 19.1 months — but this is early, single-arm evidence with no control group.
When researchers screened 101 human studies against basic quality criteria, none met all of them. The field's core difficulty is telling real particles from contamination.
Animal studies show plastic particles disturbing the gut and triggering inflammation. Human evidence is mostly detection, with cause and effect still unresolved.
Planning ahead makes a patient's end-of-life wishes far more likely to be known and followed, and eases surviving families. What it has not reliably delivered is care that matches stated goals.
Most infections end when the immune system clears them. A few have evolved ways to hide, integrate or persist — which is why they can last a lifetime, and why 'cure' means something different for each.
It hangs in the air for up to two hours and infects the great majority of susceptible people it reaches. Less well known: it can erase part of the immune memory a person had already built to other diseases.
The two most-prescribed respiratory antivirals sit at opposite ends of the evidence. One shortens flu by less than a day on average; the other cut serious outcomes sharply — but only in the group at real risk.
A real condition with a formal case definition, a measurable population-level burden, and — so far — no treatment proven to reverse it. What the studies do and do not establish.
Every vaccine does the same job — teach the immune system to recognise a pathogen before it arrives. What differs is how they show it the target: live, inactivated, protein, viral vector, or mRNA.
Studies have found plastic particles in human blood, placenta and brain tissue. Detecting a particle establishes exposure — not that it is doing harm.
SERENA-6 changed therapy the moment a resistance mutation appeared in the blood, not when tumours grew. It nearly doubled time to progression — and won camizestrant FDA approval in 2026.
A small single-arm trial of the PD-1/CTLA-4 antibody cadonilimab with lenvatinib reported a 40.6% response rate in previously treated advanced endometrial cancer.
Resistance is not something your body develops. It is an evolutionary property of bacteria, spread on mobile pieces of DNA — and it was already linked to nearly 5 million deaths a year before the forecasts began.
In 5,520 children across 34 states, prenatal exposure to regulated public-water fluoride showed no association with emotional or behavioural problems overall — with one caveat in a secondary model.
In the 172-patient PARADIGM trial, azacitidine plus venetoclax more than doubled median event-free survival versus induction chemotherapy — but it was a phase 2 study not powered for overall survival.
A blood test after surgery can detect tumour DNA too faint to see on a scan. In one trial it let colon-cancer patients safely skip chemotherapy — but the evidence is still narrow.
In 408,039 UK Biobank participants, carrying loss-of-function variants in both LPA and PCSK9 was tied to markedly lower coronary disease risk than either alone — a genetic case for combination therapy.
Stargardt disease, the most common inherited macular dystrophy, has no approved treatment. In the 50-patient TEASE-1 trial, gildeuretinol slowed atrophic lesion growth by a fraction of a millimetre a year.
In an early-phase trial of 136 previously treated patients, daraxonrasib produced responses in 31–37% depending on dose — but 54% had a serious side effect, and this is a phase 1–2 study.
In the NSABP B-59 trial, adding the immunotherapy to neoadjuvant chemotherapy did not significantly improve event-free survival, while immune-related side effects more than doubled.
Galleri-type tests can flag a cancer signal from a tube of blood and often guess its origin. But they miss most early-stage cancers, and no trial has yet shown they help people live longer.
Five grams a week is the top of a wide range in one 2020 analysis. A mechanistic model put the mass humans actually ingest at micrograms, not grams.
In 53 patients, oral fluconazole — but not a mouth-only antifungal — cut gut Candida and coincided with improved disease activity. The study was observational, brief and unblinded.
In the single-arm EPCORE NHL-2 cohort, adding epcoritamab to rituximab and lenalidomide produced responses in 95% of 41 untreated follicular lymphoma patients, with no control group to prove added benefit.
Looksmaxxing assumes a measurable ideal face that also signals health. The research on symmetry, averageness and 'good genes' is far more mixed than the forums, or the filters, let on.
Ervebo was licensed against Zaire ebolavirus. WHO says it is not known whether it protects against Bundibugyo virus in humans — which is why a trial is running alongside the wider rollout.
Lorecivivint improved pain modestly and changed nothing structural. Sprifermin grew cartilage and the effect made no difference by year five. Both illustrate the gap between a biomarker and a benefit.
