For how we live.
Evidence-grading explainers on the week's viral study.
An Ontario cohort of 1,035,927 pregnancies found excessive gestational weight gain was linked to more severe maternal morbidity in every BMI category, adjusted rate ratios 1.16 to 1.33 (observational).
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 a 98-patient French trial, six-monthly rituximab did not extend remission beyond daily azathioprine in this rare eosinophilic vasculitis — and recipients had more severe infections.
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.
A single-centre randomised trial found the Bergen 4-day treatment cut obsessive-compulsive symptoms far more than an unguided internet CBT programme, with 61% responding at three months versus 25%.
In 143 people with poorly controlled type 1 diabetes, a system that prompts injections through glucose-sensor alerts was non-inferior to standard monitoring — and acting on the alerts drove the benefit.
A six-site randomised trial of point-of-care high-sensitivity troponin cut emergency-department length of stay by 47 minutes, with no change in 30-day heart attacks or cardiac deaths.
In 1,429 high-risk breast-cancer patients, a 16-dose regimen covering the internal mammary nodes matched the standard 25-dose course for recurrence and caused far less severe skin damage.
In 947 Chinese children followed for ten years, those with insulin resistance despite normal blood sugar had a 4.3-fold higher risk of later dysglycaemia, and six amino acids helped predict who would develop it.
In 1,095 high-risk abdominal-surgery patients, targeting each person's own cardiac index during the operation left the rate of major complications essentially unchanged — 44.3% versus 46.9%.
In nearly 40,000 UK women, abnormal blood pressure six weeks after a hypertensive pregnancy roughly doubled later cardiovascular disease. A Dutch cohort shows pregnancy history sharpens risk prediction.
Among 84 women on aromatase inhibitors, CO2 laser did no better than a fake laser for sexual function at 12 months. Both groups improved — on moisturisers and vibrators given to everyone.
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.
SLOWH, a 102-patient randomised trial, compared cutting flow first, oxygen first, or both at once when weaning critically ill adults off high-flow nasal cannula. Success rates of 94%, 81% and 77% did not differ.
A 60-woman phase 2A trial found the dual PPAR agonist reduced liver fat by nearly 15 percentage points more than placebo over 24 weeks — an early, small signal in a group usually left out of fatty-liver drug trials.
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.
An observational study of 8,127 UK women on GLP-1 drugs, almost all tirzepatide, reported 16.1 kg average loss at six months and 91.4% retention. There was no control arm.
From 300 million laboratory tests, an Israeli team reconstructs trajectories and finds bone, liver, kidney, hormone and lipid markers shift abruptly at the final menstrual period — changes starting a decade earlier.
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.
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.
Among 93,406 children in Japan's national birth cohort, preterm birth was linked to higher odds of thinness at ages 4 to 6 and persistently lower BMI from 3 to 6, with no sign of catch-up.
In the phase 3 VERIFY trial, 77% of patients on the hepcidin-mimic drug avoided phlebotomy over weeks 20–32 versus 33% on placebo, and far more kept their haematocrit under control.
In 4,299 people with type 1 diabetes and 17,196 matched controls, the death rate was 131 vs 35 per 100,000 person-years. The excess risk was far larger in women, though absolute mortality was higher in men.
The phase 3 RT CHARM trial found a three-week course of radiation after mastectomy was no worse than the standard five-week course for reconstruction complications, at 12.3% versus 10.2%.
In 204 patients already on standard therapy, pressing a seed on one ear point three times daily left 56.9% clear or almost clear at 8 weeks versus 35.3% with a sham point — a single-centre result needing replication.
Among 7,579 pregnancies in people with migraine, anti-CGRP antibody use early in pregnancy carried a 42% higher adjusted risk of spontaneous abortion; propranolol showed no increase. The data are observational.
A prospective UK surveillance study followed 210 pregnancies in 209 women with a pre-pregnancy cardiomyopathy diagnosis over three years. There were no maternal deaths; 10% had heart failure and 8% an arrhythmia.
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 register-based study spanning 181,999 infants and four RSV seasons found acute otitis media dropped 44% and RSV detections 83% in infants under 12 months after a nirsevimab immunisation programme began.
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.
A 96,000-woman registry emulation found pre-conception GLP-1 or GLP-1/GIP therapy in PCOS tracked with lower pregnancy risk than metformin. It is not a trial, and says nothing about use during pregnancy.
In a 134-patient phase 3 crossover trial, deucrictibant — the first oral bradykinin B2 receptor blocker — brought symptom relief in a median 1.28 hours, against more than 12 hours on placebo.
A single-centre study used continuous glucose monitoring to fine-tune insulin in people fed intravenously overnight. Time-in-range and weight improved — but with 12 patients and no control group, it is proof of concept.
A nationwide study of 624,713 first births found quadrivalent HPV vaccination before pregnancy associated with modestly lower odds of preterm birth and growth restriction, strongest among women vaccinated youngest.
Among privately insured patients, 63% with IVF coverage had a baby within 2.5 years versus 53% without. The gap was driven mostly by covered patients starting more cycles — not a higher success rate per cycle.
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.
In a 348-patient trial, patients in sustained low disease activity who stepped down their biologic kept it almost as often as those who stayed on full dose over 24 weeks — but some measures still favoured continuing.
In a 12-month trial of 89 older adults with vascular cognitive impairment, strength training did not slow whole-brain white-matter lesions overall — but it did in women, and in two specific brain regions.
Across 27 trials and 88,830 people, each 10-mmHg drop in systolic pressure cut cardiovascular events whether or not the kidneys were impaired — while aggressive lowering nudged up short-term markers of kidney decline.
In a 462-person phase 3 trial, a synthesised copy of semaglutide, HD1916, cut body weight 13.1% over 44 weeks against 14.4% for the branded drug — inside the margin set for calling them equivalent.
In a Canadian cohort of 228 women with HIV, antibody titres matched those of women without HIV and cervical precancer was not recorded — but protection tracked with viral suppression.
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.
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.
Across 10 US children's hospitals and 697 patients, reoperation for recurrent twisting was rare either way — but laparoscopic repair carried lower odds of surgery for later bowel obstruction.
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%.
In the MONEAD cohort, six-year-olds whose mothers breastfed while taking antiseizure medicines scored no worse on language or adaptive behaviour — and longer breastfeeding tracked with slightly better scores.
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.
The UV-free TransVitD patch raised vitamin D in animals and lab-grown skin. In a randomised trial of 108 volunteers it was safe but did not lift blood levels beyond what a small oral dose would.
In the phase 3 SYNCHRONIZE-2 trial, the glucagon/GLP-1 dual agonist beat placebo on weight over 76 weeks. The effect was solid but smaller than the class leaders manage, and the maker funded it.
Two phase 3 trials put the oral drug safiglipron ahead of placebo and non-inferior to dapagliflozin on HbA1c. Both ran only in China, were maker-funded, and showed dose-dependent gut side effects.
A post hoc analysis of the BAMBINI trial asked whether losing too much weight could backfire on fertility in PCOS. It did not: every degree of weight loss was linked to a better chance of ovulating.
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.
Injecting one sperm into each egg was meant for severe male-factor cases, yet clinics now use it widely. Pooling six randomised trials found no live-birth advantage over standard IVF when sperm is not the problem.
A meta-analysis of 36 studies and 2.6 million women found iatrogenic menopause raised stroke and cardiovascular risk. The death-rate excess was confined to menopause before 45, with null estimates after.
A Korean cohort of 1.37 million women found more dementia after hypertensive pregnancies. The association did not survive adjustment for the vascular and metabolic conditions that followed.
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.
Computer-aided detection lifts polyp pickup in ordinary screening. In 757 patients having surveillance for an inherited cancer syndrome, a randomised trial could not show the same gain.
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.
A Global Burden of Disease 2023 analysis of 31 countries finds the burden climbing, peaking in early adolescence and heavier in women, with population growth the single biggest driver.
A Global Burden of Disease 2023 analysis counts 241 million users worldwide, concentrated in south Asia, with a rising burden of stroke and oral cancer even as prevalence has barely moved.
An IARC worldwide incidence analysis puts the infection-attributable share at 12%, led by H pylori and HPV, with eastern Asia carrying the heaviest load and most of the toll preventable.
