Tuning daytime and evening light did not improve older adults' sleep
In a 12-person crossover trial, blue-enriched daytime light with reduced evening blue did not cut time spent awake at night, though it nudged a brainwave marker of sleep.
A smartphone app pairing exercise with therapy cut chronic knee pain in a trial
In 216 patients with chronic patellofemoral pain across 10 Korean hospitals, an 8-week digital therapeutic beat education and exercise instruction on pain — by 12.5 mm on a 100 mm scale.
One pre-workout caffeine dose kept working across 3.5 hours of repeated sprints
A small double-blind trial found a single 5.5 mg/kg dose lifted sprint power for hours, alongside higher noradrenaline and lower perceived effort — but it was 12 people, mostly men.
A gentler drug pair beat intensive chemo on one measure in fit leukaemia patients
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.
Ketamine beat midazolam in treatment-resistant bipolar depression
In the Ket-BD trial, four IV ketamine infusions over two weeks lowered depression scores more than an active placebo, with no manic switches observed in 63 analysed patients.
Does stevia mess with your blood sugar or hormones? A crossover trial says no
In 69 people across normal weight, overweight and type 2 diabetes, a stevia drink behaved like water — no shift in glucose, insulin, gut hormones, appetite or how much they ate next.
Cannabis edibles impaired simulated driving below the legal blood limits
In a 40-person crossover trial, 10 mg and 20 mg of edible THC degraded lane-keeping while whole-blood THC peaked at 1.6 and 3.4 ng/mL — near or under the thresholds police enforce.
A statin cut heart attacks in healthy over-70s. Independent years did not follow.
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.
Your mammogram now reports breast density. Here is what that actually means.
Dense tissue raises breast-cancer risk and hides cancers on a mammogram. US facilities must now tell patients — but the evidence on what to do next is a real trade-off: more cancers found, more false alarms.
Vaginal oestrogen around prolapse surgery: better symptoms, same anatomy
A 293-woman Dutch trial found more women reported improvement at 12 months with perioperative oestriol cream than placebo. Anatomical success, surgical success and reintervention were unchanged.
A brief insomnia therapy worked during chemotherapy. Light glasses did not.
SleepCARE randomised 219 Australian women receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer to CBT-I, bright light therapy, both, or sleep hygiene. Only CBT-I moved insomnia — and nothing moved fatigue.
Each 30 minutes of weekly aerobic exercise produced half a kilogram of weight loss
A meta-analysis of 116 randomised trials found weight, waist and body fat falling steadily up to 300 minutes a week. In one 24-week trial, 48% of participants compensated by about 308 kcal a day.
How common is iron deficiency in women? It depends entirely on the cutoff you use
In one study of 62,685 women, iron deficiency prevalence ranged from 3% to 15% depending on the ferritin threshold. On treatment, a recent trial found alternate-day iron caused fewer side effects than daily dosing.
17,598 people were randomised to a PPI or placebo for three years. One harm signal emerged
Observational studies had linked proton pump inhibitors to fractures, dementia, kidney disease and more. A randomised trial collected all of those outcomes and found only enteric infections.
Eight weeks of mindfulness matched a first-line anxiety drug in a randomised trial
The TAME trial randomised 276 adults with diagnosed anxiety disorders to mindfulness-based stress reduction or escitalopram. The difference on the primary measure was 0.07 points, inside the noninferiority margin.
Ten years on, shoulder decompression still had not beaten placebo surgery
FIMPACT enrolled 210 people, assigned them to real surgery, fake surgery or exercise, and followed them to 2023. The gap between operated and pretend-operated groups was 1.5 points on a 100-point scale.
A short opioid course for acute back and neck pain did not beat placebo
OPAL randomised 347 people in Australian primary care and emergency departments. At six weeks the opioid group's mean pain score was slightly worse than the placebo group's.
Bacterial vaginosis keeps coming back — and treating the male partner cut recurrence
Most women have a recurrence within a year of standard treatment. A 2025 trial stopped early once treating a woman alone proved inferior to treating her and her male partner together.
For recurrent yeast infections, suppression works — but mostly while you keep taking it
Weekly fluconazole kept most women free of thrush during treatment, yet by 12 months, six months after stopping, the advantage had narrowed sharply. A newer drug shows more durable suppression.
For recurrent UTIs, a non-antibiotic pill matched daily antibiotics in a trial
In the 240-woman ALTAR trial, methenamine hippurate was non-inferior to standard low-dose antibiotic prophylaxis over a year. Most other non-antibiotic prevention strategies still rest on weak evidence.