The REACT study imaged people aged 18 to 70 with no known cardiovascular disease. Atherosclerosis was already present in some people in their twenties, and it was usually in the legs, not the heart.
Two pragmatic randomised trials and a Medicare nursing home cohort landed in the same week. Together they show real protection against hospitalisation and a durability question nobody has answered.
PRESC1SE-MI covered 67,624 chest-pain presentations at 19 hospitals. The one-hour troponin pathway matched the three-hour one on safety, and median length of stay was identical: 309 minutes.
Carbon filters and ion exchange concentrate PFAS rather than breaking it down, which turns treated water into a residual-waste problem. A new review puts numbers on what destruction would cost in energy.
A Chinese cohort found serum PCBs associated with a higher calculated 10-year cardiovascular risk. The longitudinal results did not survive correction for multiple testing, and no events were counted.
The beliefs — that Black patients' skin is thicker, their nerve endings less sensitive — predicted lower pain ratings and less accurate treatment recommendations for a Black patient in the same experiment.
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.
Cochrane's 2024 review found low-certainty evidence of a small effect since fluoride toothpaste became widespread. The IQ meta-analysis that reopened the argument reported a null below 1.5 mg/L in one key analysis.
POET II randomised 508 stabilised patients to stop antibiotics or complete the standard course. The safety endpoint met noninferiority; relapse of infection did not go the same way.
The first double-blind sham-controlled trial of pulmonary vein isolation found quality of life improved in both arms. Most of the benefit patients feel appears not to come from the ablation.
One found specific phenanthrene metabolites associated with fetal growth restriction and chased the mechanism. The other tested a 24-metabolite mixture against ADHD in 3,962 children and found nothing.
The Fifth Universal Definition of Myocardial Infarction drops the numbered types, keeps sex-specific troponin thresholds, and proposes ICD-11 codes so the categories can be counted.
LIBREXIA-ACS enrolled 14,194 patients before stopping for futility. Milvexian did not reduce events, but intracranial and fatal bleeding were identical to placebo, which is the class's whole premise.
CARDIO-TTRansform randomised 1,432 patients with transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy to eplontersen or placebo for 140 weeks. The confidence interval around the primary result crosses one.
A network meta-analysis found route of delivery decides everything, and that autologous transplant ranked below placebo. In IBS, 13 trials produced very low certainty of any effect.
Two birth cohorts totalling 9,801 children were sorted into eight developmental patterns. The classic progression was one of them, and one of the smallest.
A $12 million gift will test whether low-dose rapamycin changes the transition to frailty in adults over 65 — the first study of the drug designed around an outcome rather than a biomarker.
Suppressor tRNAs have been a promising idea for nonsense mutations for years, held back by weak activity and delivery. A Science paper reports one chemical tweak and one redesigned nanoparticle.
Five-year follow-up of a Chinese randomised trial shows paclitaxel–cisplatin–capecitabine before chemoradiotherapy lifted failure-free survival from 63% to 78% in high-risk disease — at the cost of more toxicity.
The longest human trial of low-dose rapamycin for healthy ageing found no change in visceral fat, its own primary outcome. The positive findings it is quoted for rest on eight women.
Twelve studies in 1,158 IBS patients found gut-directed hypnotherapy improved symptoms, with the firmest results in high-volume and group delivery. The microbiome route is weaker.
In two phase 3 trials, 38.8% and 35.9% on baricitinib 4 mg reached near-complete scalp regrowth at 36 weeks against 6.2% and 3.3% on placebo — the first drug class to do this for the condition.
An investigation into the flood of papers mining one public health database found something more awkward than organised fraud: an open marketplace of tools that lets anyone produce a publishable analysis in an afternoon.
A mandatory citywide programme sequenced 782 genes in 1,000 prospective couples. The at-risk rate was double that of a comparable Australian study, and most flagged couples still chose to marry.
A review in Gut says no intestinal disease can be cured by normalising barrier function, and that it is unproven whether restoring the barrier improves any clinical outcome at all.
A 100-child randomized trial in Uganda found a cheap supplement lowered infection rates on top of standard hydroxyurea therapy — though the authors say it needs a bigger trial before it changes practice.
