For how we live.
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.
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.
The government is gathering evidence to build step-count and muscle-strengthening guidance into the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, a supplement to the 2018 edition. Written comments close 12 November 2026.
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 prespecified analysis of 227,502 veterans who contacted the Veterans Crisis Line found suicide mortality of 0.29% among caring-letter recipients versus 0.27% in historical controls — no measurable difference.
A draft guidance published 9 October would spare mid-sized retail food establishments and restaurants from all Food Traceability Rule requirements. Comments close 23 November; a public meeting follows on 6 November.
In a cluster trial across 11 Massachusetts youth clubs, 437 children aged 8–13 got a six-week behaviour programme. The between-group BMI z-score difference was −0.19 and significant; within-group changes were not.
Surveillance data show 252 locally acquired dengue cases in the Tampa Bay area by 26 September, 223 of them in Hillsborough County, where an 80-year-old woman has died. Three counties have declared emergencies.
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%.
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.
There has been no reliable way to prevent pre-eclampsia at term. PREVENT-PE screened over 8,000 women late in pregnancy and offered earlier birth to those at highest risk — and pre-eclampsia fell by nearly a third.
Falling cervical cancer rates after HPV vaccination are well known. A 2026 analysis of mortality data goes further: among women vaccinated at 12–13 with ~90% coverage, no deaths were recorded against about 23 expected.
The first dedicated Global Burden of Disease analysis of passive smoking finds exposure falling in relative terms but stuck in absolute numbers, and still causing 1.66 million deaths a year — most from heart disease.
A new history of Norway's 1975 ban — one of the WHO's three 'best buys' against alcohol harm — traces how it survived courts, alcohol-free beer and social media, and why pressure to modernise it worries defenders.
The first GBD 2023 estimate of heart failure maps not just its size but its causes — and the causes split the world: alcohol in eastern Europe, Chagas disease in Latin America, rheumatic disease in the global south.
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.
In LatAm-FINGERS, 1,065 at-risk older adults across 11 countries did better on cognitive tests with structured coaching than with flexible health advice over two years. The gap was small.
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.
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.
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.
Retrospective studies keep finding bilinguals develop dementia symptoms three to four years later than monolinguals. Prospective studies that follow healthy people find no drop in who gets it at all.
A short walk after eating blunts the post-meal blood-sugar spike. Trials in people with type 2 diabetes and in healthy adults agree, and light walking beats standing, which beats sitting still.
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.
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.
In deficient populations, vitamin A supplements cut child deaths by 12% — among the best-evidenced global-health interventions. In the well-nourished, added vitamin A does no good and can do harm.
Bigger weekly doses of nature track with better wellbeing, structured outdoor programmes ease depression and anxiety in trials, and a single walk can quiet the overthinking that feeds low mood.
The LEAP trial found that feeding peanut to high-risk babies from infancy cut peanut allergy at age five from 13.7% to 1.9%. A follow-up showed the protection held — but high-risk infants should be assessed first.
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.
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.
For most women without complications, activity in pregnancy is safe and beneficial. Trials link exercise to lower odds of gestational diabetes and high blood pressure, with a rough dose to aim for.
US POINTER randomised 2,111 at-risk older adults to two lifestyle programmes. The structured version beat the self-guided one on cognition — but by a modest margin, and there was no do-nothing group to compare against.
Losing the ability to walk is a turning point in later life. In a large randomised trial, structured activity cut the rate of major mobility disability — evidence that movement protects independence, read honestly.
Observational studies tie hearing loss to faster mental decline. But the first large randomised trial found no overall benefit from hearing aids over three years — with a signal of help only in higher-risk older adults.
A landmark trial pushed blood pressure hard and cut mild cognitive impairment — but its headline dementia result fell short of significance after the study stopped early. The pooled trial evidence is real, and modest.
Analysing 32,294 viral sequences from 16,428 people, Swiss researchers found 23 fast-growing clusters drove a third of recent transmission growth — evidence molecular surveillance could target the remaining chains.