A population-linked Australian cohort followed children to school entry after antenatal metformin. The adjusted relative risk of developmental vulnerability was 0.97 — no different from unexposed children.
ZUPREME 1 tested a once-weekly amylin analogue that works differently from GLP-1 drugs, finding up to 9.4% weight loss at 28 weeks and gastrointestinal side-effects close to placebo. Zealand Pharma funded it.
In TRIUMPH-1, a triple hormone-receptor agonist produced a 25% average weight loss at the top dose over 80 weeks, and also eased knee pain and sleep apnoea. The trial was funded by Eli Lilly.
In the phase 3b STRIDE trial, people with peripheral artery disease and type 2 diabetes walked 13% farther at 52 weeks than on placebo (treatment ratio 1.13; p=0.0004). The gain is modest; Novo Nordisk funded it.
A randomised trial at eight South Korean hospitals found pulse methylprednisolone no better than a non-pulse regimen for surviving an acute exacerbation of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
A Swiss investigator-led trial tested whether isolating the back wall of the left atrium on top of pulsed-field pulmonary vein isolation cuts arrhythmia recurrence. The primary answer was no.
In the phase 2 KRAKEN trial, muvalaplin lowered lipoprotein(a) by 47.6% to 85.8% over 12 weeks on an intact-particle assay. Eli Lilly funded it, and the trial was not built to measure heart attacks or strokes.
In the GSK-funded phase 3 MATINEE trial, the anti-IL-5 antibody lowered moderate or severe exacerbations from 1.01 to 0.80 a year — but symptom and quality-of-life endpoints showed no significant benefit.
In the phase 3 LIBerate-HR trial, lerodalcibep lowered LDL cholesterol 56.2% more than placebo at 52 weeks on top of statins. It won approval in 2026; no outcome trial has yet reported.
A single-surgeon randomised trial of 180 knees found small but statistically supported gains for robot-assisted functional alignment over conventional mechanical alignment at two years.
In EMPACT-MI, the SGLT2 inhibitor missed its primary endpoint: 8.2% of patients had a heart-failure hospitalisation or died versus 9.1% on placebo (hazard ratio 0.90; p=0.21). Boehringer and Lilly funded it.
In the DIABIL-2 trial, low-dose interleukin-2 hit its immune target in people newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, yet failed to preserve insulin-producing cells at one year.
The PURE study measured airflow obstruction in adults across 25 countries and found most cases had never been labelled, with the largest undiagnosed share in lower-income settings.
AMPLIFIED enriched for early rheumatoid arthritis patients thought to respond best to abatacept, then compared it head-to-head with adalimumab. At week 24 the two drugs were indistinguishable.
In a double-blind trial of 65 etonogestrel-implant users with frequent or prolonged bleeding, a five-day course of tranexamic acid worked no better than placebo on any bleeding measure.
In a 76-woman randomised trial, a six-hour daily eating window and standard calorie restriction each produced about a 4% weight loss over six months, with no advantage for either approach.
A European trial stopped early for futility: clinical pregnancy occurred in 15.7% of women given transdermal testosterone before IVF and 14.9% given placebo. The trial was funded by Ferring.
In a 4,376-woman trial across 24 Chinese centres, natural-cycle embryo transfer gave the same healthy-live-birth rate as a programmed hormone regimen, with less pre-eclampsia and postpartum haemorrhage.
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.
A cluster-randomised trial in nearly 2,000 US nursing homes found fewer confirmed influenza outbreaks with a recombinant vaccine in a moderate flu season, but no difference in a near-flu-free one.
A small crossover trial found 5 mg of melatonin worsened glucose handling and cut early insulin secretion in people carrying the MTNR1B risk variant, but not in non-carriers.
In the LOSE-AF trial, an eight-month low-calorie programme cut weight by 9.7% in older adults with AF. It did not change their symptoms, their AF burden, or their need for further rhythm treatment.
A Spanish registry followed 166 patients with treatment-resistant epileptic encephalopathies for a year. Median seizure frequency fell 68.8%, though the design cannot match a placebo-controlled trial.
Added to an SGLT2 inhibitor, the aldosterone-synthase inhibitor cut office systolic pressure 7.5 mm Hg and albuminuria about a quarter in 59 adults with CKD. Kidney function dipped slightly; the maker funded it.
A pooled analysis of four trials found depemokimab roughly halved exacerbations, yet it did not significantly improve asthma control or reach the threshold for a meaningful quality-of-life gain.
In the phase 3 Bax24 trial, the aldosterone-synthase inhibitor cut 24-hour ambulatory systolic pressure 14.0 mm Hg more than placebo over 12 weeks. AstraZeneca funded it, and three patients developed high potassium.
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.
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.
There is no approved drug for methamphetamine use disorder. In 339 patients treated in ordinary clinics, a generic antidepressant cut use by about two days a month more than placebo, with more dropouts from side-effects.
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 industry-funded trial, young responders who kept taking the dopamine D1 blocker relapsed less than those tapered to placebo. The effect was clear in children but not in the small adult group.
Ruxolitinib cream beat a placebo cream for cutaneous lichen planus over 16 weeks, but the phase 2 trial randomised only 64 patients and was funded by the drug's maker.
Two-year blinded data and open-label follow-up from the ELATIVE trial show the drug kept improving liver blood tests in primary biliary cholangitis — but the endpoint is still a surrogate, and the trial is industry-run.
In the company-run CONDOR trial, brolucizumab injections outperformed panretinal laser for proliferative diabetic retinopathy over 54 weeks — while intraocular inflammation was far more common in the drug arm.
In 3,000 patients eligible for blood thinners, the device maker's trial found left atrial appendage closure noninferior to anticoagulant drugs, and superior for non-procedure-related bleeding at three years.
A meta-analysis of 10 randomised trials found ultra-processed diets raised weight and eating rate, yet the effect on how much people ate mostly disappeared when diets were not more energy-dense.
LOGICAL randomised 1,840 unresponsive adults in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland to conservative or liberal oxygen in intensive care. Favourable outcome at 180 days was 38.2% against 39.7%.
In the phase 3 INDIGO trial, weekly obexelimab roughly halved the risk of a flare in this rare fibroinflammatory disease and spared patients steroids — a positive result in a condition with no approved drug.
In 410 German women, 68% who had liposuction met the pain-reduction target at 12 months versus 8% on conservative therapy. Serious adverse events were higher after surgery.
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 TB-Speed project, trained nurses produced valid Xpert Ultra results in 99.6% to 100% of child samples and returned hospital results within three hours far more often than laboratories.
A national survey of more than 120,000 children put combined prevalence at 5.4% and heavy-intensity infection below WHO's 1% elimination threshold, after ten years of preventive chemotherapy.
A regional Global Burden of Disease analysis attributes 15.8 million healthy life-years lost in 2023 to high body-mass index, and warns of a 346.3% rise in obesity among the young.
A trial across 24 Zambian clinics found a person-centred care package lifted the share of patients in care a year after a treatment gap from 51.5% to 60.1%, and halved repeat interruptions.
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.
Rejoyn, the first prescription digital therapeutic cleared for major depression, beat a sham app on a backup analysis. Its pre-specified primary endpoint fell just short of significance.
Wrist trackers infer light, deep and REM sleep from movement and pulse. Two validation studies find they track total sleep passably but each misjudges the stage breakdown its own way.
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.
The whole scare traces to one 2009 study that measured a hormone, not hair. In 2025, the first trial to actually assess hair follicles found no difference between creatine and placebo.
In the phase 2 Vibrance-1 trial, alixorexton lifted mean sleep latency from about 2 minutes on placebo to 24 or more on the drug. The six-week study was funded by the manufacturer.
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.
Ginger's strongest evidence is unglamorous: it eases nausea in pregnancy and during chemotherapy, and modestly relieves osteoarthritis pain. The trials are small and the quality is moderate at best.
Garlic supplements modestly lower blood pressure in hypertensive people, and may nudge cholesterol down a little. The cold-prevention evidence rests on a single trial, and no study shows garlic prevents heart attacks.
Beetroot juice really does lower blood pressure — the effect is one of the better-documented in food science, driven by dietary nitrate. But most trials are short and small, and no study shows it prevents heart attacks.