A large US analysis attributed 42 percent of cancer cases to modifiable risk factors. One factor dwarfs all the others, and it is not diet.
WHO data put the normal window for walking alone at 8.2 to 17.6 months. The 2022 CDC checklists moved to the age by which 75% of children reach a milestone — to flag real delay, not redefine normal.
The approved tests are for patients already showing cognitive decline. Used on the worried well, a positive result mostly signals a risk that may never become disease — and no treatment follows from it.
Stage describes how far a cancer has spread at diagnosis. It is not the same as grade, it is set once, and it drives both prognosis and treatment more than almost any other number.
Moderna and Merck's personalized vaccine slowed melanoma's return when added to Keytruda. It is the first mRNA cancer vaccine to succeed at scale — and the first real test of a decade-old idea.
Three of the four Yamanaka factors, delivered to one eye and switched on with an antibiotic for eight weeks. The mouse data are striking; the trial is a safety study and will not measure ageing.
Chronic granulomatous disease is usually X-linked in Western cohorts. A multicentre Middle East and North Africa registry found the opposite pattern, alongside late diagnosis and a median survival of 8.5 years.
VPM1002 did not show non-inferiority to BCG for preventing tuberculosis infection in a phase 3 trial across sub-Saharan Africa. Far fewer infections occurred than planned, leaving the comparison unresolved.
Farm-raised children really are protected from asthma, and the mechanism has been traced to microbial exposure and innate immunity. What has not been shown is that household hygiene caused the allergy epidemic.
Creatinine is muscle waste your kidneys clear; eGFR is an estimate of filtering capacity built from it. A single reading is a snapshot, not a diagnosis — and the equations have limits worth knowing.
Two national studies settle the question the trials could not: in England, cancer rates fell 87% among those vaccinated at 12-13; in Sweden, the risk was cut by nearly two-thirds.
The radioligand cut the risk of radiographic progression or death by 28% when added to standard therapy in a phase 3 trial — a real but incremental gain, bought with more side-effects.
A Brazilian laboratory study found both a prototype strain and an emergent reassortant killed neural progenitors and collapsed cortical structure. This is a dish, not a pregnancy.
A 2026 meta-analysis pooled every randomised human trial of the gut-derived supplement for muscle health. Only one outcome, from two trials, could be combined — and it missed significance.
Longevity trials want a measurement that moves in months instead of decades. A Berlin study ranked the candidates, and a four-week diet trial showed what a clock does when nothing much happens.
Analgesic trials keep failing, and one reason is that the comparison arm keeps improving. Where a trial recruits, how long it runs and how big it is all move the placebo response — and none of that is about the drug.
A systematic review in Cell called that rate implausible and said it overstates the gut microbiome's role in human disease. A separate audit found the statistical tools themselves disagree.
An inactive enzyme carried by an estimated 540 million people lets a carcinogen build up when they drink. In heavy-drinking carriers, oesophageal cancer risk runs many times higher.
Two datasets report an age-independent fall in men's testosterone across birth cohorts. A separate study of nine thousand men found much of the variation between cohorts came from the tests themselves.
Raised liver enzymes are common and mean the liver may be under strain, not that a disease is confirmed. The pattern, degree and duration of the change are what a clinician reads, not a single flag.
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 prespecified analysis of the ATTRibute-CM trial found the TTR-stabilising pill slowed the decline in how patients rated their own health, with a number-needed-to-treat of six to keep one 'not worse'.
A 223-study meta-regression reports sperm concentration falling 51.6% since 1973. Two published critiques argue the method cannot support that reading. Both sides are peer-reviewed.
Longitudinal data and a meta-analysis of 159,425 children find consistent associations between screen time and development — but the effects are small, observational, and thinner than the guidelines imply.
The final HARMONi-A analysis reports a 2.7-month gain in median overall survival — 16.8 versus 14.1 months — for the PD-1/VEGF bispecific added to chemotherapy in a China-only phase 3 trial.
In KEYNOTE-B15/EV-304, perioperative enfortumab vedotin plus pembrolizumab lifted two-year event-free survival to 79.4% from 66.2% against standard cisplatin-based chemotherapy in patients fit for it.
In 53,100 California women, higher trihalomethanes in drinking water tracked with modestly higher uterine cancer risk. Nitrate, arsenic and uranium showed no link.