Seven days of low-plastic eating cut three chemical markers in urine
The PERTH trial is a 60-person pilot, and its outcome was urinary chemistry rather than health. Within those limits it answered a question people keep asking.
Vitamin D before IVF raised blood levels and left live birth rates unchanged
An 876-participant double-blind trial across 24 Chinese fertility centres nearly doubled serum 25-OHD in women with PCOS. Live births were 52.0% against 50.2% on placebo.
A 278,000-person screening trial found more early cancers — and more early harms
SCREESCO randomised Swedish 60-year-olds to colonoscopy, stool testing, or nothing. After a median 4.8 years, overall cancer incidence barely moved; the stage distribution did.
Adding exercise to sleep counselling beat either one alone in a small trial
A four-arm randomised trial in 112 young women tested whether high-intensity circuit training and sleep-health counselling add up. On objective measures they did — by minutes.
An app that nudged long COVID patients to pace themselves did not reduce crashes
A 250-person randomised trial paired a wearable tracker with just-in-time energy-management messages. Post-exertional malaise fell in both arms, and the difference between them was trivial.
Eight phone calls cut loneliness in older adults — and the effect held a year later
A 1,151-person Hong Kong trial used trained lay counsellors, not clinicians, and no internet. The effect sizes are small, and the authors are explicit that they do not know whether it travels.
Three months of an osteoporosis drug matched twelve on bone density in a 50-woman trial
The LIDA trial tested whether romosozumab's bone-building window closes early enough to shorten treatment. It met non-inferiority on hip bone density — at a single centre, with 50 participants, over one year.
A knee brace added a small, fading benefit on top of exercise advice in 466 adults
The PROP OA trial found a 3.39-point gain on a 100-point score at six months. The effect on pain was larger than the effect overall, and both diminished by twelve months.
A six-month habit programme left more people in metabolic remission two years later
In a 618-person randomized trial, 27.8% of the intervention group met the sustained-remission endpoint at 24 months against 21.2% of comparators. The confidence interval nearly touches no effect.
Permethrin cream beat oral ivermectin for scabies in a trial that ran for six years
Household cure rates were 88.5 percent with permethrin against 71.8 percent with ivermectin. The trial set out to show ivermectin was non-inferior and found the opposite.
A prescribed app cut incontinence episodes 61%. The control group changed by 1.7%.
Germany's DINKS trial is one of the largest randomised tests of a reimbursable digital therapeutic. The effect is big, the comparator is usual care alone, and the sponsor made the app.
An app matched human coaches in a diabetes trial. Both worked about a third of the time.
The headline finding is noninferiority. The more useful finding is what the shared denominator was — and how wide a gap the trial was designed to tolerate.
A trial screened women by risk instead of age. Late-stage cancers did not rise.
WISDOM randomised 28,372 women to annual mammography or a risk-tailored schedule. The risk-based arm met its non-inferiority mark for advanced cancers — with caveats about who enrolled.
Yoga is recommended for sleep. Against plain stretching, it did nothing extra.
A 240-woman randomised trial compared three months of hatha yoga with a time-matched conditioning programme. On every sleep measure, the two groups moved together.
An mRNA flu vaccine beat a licensed shot by 34.5% — and made more people feel rough
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.
A PCSK9 inhibitor cut first heart attacks and strokes in people who had never had one
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.
Fish oil halved serious cardiovascular events in a dialysis trial. The size is the puzzle
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.
Doubling the aspirin dose did not prevent more preeclampsia in a 365-woman trial
The 162 mg group had 14.1% preterm or severe preeclampsia against 17.1% on 81 mg — a difference the trial could not distinguish from chance. Eight placental abruptions occurred on the higher dose and none on the lower.
A Mediterranean diet beat standard first-line dietary advice for IBS in a UK trial
The trial was designed to test non-inferiority against traditional dietary advice. It found superiority instead, with 62% versus 42% achieving a clinical response over six weeks.
An automated internet CBT-I programme held its gains in older adults at 12 months
In 311 adults aged 55 to 95, remission rates were 40% and 51% in the two intervention arms at one year, against 16% for online patient education. Adding human support helped a little.
A Danish trial of virtual-reality therapy for voices found a small, real effect
In 270 patients whose voices persisted despite antipsychotics, the therapy beat matched clinical contact on hallucination severity by 2.26 points — significant, with a Cohen's d of 0.27.