From January 2026 children in England are offered varicella vaccine as MMRV at 12 and 18 months. Pooled trial data put one dose near 81% effective against any chickenpox and 98% against severe disease.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In a study of 633 people with gout, eating cherries over two days was linked to a 35% lower risk of a flare. It is suggestive, observational evidence — no randomised trial has yet confirmed it.
A randomised trial found ordinary ibuprofen cut acute mountain sickness from 69% to 43% on a fast ascent. A Cochrane review found most supplements and pre-acclimatisation gadgets do not hold up.
Most newborn jaundice needs no treatment. The reason clinicians watch it is a rare progression to brain injury — a burden that falls overwhelmingly on poorer countries.
The global target is an average of 60 minutes a day of moderate-to-vigorous activity, plus muscle-strengthening. Most adolescents miss it: in 2016, 81% worldwide were insufficiently active, and girls more than boys.
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.
The Women's Preventive Services Initiative now endorses patient-collected HPV tests for average-risk women aged 30 to 65. HRSA has adopted the update for no-cost insurance coverage from 2027.
A small 1990s trial hinted selenium supplements cut cancer, launching a supplement boom. The much larger SELECT trial found no benefit — and signals of harm, including more type 2 diabetes.
Diets rich in colourful fruit and vegetables track with less cancer, so supplement makers bottled beta-carotene. Two large trials in smokers found the pills raised lung cancer and death — the opposite of the hope.
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.
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.
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.
Meta-analyses found calcium pills raised heart-attack risk by around a quarter. A later review — funded by an osteoporosis foundation — found no such link. The disagreement is the story.
Colder days track with more heart attacks in nationwide data, and the sharpest signal is the day after heavy snowfall — a rise seen in men but not women, pointing to the shovel as much as the temperature.
For heat exhaustion, rest and shade usually suffice. For heat stroke, a meta-analysis of 63 studies found immersion in cold water cooled the body faster than anything passive — the intervention the evidence agrees on.
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.
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.
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.
Whole fruit and fruit juice behave oppositely for type 2 diabetes risk, and a trial that told newly diagnosed patients to eat less fruit found no benefit at all.
Iron shortfall is the leading cause of anaemia in young children and is linked to poorer development. Yet the evidence that screening symptom-free toddlers or routinely supplementing them helps their brains is thin.
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.
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.
Too little iodine, especially in pregnancy, is the world's leading preventable cause of impaired brain development. Salt iodisation fixed most of it — but mild deficiency has crept back in some rich countries.
No cream, pill or gel reverses a sunburn or shortens it. Cool compresses, moisturizer and painkillers ease the days it lasts; the burn itself is UV damage that heals on its own.
The childhood infection clears on its own in most children and has no specific antiviral. The evidence that matters is about the rare severe case — and where it happens.
There is no established safe amount, and UK and US authorities advise not drinking at all. Heavy drinking clearly causes fetal alcohol harm; the data on light drinking are genuinely sparse, not reassuring.
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.
Across nearly 1.1 million people, each extra daily cup tracks with lower diabetes risk in a clear dose-response. It is consistent and large — and still only observational.
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.
Eligibility set by exact date of birth created a natural experiment. Vaccinated people had a 20% lower relative risk of dementia over seven years. It is one striking study, and it tested the older live vaccine.
One ultrasound scan for abdominal aortic aneurysm cuts AAA-related deaths in older men who ever smoked — but not all-cause mortality. The evidence is almost entirely about men, which is why the recommendation is too.
New guidelines set how the program, launched in July 2025, screens people aged 50 to 70 with a 30 pack-year smoking history using two-yearly low-dose CT scans.
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.
Men die by suicide two to four times as often as women in most countries. The reasons implicate lower help-seeking and masculine norms — and the interventions tested so far have not been shown to reduce it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A postpartum smoking programme and a safe-sleep video series each failed the question they were designed to answer. What they reported next is where the interpretation gets difficult.