For people without coeliac disease, a large cohort found gluten intake was not linked to heart disease — and cutting it often means fewer whole grains, the foods tied to lower cardiovascular and mortality risk.
"Superfood" is a marketing word, not a scientific one. Blueberries carry real evidence for the heart and, tentatively, the ageing brain — but most of it is observational or short-term markers, not hard outcomes.
Anxiety disorders in young people are treatable. In the largest trial, combining CBT with an SSRI worked best, and both beat placebo. Talking therapy alone also clearly outperforms no treatment.
A 40-person Harvard trial aimed accelerated magnetic stimulation using each patient's own connectivity scan. Depression scores fell further than with standard scalp measurement, though the trial was small.
In the French GETUG AFU 18 trial an 80 Gy dose beat the standard 70 Gy on 10-year progression-free survival (83.6% vs 72.2%), but the advantage at the prespecified 5-year mark was far smaller.
Drawing on households across every province and region, researchers estimate a stillbirth rate of 30.5 per 1,000 births and a maternal mortality ratio of 176 per 100,000 — both above national and 2030 targets.
TEMPLE, an AbbVie-funded phase 3b trial, is the first direct test of the CGRP blocker atogepant against topiramate — a long-used preventive many patients cannot tolerate.
SINGLE-AF randomised 1,803 South Koreans with borderline stroke risk to a direct oral anticoagulant or nothing. The drug lowered a composite of stroke, bleeding and death at two years, from 1.5% to 0.5%.
In PHOENYCS GO, dapirolizumab pegol lifted the share of lupus patients reaching a composite response at 48 weeks to 50% from 35% on placebo — a real but modest 14.6-point gain.
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.
In the investigator-led CAVIAR trial, adding the PCSK9 inhibitor alirocumab to a statin after heart transplant more than halved LDL cholesterol but did not slow coronary plaque growth at one year.
An 840-child US trial gave the antibiotic to toddlers with moderate-to-severe wheezing in the emergency department. Symptom scores were no better than placebo, and the study was stopped for futility.
The Essilor-designed HAL lenses cut two-year myopia progression by 71% versus ordinary glasses in 159 American children. The company employs the study's authors, and the result backs the device's US clearance.
The large trials built to confirm vitamin E's promise came back null, and a meta-analysis tied 400 IU a day or more to a small rise in all-cause mortality.
Pooling 58 randomised trials, about 3.5g a day of oat beta-glucan lowered LDL cholesterol by 0.19 mmol/L. A separate meta-analysis of 28 trials found 0.25 mmol/L. Small per person, but consistent.
Cohort data link green tea drinking to lower cardiovascular death, but trials show only surrogate changes and concentrated extracts have caused liver injury at everyday catechin doses.
Surveys have flagged lead, cadmium and arsenic in some powders, but a risk assessment of those same numbers found typical intakes stayed below the thresholds used to judge harm.
Omega-3 supplements are widely recommended for dry eye, but the largest randomised trial found them no better than an olive-oil placebo. A Cochrane review leaves the case uncertain at best.
A JAMA Dermatology review found the best-evidenced products — Viviscal, Nutrafol and a few others — but flagged weak studies and industry funding. For people who eat normally, the case is thin.
A new model built on rare donor-transmitted infections estimates China detected 29% and the United States 6% of their rabies deaths, implying hundreds go uncounted each year even where the disease seems rare.
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.
A Cochrane review of six trials finds honey modestly eases cough in children over one, and does as well as common syrup ingredients — while regulators say those syrups do not shorten a cold. Never give honey under one.
Up to a third of children get the label, but a review of 145 studies shows doctors do not agree what growing pains are — not even that they involve the legs. Here is what the evidence supports, and the warning signs.
A Cochrane review found no evidence that antibiotics ease the pain of an inflamed tooth nerve. The best trial evidence points to ibuprofen, with paracetamol added — but only a dentist fixes the cause.
Since 2024 the FDA has cleared over-the-counter CGMs for people who don't use insulin. The first independent accuracy check in adults without diabetes finds the sensors track the trend but miss the exact number.
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.
No long-term trial has tested an all-meat diet. The best direct data is a self-reported survey where people felt better but ran markedly high LDL cholesterol — the signal that should give pause.
Two controlled studies compared vitamins in fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables. Frozen matched fresh in most cases and sometimes beat it, especially against fresh produce that had spent a few days in the fridge.
A 43-year meta-analysis found loneliness in young adults rising by about half a standard deviation — while its own authors call the word 'epidemic' exaggerated. The pandemic added a small further bump.
The best single randomised trial found morning light beat a sham device over eight weeks, but the effect is most reliable when light is added to an antidepressant rather than used alone.
Topical retinol is the over-the-counter cousin of prescription tretinoin. In the cleanest test of the pure ingredient, three-times-a-week retinol beat its own vehicle on fine wrinkles and built new collagen — slowly.
'Natural', 'clean' and 'organic' have no agreed regulatory meaning on a cosmetic label, and some plant-derived and fragrance ingredients are among the most common triggers of allergic skin reactions.
In the TESEO trial, benznidazole for 30 days matched the 60-day standard for clearing the parasite and caused fewer side effects, pointing to a gentler regimen for a neglected disease.
An observational study across four DR Congo outbreak sites estimates that a third of positive mpox PCR results reflect environmental viral DNA, not infection — and that a stricter cutoff fixes most of it.
The system sorts feverish under-5s into red, amber and green. Validation studies find it misses serious illness and over-refers the well — a prompt, not a reliable test.
A six-month randomised trial found liver-fat improvement tracked weight loss and lower ultra-processed food intake, not whether people were assigned a Mediterranean or low-carbohydrate pattern.
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.
Open-label follow-up of the phase 3 LUNA3 trial shows rilzabrutinib's platelet responses were durable and sometimes appeared in people who had not responded at first — but a minority reached the mark.
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.
A French study of 11,558 patients without heart failure linked atenolol to fewer cardiovascular events than bisoprolol. It is observational, so it shows an association, not proof one is better.
EndeavorRx is a prescription game the FDA cleared in 2020 for children with ADHD. Its pivotal trial moved a computer attention score, but the FDA says it may not help the behaviour parents notice.
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.
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 people with healthy kidneys, trials find high-protein diets do not worsen kidney function. The picture changes for those who already have reduced function, where animal protein may speed decline.
A systematic review of human trials found the evidence weak and inconsistent. Where MSG seemed to trigger headaches, it was given in large doses dissolved in water without food, in studies that were not properly blinded.
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.
The trials that licensed minoxidil ran for 24 to 48 weeks, and a five-year follow-up shows why the honest answer to 'when can I stop' is: you probably can't without losing the gain.
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.
At one year, 79% of newly diagnosed patients given early infliximab plus an immunomodulator were in steroid-free, surgery-free remission, versus 15% treated conventionally.
Companion chatbots eased loneliness as much as talking to a person in one set of studies — and the same research documents emotional dependence and users who are lonelier to begin with.
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.
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.
Randomised trials show a Palaeolithic diet trims weight and risk markers in the short term. A two-year trial found the early edge over an ordinary healthy diet had mostly faded — and that people struggled to stick to it.
A critical review went looking for clinical proof that commercial detox diets remove toxins or keep weight off. It found almost none, and no randomised trial of a commercial detox diet in humans at all.
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.
A 2024 trial randomised heart-risk patients to a dozen eggs a week or almost none. Over four months, blood cholesterol barely moved — echoing an earlier year-long trial in people with diabetes.
A fear that shaped urology for decades held that raising testosterone feeds prostate cancer. Randomised trials and a large 2024 safety analysis find no such rise in screened men.
A harmonised meta-analysis of over a million adults found high sitting time raised mortality — but about 60 to 75 minutes a day of activity erased that risk. Being inactive, not the chair itself, did most of the damage.
A widely cited cohort found people with diabetes on metformin outlived matched non-diabetic controls. It fuelled the TAME anti-ageing trial — but the human signal is observational, and TAME is not running.
For 70 years the idea that oxidative damage drives ageing justified a supplement industry. Large randomised trials found antioxidant pills do not extend life, and some raise mortality.
A high number does buy measurably more protection — in one real-use trial far fewer people burned on the SPF 100 side. But how much you apply, and whether you reapply, moves the needle more than the label.