The MITRIC basket trial gave 12 patients with immunotherapy-resistant cancer stool transplants from patients who had responded. It was safe but produced no objective tumour responses.
The SMART trial tested clesrovimab against palivizumab in premature and heart- and lung-affected infants. It was built to show safety, not to prove one prevents more RSV than the other.
Blood samples from a West African vaccine trial show both licensed Ebola vaccines generate antibodies that bind Bundibugyo virus — the species with no vaccine of its own, now causing DRC's largest outbreak on record.
Peruvian Andeans are famous for high haemoglobin at altitude. A genome-wide scan finds the alleles under recent positive selection are the ones that lower it — a pattern closer to Tibetans than expected.
The targeted combination more than tripled progression-free survival versus placebo in iodine-refractory disease — but overall survival is not yet significant and the trial was mostly Asian.
Gene-edited islet cells implanted in a person's forearm are still functioning more than a year later. It is a single case report, and will need many more patients to mean anything.
In the phase 3 BRUIN CLL-322 trial, adding pirtobrutinib to a fixed course of venetoclax and rituximab raised 24-month progression-free survival to 87% from 72% in previously treated disease.
Two 2026 reviews make the case that human-derived models can replace animal testing. A third paper argues the field is checking the biology and the algorithm separately, and calling that assurance.
Years of observational data suggested 4CMenB cut gonorrhea risk by a third or more. A placebo-controlled trial in 654 people at high risk found essentially no effect at all.
Nous-209 targets 209 mutations shared across a whole class of tumours, so it can be manufactured in advance. What the trial has not yet shown is that anyone got less cancer.
In a 187-patient trial, chronic graft-versus-host-disease-free survival at one year was 78% with the new therapy versus 38% with conventional transplant. The FDA approved it 30 June.
A sham-controlled trial found FMT shifted bacterial composition but cleared drug-resistant organisms no better than a saline placebo. A second trial shows what a defined replacement product can and cannot yet prove.
A New England Journal of Medicine review of the ongoing outbreak lays out what is and isn't known about treating Bundibugyo virus disease — and why Ebola virus countermeasures may offer partial cover.
In ATTRACTION, tirofiban given after successful thrombectomy left more stroke patients independent at 90 days than placebo, though symptomatic brain bleeds trended higher and were not significantly different.
A meta-analysis of 27 randomised trials found that disclosing a polygenic risk score did not meaningfully shift diet, screening uptake, medication use, anxiety or cholesterol.
In a 500-patient ICU trial across seven countries, bicarbonate infusions for metabolic acidosis in patients on vasopressors did not lower major kidney events or death at 30 days.
In a UK trial of 1,956 critically ill adults, neither carbocisteine nor nebulised hypertonic saline shortened time on a ventilator, and each was tied to a specific harm.
University of Florida researchers identify excess glycan production as a driver of Alzheimer's pathology, and find oral glucosamine worsened cognition in mice and tracked with faster decline.
Data from 20 European countries covering 2014 to 2024 tracks lung function, nutrition and infection through the arrival of triple modulator therapy — and the new complications arriving with age.
Thirty-five people received VERVE-102 in a phase 1 trial. The edit is permanent, the follow-up is short, and the endpoint measured was cholesterol, not heart attacks.
In the MajesTEC-9 trial, the bispecific antibody teclistamab cut the risk of progression or death by 71% against standard three- and two-drug regimens. Serious infections were common.
In the phase 3 LIBRETTO-432 trial, adjuvant selpercatinib raised two-year event-free survival to 92% from 61% in resected stage II-IIIA RET fusion-positive lung cancer. The trial was small and survival is unproven.
35% of patients on tezepelumab stopped oral steroids entirely, versus 21% on placebo, without losing asthma control — in a drug that targets inflammation upstream of the eosinophil count doctors usually check.
A modelling analysis puts 2.75 million children under five in sub-Saharan Africa living with sickle cell disease. Seven African countries have transplant programmes; approved gene therapies cost millions.
An 8-year-old boy had brain inflammation with no respiratory symptoms. Every respiratory, blood and rectal sample tested negative; the virus was in his cerebrospinal fluid alone.
