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.
In 1,448 pregnancies, lower early placental growth factor was linked to more preterm births — yet adding it to a prediction model lifted accuracy only from 0.59 to 0.68.
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.
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.
An overactive thyroid speeds the body up; an underactive one slows it down. But no single symptom is reliable — in one large screening study, individual thyroid symptoms were poor at flagging who actually had a problem.
A deep-learning model reads the pancreas on non-contrast CT taken for other reasons. It reached very high accuracy in large tests — none of them a prospective screening trial.
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.
Some heart attacks leave scar on an ECG or MRI but were never felt as one. In a long US cohort they made up more than 45% of heart attacks — and they still shortened survival.
Open-angle glaucoma steals side vision so slowly that half of people who have it don't know. There is no way to prevent it — but a placebo-controlled trial showed pressure-lowering drops preserve vision.
Disordered eating is far more common in adolescents than most parents realise, and weight is a poor guide. A pooled analysis found about 22% of children and teens screen positive, and girls far more than boys.
For the HPV tests now used in primary screening, a self-collected vaginal sample is about as accurate as one a clinician takes — and mailing kits to under-screened women roughly doubles uptake.
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.
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.
HPV drove 71.7% of US oropharyngeal cancers in the most recent period studied, and incidence in men rose 2.7% a year through 2017. Vaccination cuts the oral infections behind them.
The honest answer is that early type 2 diabetes usually has no signs you can feel. The classic symptoms arrive late, and damage can be under way years before the diagnosis is made.
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.
Software that interprets cardiotocography in labour lifts clinicians' accuracy in reader studies. The largest randomised trial of computerised interpretation, in 47,062 women, found no benefit for mothers or babies.
US mortality is roughly two-fold higher in Black men, but when care and treatment are equal — in the military health system and in trials — the stage-for-stage survival gap largely disappears.
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.
Physically acting out dreams is one of the strongest known early signs of Parkinson's and related diseases. In a 1,280-patient cohort, most converted within 12 years — but it is a risk marker, not a verdict.
European screening cut prostate-cancer deaths by 21% at 13 years, at the cost of overdiagnosis; a UK trial of a single test found no mortality benefit. US guidance now makes it a personal choice for men 55 to 69.
Gallstones affect 10 to 15 percent of Americans, but stones that never block a bile duct cause no symptoms. Here is when a stone stops being harmless and becomes an emergency.
US guidelines recommend a one-time ultrasound for men aged 65 to 75 who ever smoked, and advise against it for most women. The split turns on who actually benefits from finding a silent bulge in the aorta.
TRICORDER put an AI-enabled stethoscope into UK primary care. Over a year it did not increase heart-failure diagnoses population-wide, even though the device, when actually used, flagged more disease.
Real deficiency shows as bone pain, muscle weakness or, in children, rickets. But US surveys suggest most people meet their needs, and both a 2011 and a 2024 review advise against routine testing in healthy adults.
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.
Every low-dose CT for lung cancer also images the heart. A 323-scan study found an AI tool matched expert calcium scoring almost exactly — and separate data show why that number carries weight.
A multicentre reader study found AI raised early-career dentists' caries sensitivity from 67% to 82% without more false positives. Independent testing shows the same tools still miss early lesions.
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.
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.
For adults with no symptoms, the US Preventive Services Task Force recommends against carotid ultrasound screening — a rare 'D' grade, because finding the narrowing does more harm than good.
The blood test known as NIPT is a strong screen for Down syndrome but not a diagnosis. In a general-risk population a positive result was correct about 81% of the time — and much less often for rarer conditions.
A few drops of blood taken in the first days of life are checked for dozens of rare but treatable disorders. The US panel has grown from 29 conditions to 35, and states adopt each one at very different speeds.
Paediatric bodies advise formal autism screening at 18 and 24 months; a US task force found the evidence for universal screening merely insufficient, not against it. Large studies find no link to vaccines.
An autonomous AI for diabetic retinopathy hit 87.2% sensitivity in primary care. A smartphone acuity test agreed with a reference chart to within 0.07 logMAR. Both are triage, not diagnosis.
Men break fewer bones than women but die more often after a hip fracture. No major body recommends screening every man, and the US task force says the evidence is simply not there yet.
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.
In a prospective African validation, TB-detection AI matched radiologists but neither hit the WHO sensitivity target. In an Indian field programme, AI-led screening lifted case-finding sharply.
The 2025 USPSTF statement keeps a B recommendation for women 65+ and for higher-risk younger postmenopausal women. The fracture benefit is real but small, and evidence gaps remain.
23andMe's cleared BRCA report reads 3 of more than 1,000 mutations, so a negative result is not the all-clear it looks like — and the firm's bankruptcy has put customers' genetic data in play.
Systems that give a diagnosis with no clinician in the loop post high sensitivity in trials. In real-world use, one in six images was too poor to grade — and the strongest numbers come from company-run studies.
A prescribed home apnea test can diagnose clear-cut cases, and one under-mattress sensor flagged severe apnea with 86% sensitivity — but both miss milder disease and events a lab would catch.
Out-of-office readings predict heart attacks and death better than a clinic measurement, and guidelines now require them to confirm hypertension — but only a validated upper-arm cuff counts.
New at-home molecular tests catch most established colorectal cancers, but find only 13–43% of the advanced precancerous polyps a colonoscopy is meant to remove before they become cancer.
The first randomised trial to report interval cancers found AI non-inferior to double reading, with higher sensitivity at equal specificity. Across three European programmes the extra detection is about one per 1000.
In 17,685 footballers, borderline ECG findings predicted almost no disease. Across 360 studies of female athletes, screening concentrated on mental health while menstrual and pelvic floor health went largely unasked.