A meta-analysis of four small trials found zilebesiran lowered office systolic pressure by 7.16 mmHg versus placebo, with wide confidence intervals, a hint the effect wanes by six months, and more hyperkalaemia.
A randomised trial and a 21-study meta-analysis found thyroid hormone normalised the blood test but left tiredness and symptom scores unchanged. A guideline now advises against routine treatment.
A pooled study of 1.44 million adults links activity to lower risk of 13 cancers — but not all, and not melanoma. A 2025 randomised trial now shows exercise after colon cancer improves survival.
A Cochrane review of 36 trials found no strong evidence that any spray, gel or lozenge reliably relieves dry mouth. A second review found acupuncture no better than a placebo. The honest answers are narrow.
The strongest rinse, chlorhexidine, clearly cuts plaque and gum inflammation — but stains teeth, so it is a short-term treatment, not a daily habit. Everyday rinses help less, and always work on top of brushing.
A Cochrane review found lumbar supports do not prevent back pain and their treatment value was unclear. A new French randomised trial found a soft belt added to usual care modestly improved pain and disability.
In 370 nulliparous women, instilling mepivacaine into the uterus before IUD placement lowered pain by about 15 mm on a 100-mm scale versus saline. It is a real effect, not a cure for the procedure.
In a 64-patient randomised trial, home cardiac rehab monitored by a smart ring improved fitness. But both arms wore the ring; what separated them was a weekly call from a clinician.
RelieVRx is an authorised virtual-reality therapeutic for chronic low back pain. Its trials show real improvement — but in a 1,067-person study the edge over a placebo headset was 0.4 points on a 10-point scale.
In a 304-veteran trial, prazosin matched placebo on trauma nightmares and sleep quality. Sleep medicine's one recommended treatment for nightmare disorder is a behavioural therapy, not a drug.
The line is marketing, not trial data. A meta-analysis of 13 randomised trials found adding breakfast raised daily calories and, if anything, nudged weight up, not down. A controlled feeding trial explains why.
Six months of dietitian sessions aimed at a high-fibre diet nudged diet quality but left estimated 10-year cardiovascular risk, HbA1c, cholesterol and blood pressure essentially unchanged versus standard care.
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.
One cohort tied high animal protein in midlife to higher mortality, yet found the opposite after 65. Guidelines urge older adults to eat more, and plant protein looks best. No trial proves a lifespan effect.
A 2019 pooling of 12 trials rated peppermint oil safe and effective for IBS, with a number-needed-to-treat of three. The largest, most rigorous trial then missed its primary endpoint against placebo.
The belief that a razor makes hair return coarser, faster or darker is one of medicine's durable myths. Controlled studies going back decades find no change in thickness, colour or growth rate.
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.
Every documented case of biotin helping hair involved a deficiency. In people who are not deficient the evidence is absent — and high-dose supplements can skew blood tests, including a heart-attack marker.
A double-blind trial gave 17,598 people pantoprazole or placebo for three years and tracked pneumonia, fractures, kidney disease and dementia. Only gut infections rose, and only modestly.
WHO and ILO estimate long hours caused 745,000 deaths in one year. The effect is real but modest per person, and clearest for stroke rather than heart disease.
In FINEARTS-HF, 6,001 patients with an ejection fraction of 40% or more had fewer worsening-heart-failure events on finerenone. Cardiovascular deaths were not lower.
In a two-week trial, 100 adults drank coffee or avoided caffeine on random days. Coffee did not raise the upper-chamber skipped beats it was blamed for — but it nudged up lower-chamber ones and cut sleep.
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.
A 140-woman randomised trial found diet-and-exercise coaching, added to hormonal treatment, cut some pain scores more than usual care — but the differences were small and menstrual pain did not budge.
In a 230-patient randomised trial, self-guided app hypnotherapy produced a 33% pain response versus 48% with an in-person therapist and 22% with education — falling short of non-inferiority.
The Hypotension Prediction Index warns anaesthetists before blood pressure falls. Three 2026 trials find a plain mean-pressure alarm does the same job, and the algorithm's benefit tracks how hard clinicians treat.
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.
Honey and table sugar are both free sugars with almost identical calories. Trials hint at small metabolic differences in honey's favour, but the certainty is low and honey is still added sugar to be limited.
Two of the largest datasets — 6.5 million UK bank customers and a Swedish national registry — tie heavier gambling to financial and health decline, and gambling disorder to a fifteenfold suicide death rate.
Observational studies robustly link the diet to lower mortality. The best randomised trial measured fewer heart attacks and strokes, and the strongest review finds the evidence for a survival benefit weak.
For dry, eczema-prone skin and for shielding hair from wash damage, coconut oil has real randomised evidence behind it — narrow, not miraculous, and not the same claim as being good for every skin type.
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.
A modelling study finds South Africa's selective birth-dose policy is efficient per infection averted, but giving every newborn a dose would prevent the most disease and be the most cost-effective overall.
VITAL, with 25,871 adults, and D-Health, with 21,315, both tested vitamin D against placebo. Neither cut cancer incidence or cancer death — and one saw a signal pointing the wrong way.
SOLARIO randomised 500 patients after orthopaedic infection surgery to short or long systemic antibiotics. With a local-antibiotic carrier in place, the short course was noninferior and caused fewer side effects.
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.
Abaloparatide reliably raises bone density, so it seemed a natural candidate to help fractures knit. A randomised trial found no benefit — and healing numerically favoured placebo.
Cognitive behavioural therapy is one of the few non-hormone options the North American Menopause Society backs at its top evidence level. What it changes is how much flushes bother you, not the thermostat.
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.
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 US banned Red No. 3 in 2025 on a rat-specific cancer finding, not human data. The separate question — whether dyes affect children's behaviour — has better, and more unsettling, evidence.
In a 619-patient NEJM trial of treatment-resistant depression after 60, augmenting an antidepressant with aripiprazole improved well-being more than switching to bupropion. The margin was modest.
Large cohorts link higher optimism and a stronger sense of purpose to longer life and lower mortality, in a dose-dependent way. But the studies are observational, and no trial has proved the causal arrow.
A single randomised trial found rosemary oil and 2% minoxidil produced statistically indistinguishable hair counts at six months. It is the strongest evidence rosemary has — and it is thin.
A Cochrane review of 51 trials found powered brushes cut plaque and gum inflammation more than manual ones, on moderate-quality evidence. An 11-year cohort suggests the small edge adds up: fewer teeth lost.
In a company-funded randomised trial, adults who lost weight then took pasteurised Akkermansia muciniphila regained 1.2 kg over 24 weeks versus 3.2 kg on placebo — a modest effect in 90 people.
A randomised trial put a number on how much misinformation lowers vaccination intent. A systematic review mapped how common it is. And inoculation studies show the skill of spotting it can be trained at scale.
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.
In 25,241 non-exercisers, three brief daily bursts of vigorous activity tracked with markedly lower mortality. A small trial found stair-climbing 'snacks' raised fitness. The catch: they must be genuinely vigorous.
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.
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.
Iron does leach from a cast-iron pan into food, and randomised trials in iron-deficient populations found it raised haemoglobin. The effect depends on what you cook, and means little for people who are iron-replete.
Older meta-analyses linked lithium to fewer suicides. A randomised trial in 519 US veterans, stopped early for futility, found no such benefit when it was added to usual care.
The largest network meta-analysis of brain stimulation found several forms of TMS roughly triple the odds of responding, but they sit below ECT and rest on mostly small, uncertain trials.
Meta-analyses of more than a million people find a U-shaped link between sleep duration and death, lowest around seven hours. But this is observational, and reverse causation is the hard part to rule out.
In the one randomised trial to test it, adults who used sunscreen daily showed no detectable increase in skin ageing over 4.5 years — 24% less than those who used it as they pleased.
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.
In a 142-patient phase 3 trial, 37% reached complete remission on the antibody obinutuzumab versus 6% on tacrolimus at two years. A key kidney-function endpoint was not met, tempering the result.
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.
Two trials found low-dose colchicine cut cardiovascular events, and the FDA approved it for heart risk in 2023. Then the largest trial found nothing, leaving the question genuinely unsettled.
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.