Baxdrostat blocks the enzyme that makes aldosterone, rather than blocking aldosterone's receptor. In a 794-patient trial it lowered systolic pressure another 10 points in people already on multiple drugs.
ETX101 doesn't replace the faulty gene behind Dravet syndrome — it turns up the healthy copy that's still there. New data from 21 children show the effect holding for a year.
A linked-registry cohort of New South Wales residents from 2001 to 2018 finds cancer risk in people with intellectual disability inverts with age — higher when young, lower after 50.
In VERITAC-2 the oral degrader more than doubled progression-free survival over fulvestrant in patients with an ESR1 mutation — 5.0 months versus 2.1 — but not in the trial as a whole.
Buntanetap showed dose-dependent cognitive benefit in biomarker-positive patients with mild disease. The company's announcement does not say what happened in the full 351-patient population.
The LiverScreen project ran transient elastography across nine countries, then sent everyone who screened positive to a hepatologist. The gap between the two numbers is the interesting part.
Of 1,363 evaluable patients matched to drugs by tumor genetics, 7% became exceptional responders. Activity across all 37 drugs was modest, and severe side effects hit over a quarter.
27 of 28 patients had no severe pain crises after treatment with reni-cel. But the sponsor ended the study early, and the reported analysis was not the one it was designed to test.
Results posted to ClinicalTrials.gov show 15- and 25-day nirmatrelvir-ritonavir regimens produced no meaningful edge over placebo on cognitive, autonomic, or exercise-intolerance symptoms.
In the phase 3 ATOMIC trial, atezolizumab on top of standard FOLFOX chemotherapy raised three-year disease-free survival to 86.3% from 76.2% after surgery for stage III dMMR colon cancer.
In a Chinese phase 2–3 trial, neoadjuvant chemotherapy, lenvatinib and a PD-1 antibody before liver surgery lifted median event-free survival to 18.0 months from 8.7. The survival signal was not yet conclusive.
In 2,077 children, higher processed-food intake at age 3 tracked with worse behavioral and emotional scores at age 5. It's an association from a birth cohort, not a trial, and can't establish that the food caused it.
The STABLED trial randomized 331 atrial fibrillation patients with a recent stroke to ablation plus anticoagulation or anticoagulation alone. The two groups ended up nearly identical.
Sequencing 6,141 people turned high consanguinity into a research advantage: it produced natural human knockouts that population studies elsewhere almost never see.
A three-year update of RATIONALE-309 found tislelizumab plus chemotherapy lengthened median progression-free survival to 9.6 months from 7.4. The overall-survival gain was not statistically significant on its own.
Researchers profiled nearly 356,000 nuclei from post-mortem hippocampi across five groups. Chromatin accessibility in neurogenic cells was already altered in people with preclinical Alzheimer's pathology.
In KEYNOTE-905/EV-303, adding enfortumab vedotin and pembrolizumab to surgery lifted two-year event-free survival to 74.7% from 39.4%. Serious side effects were common.
A cluster-randomised trial across 15 population clusters found mosquito abundance collapsed in intervention areas and protective efficacy of 71–72% against symptomatic dengue.
A study in patients with VITT maps the trigger to a specific epitope on an adenoviral core protein, and to a single amino acid change that redirects the antibody onto a human platelet protein.
A Swedish birth cohort of 2.76 million people found the cumulative male-to-female ratio for autism incidence had fallen to 1.2 by age 20 — and projects parity by 2024.
Nine children received a single infusion of AAV9 carrying the beta-galactosidase gene. Enzyme activity rose and substrate fell in every participant; some developmental measures held steady and others declined.
Trained on 2,202 retracted paper mill articles, a text classifier flagged 9.87 percent of the cancer literature — including in the highest-impact journals. Flagged is not the same as fraudulent.
AlphaGenome takes a million base pairs of DNA and predicts what the sequence does. In Nature on January 28, it matched or beat the best existing models in 25 of 26 variant-effect evaluations.
Two notices, one day apart, end one line of federally funded research and freeze another pending review. NIH is now asking scientists which experiments could not be done without embryonic stem cells.
In the phase 3 ASCENT-04 trial, sacituzumab govitecan with pembrolizumab lifted median progression-free survival to 11.2 months from 7.8 in PD-L1-positive disease. Survival data are immature.