It is the most common cancer in young men and incidence keeps climbing, but deaths are a small fraction of cases — and major guidelines advise against routine screening or self-exam in men without symptoms.
A trial in India found calling tuberculosis survivors was non-inferior to visiting them, on a combined measure. Split into survivors and their contacts, the picture reverses for the group at highest risk.
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.
In 415,000 New Jersey births, infants of mothers who screened positive for depression died before age one at more than three times the rate, an association steady across race, income and preterm birth.
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.
A meta-analysis of 155 studies puts photo-based skin diagnosis close to a face-to-face visit for common conditions. For skin cancer the agreement is lower, and hinges on dermoscopy.
Across 16,893 high school athletes screened over 15 years, 0.36% had T-wave inversions. Four were later found to have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in the young.
Applied to 411,000 UK Biobank adults, the Edmonton staging system and the Lancet Commission's clinical-obesity model classified severe disease alike but diverged on who counts as early-stage.
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.
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.
13% of women met criteria for insomnia disorder six weeks after delivery, and only two had been evaluated. In a separate cohort, restless legs in pregnancy tripled the risk of perinatal depression.
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.
US guidelines now let women aged 30 to 65 screen every five years with an HPV test. One major body would make that the primary test from age 25 — and self-collected samples work about as well.
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.
A facility-based study of 5,053 infants finds undernutrition begins earlier than the age group nutrition programmes usually screen — and that weight-for-age caught far more of it than arm-circumference tape.
US guidelines recommend routine chlamydia and gonorrhea screening for sexually active women under 25 and older women at higher risk. Self-collected swabs match clinician-collected ones closely.
In 152 adults tested against two nights of polysomnography, the Galaxy Watch reached an AUROC of 0.94 for moderate-to-severe sleep apnea — with 66.7% specificity at the setting it ships with.
A 200,000-woman trial found that screening caught more early-stage disease. It did not save lives — a result that explains why guidelines recommend against screening the general population.
The country's blood-spot programme has run since 2003 and reaches nearly every baby. A pilot adds genomic sequencing — where a study of Qatari genomes suggests the biggest gains lie.
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.
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.
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.
A Cochrane review of 251,891 participants found no effect on total, cancer or cardiovascular mortality, at high certainty for the first two. The finding is about check-ups, not about all screening.
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.
Only three of the 15 studies pooled in a Chilean meta-analysis used sleep testing at all. A Lima clinic analysis shows why that shortcut matters.
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.
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.
Endometriosis takes up to a decade to diagnose. A modelling study estimated a digital symptom checker could cut that by 4.36 years — but the tools still lack the external validation to trust in practice.
In 555,904 matched adults, screening endoscopy cut gastric cancer mortality in the 50s and 60s. Past 80, or with heavy comorbidity, the association reversed.
A comparative survey finds four European countries still rely on opportunistic screening, and that where family doctors are most involved, participation tends to be lower — not higher.
A low-probability alert still sends most recipients to a doctor. Researchers are now naming the flip side of continuous self-monitoring — a device-driven health anxiety they call technohypochondria.
Two 2026 meta-analyses pooled deep-learning systems reading retinal images for AMD. The accuracy looks near-perfect, but almost all of it comes from algorithms tested on their own data.
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.
Smart-ring studies report flagging COVID nearly three days before symptoms and IBD flares weeks ahead. But two-thirds of that research carries a high risk of bias, and clinical usefulness is largely unproven.
The best-validated sleep apnea screener works by being wrong in a specific direction. A 47-study meta-analysis of 26,547 people shows what a questionnaire can and cannot conclude about you.
A Qatar Biobank analysis derived local cut-points and found WHO's standard numbers misclassified more than half of men and nearly half of women in the sample.
Most childhood lead exposure traces to deteriorating paint in pre-1978 housing and the dust it sheds. The damage to a child's developing brain is steepest at the lowest measured levels.
A secondary analysis of the VITAL-AF trial reports a screening benefit only in the top risk decile — with a confidence interval whose lower bound sits at 0.01.
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.
Fifty-five per cent of surveyed cricketers over 70 reported a basal cell carcinoma. A 29% response rate and self-reported diagnoses mean the number cannot be read as a rate — which is the finding.
Pooling 94 cohort studies, grip strength tracked with later dementia, depression and disability. The authors rate their own confidence in the numbers as limited to moderate.
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.
Among watch wearers told their pulse looked irregular, a third had atrial fibrillation confirmed on a follow-up ECG patch. Most who were notified did not.
A colourless gas that seeps from soil into homes accounts for a large share of lung cancers in never-smokers. The evidence for testing is strong; the risk rises smoothly with concentration, with no clear safe level.
FDA-cleared in September 2025, the feature notifies fewer than half of people with hypertension in Apple's own validation. Hypertension specialists warn the bigger risk is false reassurance.
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.
A meta-analysis of 26 studies put pooled sensitivity at 95% and specificity at 97%. Samsung and Withings devices performed comparably to Apple — but the numbers come from people already suspected of arrhythmia.
IARC and WHO put five modules on screening and precancer management online. The 90-70-90 targets they support depend on health workers who can act on a positive test.
Fourteen studies covering 265 elite athletes used six different methods to identify relative energy deficiency. The spread in the answers is mostly a spread in the definitions.
EyeFM was tested as an assistant to 16 ophthalmologists screening 668 high-risk patients in China. Patients in the AI arm also followed referral advice more often.
EchoNext scored 77.3% accuracy on a 150-ECG set where 13 cardiologists averaged 64.0%. Its authors released the model weights and a 100,000-ECG labelled dataset alongside the paper.
FDA-cleared in September 2024, the feature caught 89% of severe obstructive sleep apnea in Apple's validation but 43% of moderate cases. It is a nudge toward testing, not a test.