Pooled across 85 trials, exercise-based cardiac rehab cut later heart attacks and hospital admissions but barely moved death rates within a year — a real benefit, and a narrower one than the usual pitch.
A new analysis of the REDEFINE 1 trial reframes obesity treatment around reaching a normal BMI and waist size, not just percentage lost. The combination beat semaglutide alone on that measure.
A retrospective analysis of 54,114 women on a digital weight-loss service found those with PCOS lost as much as those without. But only 40 PCOS users reached the 10-month mark, and the data are observational.
Wrist and body sensors detect roughly 9 in 10 tonic-clonic seizures. A 192-patient validation against video-EEG found the harder focal seizures still slip past, or bury the alarm in false alerts.
Contactless photoplethysmography turns an ordinary camera into a heart-rate monitor, and pooled studies show it tracks pulse well. Oxygen, respiration and the stress scores layered on top rest on far thinner evidence.
Two 2026 studies posted high accuracy for AI reading Pap-smear cells and colposcopy images in settings short of pathologists. Both were validated internally, which is where such numbers usually shrink.
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.
Organic produce carries far fewer pesticide residues and modestly more of some antioxidants. But there is no strong evidence that eating organic makes you healthier, and the cancer signal is observational.
In a tightly controlled feeding trial, swapping high-GI for low-GI carbohydrate inside a healthy diet did not improve insulin sensitivity, cholesterol or blood pressure. The wider evidence rates the GI case as weak.
In the largest head-to-head trial, a simpler therapy delivered by junior staff matched full CBT — mean difference 0.1 PHQ-9 points. A Cochrane review finds no difference between the two.
A matched cohort of 173,910 people with dementia in England tied the drugs to raised risks of pneumonia, stroke, clots, heart attack, fracture and kidney injury — highest just after starting.
A modelling study of 93 household surveys corrects for the chronic underreporting that hides stillbirths, and finds steady but socially unequal declines in perinatal mortality since 1990.
A survey of 1,042 people in the Syrian city found high prices the leading barrier, and more than half said they knew of deaths they attributed to medication shortages.
WHO flagged a drifted A(H3N2) subclade K in December; the first 2025-2026 effectiveness data, from 1.4 million US veterans, put overall protection near 22% and protection against hospitalisation near 32%.
In the phase 3 THRIVE trial, veligrotug shrank bulging eyes in 70% of patients versus 5% on placebo. It is the first serious challenger to the only drug approved for the condition.
Implanted electrodes now decode attempted speech into text for people who cannot speak. Results are striking — up to 62 words a minute — but come from single participants, need brain surgery, and remain research.
Digital adherence gadgets promise to fix forgotten doses. In a 53,480-person randomised trial, low-cost reminder devices did not raise adherence at all. Text reminders did more, but on short, self-reported trials.
In a 711-patient phase 2b trial, the myeloperoxidase inhibitor mitiperstat did not improve symptoms or walking distance in heart failure with preserved or mildly reduced ejection fraction.
Higher whole-grain intake is consistently linked to lower rates of heart disease, cancer and early death, with benefit rising up to about seven servings a day. Refined grains show no such signal.
The fear that soy fuels breast cancer is not supported by the human data; if anything, soy food intake tracks with lower recurrence and death after diagnosis. Its other health claims are weaker.
Cohorts link both to modestly higher rates of heart disease and early death, on low-certainty evidence. A 2019 guideline then told people to keep eating them — and split the field over how to weigh nutrition science.
Large randomised trials mostly find no cardiovascular benefit from ordinary fish-oil capsules. One high-dose prescription drug is the striking exception, and the case for brain protection is weak.
People who eat nuts have lower rates of heart disease and early death in large cohorts, and a Mediterranean diet with nuts cut cardiovascular events in one trial. Most of the evidence is observational.
Whole fruit is linked to lower type 2 diabetes risk, sugary drinks to clearly higher risk, and fruit juice sits closer to the drinks than to the fruit it comes from.
For heart disease and death, dairy looks roughly neutral to modestly favourable in large cohorts, and the long-standing warning against whole-fat dairy is not well supported by outcome data.
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.
A Cochrane review of 48 trials found treatment may lift pregnancy rates from about 21% to 22–48%, but couldn't confirm a live-birth benefit. Microsurgery had the fewest recurrences.
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.
A cohort at Kilifi County Hospital found RSV pneumonia killed 2.4% of admitted infants across 25 seasons, with no decline; severe undernutrition and congenital heart disease marked the highest risk.
An injection at birth prevents a rare but often catastrophic bleeding disorder. Pooled surveillance data put late-onset bleeding at a median of 35 per 100,000 unprotected infants — and near zero after the shot.
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 large Cochrane review found fish-oil supplements cut early preterm birth substantially. The biggest single trial since found no effect at all — a genuine split the marketing skips over.
A single-centre randomised trial found that three cycles of intravenous immunoglobulin on top of high-dose steroids improved muscle disease faster and further — in just 44 patients, at one Dutch hospital.
A closed-loop system links a glucose sensor to an insulin pump so software doses automatically. In the pivotal 6-month trial it raised time in target range by 11 points over a standard pump — a bounded gain, not a cure.
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.
Pooled trials show a small boost to oxygen uptake and exercise tolerance from dietary nitrate. The effect shrinks toward zero in the most trained athletes.
Modern techniques fail less than 1% of the time. The best meta-analysis found no link to aggressive or fatal prostate cancer; a 2-million-man registry still sees a small excess, most likely from extra testing.
For the pelvic-pain syndrome that affects many men, Cochrane reviews find alpha-blockers, antibiotics and anti-inflammatories each help only a little. Acupuncture and shockwave therapy have the firmer support.
The DO-HEALTH sub-study is the first randomised evidence that a supplement can nudge DNA-methylation ageing clocks. The effect was tiny, and the parent trial found no benefit on health outcomes that matter.
The only long randomised trial of calorie restriction in non-obese adults improved cardiometabolic risk and modestly slowed one measure of biological ageing. Participants never hit the 25% target.
A 4,153-woman trial found progesterone did not raise live births overall. The benefit concentrated in women who were bleeding and had had three or more previous miscarriages.
An individual-participant meta-analysis found metformin given in pregnancy did not lower the odds of gestational diabetes, though it modestly lengthened gestation and reduced preterm birth.
Commercial software reads an X-ray for breaks about as well as a radiologist. A prospective paediatric emergency study found that accuracy did not translate into fewer missed-fracture recalls.
A 2024 meta-regression found strength gains barely track how close you stop to failure, while muscle growth rises the nearer you get. Two trials put the size gap close to zero.
Two meta-analyses find evening exercise leaves sleep largely unchanged or slightly improved. The real exception is vigorous exercise finishing within about an hour of bedtime.
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.
A randomised trial found the Portfolio diet cut LDL cholesterol by about 13%, and a large cohort study links closer adherence to lower cardiovascular risk. Its authors' industry funding belongs in the record.
In the largest network meta-analysis, EMDR and trauma-focused CBT were the most effective treatments for adults with PTSD. The evidence is graded moderate-to-low, and the eye movements may not be why it works.
Restrictive English schools cut phone use during the school day but not overall — and teenagers' wellbeing was no better than at schools that allow phones. What tracks with worse mental health is heavy, problematic use.
In the 500-man PRECISION trial, MRI-guided biopsy detected clinically significant cancer in 38% of men versus 26% with the old blind biopsy — and spared 28% a biopsy altogether.
A 1,784-child randomised trial in Uganda found one-fifth and one-half doses of the 17DD vaccine matched the full dose for initial immunity — evidence for dose-sparing in young children when supplies run short.
AIROPLANE enrolled 1,818 newborns at 32 to 35 weeks across 26 Australian hospitals. Starting with 30% oxygen instead of room air left the same share still on respiratory support leaving the delivery room.
In the largest trial, combining fluoxetine with talking therapy helped most, and both worked better than placebo. A later network analysis found only fluoxetine, alone or with therapy, clearly beat placebo.
In UK Biobank participants tracked with wrist light sensors, high nighttime light exposure was tied to thickened, weaker heart muscle and 24–33% higher risks of heart attack, stroke and heart failure.
TRIC-I-HF randomised 360 older patients with severe tricuspid regurgitation. Adding transcatheter repair to medical therapy cut a composite of death or heart-failure hospitalisation through three years.