FDA approved copper histidinate on the strength of two single-arm trials compared with an external control group. Children treated within four weeks of birth had a 78 percent lower risk of death.
The agency says it has been relaxing chemistry and manufacturing expectations for cell and gene therapies case by case. The change is that every sponsor now knows it.
Narsoplimab clears the FDA on a single-arm study of 28 adults plus 19 patients from an expanded access programme. Sixty-one per cent responded. Seven per cent had a fatal adverse reaction.
The NEJM paper reports 47 children in an open-label trial with no randomised control. The biomarker effect is large; the clinical claim rests on softer ground.
The biomarker effect reported at CTAD is large and sustained over two years. The sample is seven, the design is open dose-escalation, and imaging was available for three.
At a Mayo Clinic cohort of 252 patients, 40% of amyloid-negative people tested positive. The manufacturer says it has found a manufacturing problem and put the product on hold.
Shared cell time raises transmission odds sharply — six months of it doubles them. But cell-level exposure explains only part of the genomic clustering, which undercuts contact tracing as a strategy.
A Buenos Aires surveillance cohort estimates 80.8% effectiveness against RSV hospitalisation in infants under three months — close to what the licensing trial found, in a real programme.
An 18,476-person phase 3 trial and a small human challenge study landed the same day. Both favour the mRNA vaccine against influenza A; neither settles what it does against influenza B.
An individual-patient meta-analysis of 17,801 patients found a hazard ratio of 0.97 for death, reinfarction or heart failure — a result precise enough to make the question look settled.
VESALIUS-CV randomised 12,257 patients with atherosclerosis or diabetes but no prior MI or stroke. Evolocumab reduced the three-point event rate from 8.0% to 6.2% over a median 4.6 years.
The first phase 1 results for CTX310 show gene editing can switch off a lipid gene in the liver. The trial was designed to look for harm, not benefit, and one participant died suddenly.
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.
The experimental recombinant antivenom outperformed a plasma-derived product in mice and cut tissue necrosis. It has not been tested in a single human, and the paper does not address cost or manufacturing at scale.
The Nature paper pairs mouse mechanism with retrospective human cohorts: vaccination within 100 days of starting a checkpoint inhibitor was associated with better survival. Retrospective is the load-bearing word.
Two Nature papers describe the Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative and the risk scores built from it. The genetic effects identified explained up to 10.3% of health variation in the cohort.
Two Nature papers apply duplex sequencing with fewer than five errors per billion bases to cheek swabs and sperm — finding 46 genes under selection in mouth lining and a fatherhood risk that rises with age.
Three laureates, three papers, and a 30-year gap between the first observation and the therapies it enabled. The prize rewards work that was against the consensus when it was published.
Researchers showed open-source protein design software could produce variants of proteins of concern that biosecurity screening tools missed, then wrote and deployed patches before publishing.
Thirty-seven had the necrotising form, of whom 41% died. Just 16% of vaccine-eligible children with encephalopathy had received that season's flu vaccine. There is no national surveillance for the condition.
A 13-year-old observational hypothesis finally got its randomised test. In ALASCCA, 160 mg of daily aspirin cut three-year recurrence from 14.1% to 7.7% in biomarker-selected patients.
BCG and oral polio vaccine given within 48 hours to 5,420 babies under 2,000 g reduced deaths from infections other than tuberculosis. The effect is off-target, and the mechanism is unresolved.
In a 400-pair trial in Uganda where every family already had a bed net, insecticide-treated wraps reduced clinical malaria in infants from 2.14 to 0.73 cases per 100 person-weeks.
Forzinity was approved under accelerated approval to improve muscle strength in patients weighing at least 30 kg. The confirmatory trial is not due to report until 2030.
In 99 patients with normal-pressure hydrocephalus, an open shunt valve improved gait velocity and balance versus a valve set so high it did nothing. Cognition and bladder control did not improve.
Brensocatib blocks an enzyme that arms neutrophils rather than killing bacteria. In a 1,721-patient trial it cut yearly flare-ups by about a fifth — a modest effect in a disease with nothing else approved.
A Nature paper maps the route cerebrospinal fluid takes to neck lymph nodes, finds the route degrades with age, and reports a mechanical device that reopened it in old mice.