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.
E-cigarettes are the tobacco product US teenagers use most, and youth use has fallen from its peak. The clearest documented harm is that teens who vape are several times more likely to start smoking cigarettes.
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.
A, B, C, D and I are not school marks. They encode how strong the evidence is, whether to screen at all — and in the US, whether insurance has to pay for it.
A German trial in 1,793 students found a cognitive-behavioural programme reduced gaming and internet-use disorder symptoms only in high-risk adolescents — not across the whole classroom.
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.
Screening 2,904 proteins in early pregnancy, researchers found low maternal isthmin-2 was the strongest signal for later preeclampsia or fetal growth restriction, validated in two cohorts.
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.
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 modelling study estimates near-universal kangaroo care would avert 1.6 million disability-adjusted life-years and shield 57,000 households from catastrophic health costs, with most gains among the poorest.
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.
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.
A review by the country's Public Health Authority credits enforcement and awareness campaigns for falls in crashes, deaths and injuries from 2013 to 2023 — while naming what still holds the Vision 2030 target back.
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.
The share of US adults who drink has fallen to a record 54%, and for the first time a near-majority think a daily drink or two is bad for them. What is driving the sober-curious turn is less obvious than the trend.
A Cochrane review finds fixing home hazards reduces falls by 38% in people at high risk of falling — and not at all in those who are not. On vitamin D, the US task force is blunt: no benefit.
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.
Alternating alcoholic and soft drinks is the tactic of the moment, but it has never been tested. A brief conversation with a clinician has, and it cuts drinking by about two drinks a week.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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%.
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 standing commission estimates that eliminating 14 risk factors could prevent or delay 45% of dementia across a whole population. What that number means for one person is a different and much weaker claim.
SPF measures how much ultraviolet exposure it takes to burn, not how long you can stay outside. The randomised cancer-prevention evidence rests largely on 1,621 adults followed for more than a decade.
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.
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.
Imaging finds smaller brain volumes from as little as one to two daily drinks. Long-run dementia studies show a U-shape, with abstainers also at higher risk — a pattern that is easy to misread.
A cluster-randomised trial in Saponé found seasonal chemoprevention given to children up to age 10 nearly halved parasite carriage in 5-to-9-year-olds, though supervised delivery brought no clear gain under age five.
In 53,100 California women, higher trihalomethanes in drinking water tracked with modestly higher uterine cancer risk. Nitrate, arsenic and uranium showed no link.
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.
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.
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.
An econometric analysis of the 2019 European Health Interview Survey prices smoking-attributable inpatient and daycare hospitalisation across the EU — deliberately excluding every other kind of care.
A secondary analysis of 8,376 adolescents built two models to predict who benefits from school-based mindfulness training. Both found a subgroup — and the difference in outcomes was trivial.
Two doses of the long-acting antibody L9LS protected under-fives in a high-transmission area, but researchers say a higher dose is likely needed for stronger cover.
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.
Intimate partner violence has declined by 0.2% a year over two decades. The report also produces the first national and regional estimates of sexual violence by someone other than a partner.
The recommendation covers people weighing at least 35 kg and rests on two trials in which lenacapavir cut HIV infections by 100% and 96% against background incidence.
An Australian cohort of 3,044 children found no protective factor held across all ages and outcomes. School safety mattered at age 6-7; belonging mattered at 12-13.
A Spanish trial in 4,746 adults compared an energy-reduced Mediterranean diet plus exercise against the same diet eaten freely. Over six years the absolute gap was 12.0% versus 9.5%.
The guidelines pair the new injectable with a second, quieter recommendation: use simplified rapid diagnostic testing to start and continue long-acting PrEP, rather than more complex assays.
Lenacapavir is the first HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis given every six months. Two phase 3 trials found zero and two infections in the lenacapavir groups against background rates above 2 per 100 person-years.