A 1,695-patient trial tested whether metoprolol helps people with COPD and no cardiovascular indication. It missed its primary endpoint — but, unlike an earlier trial, showed no signal of harm.
In QWINT-1, fixed-dose weekly efsitora cut HbA1c about as much as daily glargine in 795 insulin-naive adults — with a lower rate of significant hypoglycaemia and a quarter of the dose changes.
The E-MOTIVE trial, across 80 hospitals and 210,132 births in four African countries, paired objective blood measurement with a first-response bundle — and severe outcomes fell sharply.
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.
Five-day fasting cycles improve risk markers and one 'biological age' estimate in small trials. No human study has yet shown the diet prevents disease or extends life.
Registries show a real but narrow signal: a few cancers, led by prostate and thyroid, run high in 9/11 responders, while overall cancer incidence sits at or below the rate expected.
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.
In the LIFTMOR trial, brief twice-weekly heavy lifting raised spine bone density in postmenopausal women with low bone mass, while a gentle home programme lost ground. A Cochrane review finds a smaller but real effect.
In a study of 750 women, those with 'low' ovarian-reserve hormones were no less likely to conceive. Professional guidance says the test shouldn't be used to counsel women who aren't already infertile.
A smartphone app delivering CBT cut tinnitus-related distress about 20 points more than a sham app in 60 adults, and the effect held for two months. The trial was small and industry-funded.
Randomised trials show acute care delivered at home costs less, uses fewer tests and readmits fewer patients — while making little or no difference to whether they survive.
Sensors and reminder inhalers get patients to take more doses — one trial lifted adherence from 30% to 84%. That this translates into meaningfully better control is real but a smaller effect.
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.
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.
Head-to-head randomised trials find low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets produce similar weight loss over a year or two. The differences that survive are in blood lipids and glycemic control, not the scale.
A meta-analysis of consumer neurofeedback found no benefit for cognition, mindfulness or physical health and only a small effect on distress — even though the headbands do record real brain activity.
A Danish study of 71,000 cases found the risk factors tied to a diagnosis weakened over a decade, pointing to changing diagnostic practice rather than falling thresholds of impairment.
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.
Self-testing and self-managing warfarin cut clot events by roughly 40%, and self-management also lowered deaths — one of the few at-home tests with randomised evidence of real benefit.
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.
In the SKYLARK trial, a 14-day course improved depression scores faster than placebo. The effect was real but modest, and the label carries a driving-impairment warning.
Pooled diagnostic accuracy is high in specialist settings, but performance falls on Fitzpatrick IV–VI skin and on smartphone images, and most studies never report skin tone at all.
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.
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 British Columbia study emulated a trial across 41,000 patients. Those started on take-home methadone within weeks to months of induction stayed in treatment longer and died less than those on daily witnessed dosing.
A five-year panel study found sales of mental-disorder medicines rose 144% in a cyclone's landfall year and 173% the next in coastal districts, with no measurable effect further inland.
Tozorakimab, which blocks interleukin-33, lowered the rate of moderate or severe COPD exacerbations by about a third against placebo, without an eosinophil requirement to qualify.
In LIBERTY 1 and 2, more than 70% of women with fibroid-related heavy bleeding responded to the once-daily pill, versus under 20% on placebo. The label caps use at 24 months over bone loss.
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.
A Polish study found endoscopists' unaided polyp-detection fell after AI arrived. A Norwegian trial that tracked doctors before, during and after AI use found no such deskilling.
OSPREY implanted every participant, then randomly decided whose device was switched on. That design answers a question most implant studies leave open, and it has limits the authors state plainly.
AD109 cut the apnoea-hypopnoea index by four events an hour more than placebo over 26 weeks. It did not improve fatigue, and one in five participants stopped because of side effects.
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.
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.
Spain's PREDIMED trial is the strongest randomised evidence that a dietary pattern lowers cardiovascular events. In 2018 its authors withdrew it over flawed randomisation and reissued corrected results.
A 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 WHO data-set analysis shows how mobile and hospital teams split the load of hypertension, diabetes and epilepsy care during the war, while a separate study tracked dialysis capacity falling.
Zenagamtide was tested as a weekly injection and a daily pill in type 2 diabetes. Both cut HbA1c against placebo at 36 weeks, and the oral version's side effects rose steeply with dose.
Three randomised trials found routine finger-prick testing produced no clinically meaningful change in long-term blood sugar for people whose type 2 diabetes is managed without insulin.
Cataract surgery was tied to 29% lower dementia risk in a strong cohort. But the largest hearing-aid trial found no overall effect on cognition. The signal is real; the proof that fixing senses prevents dementia is not.
Among 383 dialysis patients, 83.6% screened for moderate-to-extreme anxiety and 58% for PTSD; a separate study of 250 displaced adolescents found trauma exposure tracking closely with post-traumatic symptoms.
A single infusion of a pan-serotype monoclonal antibody cut viraemia and shortened fever in a 250-patient phase 2 trial in India — the first therapy to show preliminary efficacy against wild-type dengue in people.
Substantial, sustained weight loss can return blood sugar to the normal range without drugs in some people diagnosed recently. It is real, it is not a cure, and it fades as the weight comes back.
MariTide antagonises the GIP receptor that tirzepatide switches on, yet in 592 adults it drove 12–16% weight loss over a year — and it is dosed once a month, not once a week.
Algorithms that read short voice recordings can pick up acoustic signs of some conditions. In the largest and most careful studies the signals are real but narrow, sex-specific, and often fail to generalise.
Structured counselling for a spouse delayed a patient's nursing-home admission by an estimated 557 days. Other trials cut carer depression sharply, though the effect on institutionalisation is less consistent.
A GBD analysis linked 0.84 million under-five deaths in 2021 to antimicrobial resistance, and directly attributed 0.19 million — declining since 1990 but heaviest in sub-Saharan Africa.
EECOH-1 randomised 211 adults and found the weekly GLP-1 cut HbA1c up to 1.56 points more than placebo over 24 weeks — competitive numbers from a short, single-country, company-run trial.
A secondary analysis of the ELITE hormone-therapy trial found hints that social ties tracked with cognition, but none survived correction for multiple testing.
Analysing 64.8 million births from 2005 to 2022, researchers found policies such as physician-only requirements and 20-week bans tied to higher odds of preterm birth or low Apgar scores.
Linking exome data to electronic medical records solved 15% of unexplained hearing-loss cases and flagged new candidate genes — while showing what the records could not supply.
Researchers built an AI pipeline to convert decades of narrative reports into one modern TNM staging system, reaching 95% accuracy for tumour classification in an expert-labelled test set.
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.
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.
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.
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.
EVAOLD tested whether stress imaging could safely spare patients aged 80 and over an invasive procedure. It was stopped early for futility, and the selective strategy did not prove non-inferior.
A Norwegian study of 204,663 children found no raised risk of autism or most neurodevelopmental disorders after maternal COVID in pregnancy — with one exception in the early pandemic.
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.
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 Swedish study of 10,693 ACL reconstructions in registered football players found no link between graft type and revision surgery. Age and playing level mattered far more.
Two small pilot studies in 18-to-25-year-olds found morning bright light on its own shifted circadian timing little, while adding a timed schedule and evening blue-blockers advanced it about 35 minutes.
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.
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 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 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.
A meta-analysis of 28 studies and 684,065 people links intimate partner violence to raised odds of neonatal, infant and under-5 death — the association strongest for sexual violence.
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 transcriptomic sub-study of the CALERIE calorie-restriction trial links 151 genes to preserved leg strength during weight loss, independent of how much body mass was lost.
In a 92-patient Greek cohort, the long-acting PTH replacement normalised calcium and phosphate and freed 58% of patients from calcium and vitamin D pills — echoing the trials, over a short follow-up.
Patients whose carotid plaque contained plastics had a higher rate of heart attack, stroke or death. It is an association in 257 people, not proof of cause.
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.
In 2.5 million Swedish births followed to adulthood, mothers' early-pregnancy obesity was linked to a stepwise rise in offspring cardiovascular disease, though sibling analyses temper the size.
In the 571-woman ECLIPSE trial, the hormonal coil improved quality-of-life scores more than standard tablets over two years, and far more women stuck with it. A Cochrane review reaches the same conclusion.
In 33 former players with autopsy-confirmed disease, memory, executive-function and language impairments were frequent before death, and greater tau burden tracked worse memory.
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.
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.
Dronabinol beat placebo on a nightmare-severity scale in 171 adults, but the effect was moderate and the only serious adverse events occurred in the drug group. Long-term safety is untested.
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.
Applying the 2025 AHA/ACC guideline to a Nigerian survey sharply raised the share classified hypertensive versus older criteria, widening the gap between diagnosis and treatment capacity.
Reviewing and stopping unnecessary drugs in older people is safe in trials and reduces inappropriate prescriptions. Whether it makes them live longer or feel better is far less settled than the enthusiasm implies.
In a randomised trial of 3,102 bypass patients across seven countries, all-cause mortality was near-identical between bilateral and single internal thoracic artery grafting.
A 2,234-patient UK trial gave people with unexplained syncope a 14-day ECG monitor or usual care. A year on, fainting episodes were no fewer — a caution against confusing better detection with better outcomes.
Among 3,032 couples sampled before conception, higher maternal and paternal vitamin B12 both tracked with lower predicted birth-defect prevalence. The paternal pattern was weaker, and this is observational.
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.
Cochrane reviews rate anti-inflammatory painkillers a very effective treatment for menstrual cramps, roughly doubling the odds of good pain relief. Exercise helps too, but on lower-quality evidence.
A self-reported cross-sectional study of 599 residents found sharp deterioration across every measured dimension of oral health during the war — a neglected corner of the humanitarian-health picture.
TARGET-CTCA randomised 3,170 emergency patients whose troponin had cleared them of a heart attack. Outpatient CT angiography-guided care matched standard care on later infarction or cardiac death.
Trials put the pregnancy rate after emergency contraceptive pills at roughly 1-3%. But the risk rose more than threefold in obese women, and the levonorgestrel pill fared worst of all.
In 7,530 people from two long-running cohorts, central sleep apnea with high oxygen overshoot carried elevated cardiovascular risk. The same apnea with low overshoot did not.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tungiasis, on WHO's neglected-disease list since 2021 but never quantified, costs up to 379,645 healthy life-years a year — rising to 575,298 once its complications are counted.
SWITCH-SWEDEHEART randomised regions rather than patients. Over 17,095 people, a default prasugrel policy did not lower ischaemic events against ticagrelor, but major bleeding was lower.
In 264 patients in China, the device maker's trial reported clinical worsening in 25.7% versus 51.5% on medical therapy alone (HR 0.49) — but no sham procedure blinded patients.
DANISH-CRT randomised 1,000 patients to electrically targeted or conventional left ventricular lead placement. After nearly four years, death and heart failure admissions were the same.
PRAGUE-26 randomised 558 patients across 11 Czech hospitals. The seven-day composite fell from 6.8% to 0.7%, driven by cardiorespiratory collapse, with no clear bleeding penalty.
PREMIUM tested prasugrel alone against aspirin plus prasugrel in 2,216 STEMI patients in Japan. Monotherapy failed to show noninferiority, and the confidence interval sat above one.
The INTERSECT study asked 11,302 women 6 to 12 weeks postpartum about birth trauma. The spread between countries is far wider than the average, and that is the finding.
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.
Cochrane found a clinically important 15.2-point pain reduction across 249 trials. A reanalysis excluding trials with fewer than 70 participants put the effect below the threshold that counts as meaningful.
ABYSS and SMART-DECISION together cover 6,238 stable patients. Discontinuation cleared both noninferiority margins, though the authors say the primary endpoint's composition limits what it shows.
In 1,238 people from two community cohorts, apnea severity showed no link to depressive symptoms. Sleep fragmentation did, and that association disappeared once insomnia symptoms entered the model.
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 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.
Guidelines have hedged on anticoagulation for people with one stroke risk factor. SINGLE-AF randomised 1,803 patients in South Korea, and the events it counted were very few in both arms.
A meta-analysis of 90,000 people found these diabetes-origin drugs reduced kidney disease progression by 37% and cardiovascular events by 23%, and the benefit was similar in people who did not have diabetes.
A 740,744-child natural experiment tested a decade-old hypothesis that rotavirus vaccine might prevent type 1 diabetes. It found no protective effect — and no evidence of harm either.
WHO and ILO estimate about 17% of workers face hazardous noise. Their review of whether it causes heart disease found only low-certainty signals — one for heart-attack incidence, little for stroke or blood pressure.
The phase 3 VALOR trial met its primary endpoint at the higher dose of the oral TYK2-JAK1 inhibitor, with more serious infections — a benefit and a safety signal that arrive together.
ACACIA-HCM met both primary endpoints in symptomatic non-obstructive HCM. The gains were real but small, and one in ten patients had a reversible drop in pumping function.
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 32-study review attaches a five- to eight-fold per-tackle concussion risk to one body position, and finds youth players use it more often. A New Zealand school study maps where the force lands.
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.
High urate levels track with worsening kidney disease, so treating them seemed a logical way to slow it. Two trials that lowered urate with allopurinol found the kidneys declined at the same rate anyway.
Among 603 RECOVER participants, 118 were classified as likely having Long COVID. The primary analysis found no association with preterm delivery, and one secondary signal that only appeared in a sensitivity analysis.
The same audit found high-performance female athletes well represented in the field — and that the studies generating prevalence figures lean on self-reported food records and MET lookup tables.
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.
A meta-analysis of 27 studies found a dose-response pattern that runs against the nightcap logic: the sedative effect needs a high dose, and the REM disruption starts at a low one.
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.
Leisure exercise reliably protects the heart. Physical activity done for a living shows mixed or even adverse associations — and some meta-analyses find higher mortality in men with the most physically demanding jobs.
The range is the finding, not a failure of the study. 1,712 former players died between 2008 and 2021; 338 brains were examined, and who donates a brain is not random.
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.
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.
The ODDESSI trial ran in 30 clusters across five NHS trusts in England. Time to relapse was unchanged; inpatient admission, re-referral and service-user ratings all moved in Open Dialogue's favour.
A 1.5-million-person records study reports lower mortality with GLP-1 drugs than with SGLT2 inhibitors, and the largest absolute gains in people with serious mental illness. The design cannot prove it.
Comparing US adults vaccinated just before and just after the changeover from the live to the recombinant shingles vaccine, researchers found a 9% lower cardiovascular burden over seven years.
A cohort with serial MRI and autopsy data found earlier menopause tracked faster cognitive decline and white matter damage. The per-year coefficients are very small.
A 4,066-person survey series across Funafuti and the outer islands links second-hand smoke exposure — reported by 61% of participants — to obesity and elevated STOP-Bang scores.
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.
In 276 adults tested at 60, the differences in GrimAge and DunedinPACE were small, their intervals crossed zero, and most of what was there disappeared once smoking was accounted for.
The MTA trial randomised 579 children and found medication management clearly superior short-term. Its own long-term follow-up found the treatment groups no longer differed by 6 to 8 years.
A Cochrane review found women doing pelvic floor muscle training were eight times more likely to report their stress incontinence cured than untreated women — with the strongest evidence for that one condition.
The glucagon and GLP-1 dual agonist, already approved in China, cut bodyweight 18.1% at 16 mg and 15.6% at 10 mg over 32 weeks versus 0.9% on placebo in a US phase 2 trial.
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.
Among 17,508 notified cases from 2007 to 2021, 1.49% died of Chagas and 5.83% of other causes — with digestive complications, not cardiac ones, carrying the highest cumulative risk.
In the phase 3 Launch-HTN trial, adults already on two to five drugs fell 9.1 mm Hg further on lorundrostat than placebo — the second aldosterone-synthase inhibitor to post positive data after baxdrostat.
ITACS randomised 955 anaemic adults to intravenous iron or placebo before elective cardiac surgery. Fewer patients needed a transfusion, but the primary benefit was a median of one day alive and at home.
A study of 9,248 US women published in May 2026 found perimenopausal women twice as likely to fall into the lowest cardiovascular health band. The design cannot show that the decline happens within individuals.
Overall musculoskeletal injury was lower during pregnancy and the year after than in non-pregnant periods. Spine and back injuries were the exception, rising through pregnancy and postpartum.
A 614-donor autopsy study tied advanced CTE to dementia independently of other brain disease. A separate imaging report in three former athletes hints at a test for the living. The caveats on both are heavy.
Stanford's SleepFM, published in Nature Medicine in January 2026, is the most consequential sleep paper of the year. Its own limitations section explains why it is not yet a clinical test.
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.
In 62 adults scanned under psilocybin during rest, meditation, music, and film, brain networks reorganized differently by setting — and more reorganization tracked with more positive experiences.
Using causal-inference methods on 1,269 people, researchers linked two bacterial genera to depression independent of body weight and medication — the first such evidence in humans, not proof of mechanism.
An analysis of a decade of surveillance data shows the system leans heavily on hospitals and misses cases in the community — the weakness that lets measles circulate undetected between outbreaks.
Mice lacking the chaperone GRPEL2 stayed leaner on a high-fat diet and kept better insulin sensitivity — an early mechanistic finding, not a treatment, and so far only in mice.
A Cochrane review of 50 trials found cranberry products lower UTI risk in women with recurrent infections and in children, but no benefit in the elderly, in pregnancy, or in bladder-emptying problems.
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.
RACER-Knee masked patients with sham incisions and found a Forgotten Joint Score difference of −1.5 points at 12 months (P=0.62) — while the robotic operation cost more.
Two randomised trials tested whether thyroid-hormone tablets help women who carry thyroid antibodies but have normal thyroid function and a history of miscarriage or infertility. Live-birth rates did not move.
A national analysis of 2,985 haemorrhage deaths from 2015 to 2024 found no significant change over time — and Indigenous women dying at 2.87 times the rate of White women.
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.
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.
Twenty months of under-mattress sensor data from 95,819 people found that chronic irregularity was common, persistent, and tracked with 46% higher odds of hypertension.
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.
A randomised trial tracked infants' cortisol and attachment; a five-year follow-up tracked mental health. Graduated extinction improved sleep with no sign of long-term damage — or lasting benefit.
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.
A 2025 review walked through every study of low-dose rapamycin in healthy adults. The immune findings are real, the outcome data do not exist, and the review's own worked example does not add up.
A decade of eardrum repair delivered on Country across nine Queensland communities produced closure rates below metropolitan benchmarks — and a follow-up rate most urban surgical services do not achieve.
Where AI clot-detection was tested head-to-head, it still missed more emboli than radiology trainees, especially small peripheral ones. Its clearest win was cutting time to diagnosis.
A Nurses' Health Study II analysis estimated 37% of incident reflux symptoms were attributable to five modifiable factors. Body weight was the largest single one, at 19%.
The IARC calls night shift work probably carcinogenic. A 2026 meta-analysis of nurses shows why 'probably' is careful: the breast cancer signal appears only after decades, and shrinks to nothing once bias is corrected.
In-lab trials that restricted sleep on weekdays and allowed recovery at the weekend found insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance still worsened. Population surveys point the other way, and the designs explain why.
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.
A phase 2 trial of dasatinib plus quercetin missed its bone endpoint. A senolytic injected into the eye produced a 5.6-letter vision gain whose confidence interval crosses zero.
Two cohorts published ten days apart. One found the PFAS mixture more than doubling the odds of hypertension at 24 to 28 weeks; the other found lower birth weight, but only in female infants.
Surveillance data show reported measles cases from Tigray collapsed during the 2020–2022 war; afterward the median age of infection fell to five years and the odds a case was unvaccinated stayed sharply raised.
A case-control study by MSF's Epicentre and WHO put NmCV-5's adjusted effectiveness at 92% against meningococcal meningitis after 2024 campaigns in Niger — on a small sample of 17 confirmed cases.
A case-crossover study of 29,604 arrests over a decade found risk lowest around the 86th temperature percentile and higher at both local extremes, with the cold tail slightly larger.
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.
Five-fraction SBRT improved several quality-of-life measures but was not superior to longer IMRT for prostate cancer. Three-year disease-free survival was 88.6% with SBRT and 92.1% with IMRT.
A 2,836-pair analysis of the ECHO cohort found one of four compounds associated with parent-reported sleep problems. A Shanghai study of bone density found opposite directions in girls and boys.
ACHIEVE randomised 977 older adults and measured three-year cognitive change. The difference between hearing aids and health education was 0.002 SD units, p=0.96. One subgroup result is doing a lot of work.
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.
The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index global score is the field's default outcome. Tested in a large South African cohort, its single-factor structure fit poorly and internal consistency was modest.
In 2,414 children, the MODAM-MAM trial found one daily sachet of therapeutic food non-inferior to standard supplementary food; two sachets did marginally better but used far more product.
A network meta-analysis of 24 randomised trials ranks oral dutasteride first on 24-week hair density. The adverse-effect literature behind these drugs is separately, and seriously, contested.
Cochrane reviews find honey modestly eases a child's cough and does about as well as dextromethorphan, while OTC cough medicines have not beaten placebo in children. The honey trials excluded infants under one.
A study of 19,539 patients echoed the randomised CONVINCE trial — but it was observational, and several of its authors work for the dialysis company that owns the data.
Two double-blind crossover studies in people who had put themselves on gluten-free diets failed to reproduce a gluten effect. One found a different wheat carbohydrate did it instead.
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.
In two large clinics, the live birth rate per woman who returned to use her eggs was around 39-50% under 35 or 38, but far lower for older women — and most women who froze never came back to use them.
A meta-regression of 23 hypertrophy studies found total intake the strongest predictor and no timing effect after adjustment. A later network meta-analysis of 116 trials still favours post-exercise, narrowly.
A laboratory trial found a light-emitting e-reader really does suppress melatonin and delay the body clock. Two 2026 field studies found the day-to-day effect runs almost entirely through when people go to bed.
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.
In 2023 declining taurine was proposed as a driver of ageing. Two years later the same journal published human, monkey and mouse data in which taurine rose or stayed flat.
Feeding studies find that when fructose replaces other carbohydrate at equal calories, liver fat barely moves. The liver damage tracks the extra energy, not the sugar's molecular identity.
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 network meta-analysis of 331 trials and 34,285 adults found no significant differences between the main psychotherapies, with one exception. In children and adolescents the picture is narrower.
Children in low-vegetation districts exposed to heat stress had sharply higher odds of severe wasting and underweight; in greener areas the link vanished. The pathway runs through food systems, not heat alone.
The first randomised trial to pit surgery against the natural course of big-toe arthritis found fusion cut walking pain to 1.3 on a 10-point scale at one year, versus 5.7 with watchful waiting.
The trials that made eye vitamins a standard recommendation enrolled only people who already had substantial disease. In AREDS2, neither omega-3 nor lutein beat placebo on the primary endpoint.
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.
In modern couples timing intercourse, an estimated 18% of women aged 35-39 failed to conceive within a year — not one in three. The most alarming figures come from models, not from watching real couples try.
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.
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 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%.
A 1,224-person biomonitoring study found four compounds only in firefighter serum. A separate 65-person pilot in Texas asked whether that matters for cognition, and got a partial answer.
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.
In a 22,785-user study of one temperature-based app, typical use failed 6.9 per 100 woman-years and perfect use 1.0 — but the study came from the maker, and traditional methods vary widely.
A consortium reduced overnight sleep studies to nine composites. Two tracked with better cognition. None tracked with whether a person later developed dementia.
A large randomised promotion trial and sibling studies find some real benefits in infancy — fewer gut infections, less eczema — but the sweeping long-term advantages shrink once confounding is accounted for.
An umbrella review of 29 systematic reviews and 863 randomised trials found most treatments resting on critically low-quality evidence. Animal work suggests soreness can arise without muscle damage at all.
The best long-term trial found trained skills can last a decade. Whether they transfer to daily life, or hold off dementia, is where the evidence — and the FTC — parted ways with the marketing.
Pooling the trials, one- and two-dose HPV schedules produced lower antibody titres than three doses but still cut persistent infection — with the usual caveat about surrogate endpoints.
Both things are true, and both rest on high-certainty evidence. The phase 3 trial and the meta-analysis that followed it measured different outcomes and reached opposite-sounding conclusions.
GLORY-2 randomised 461 Chinese adults with obesity to a weekly GLP-1/glucagon dual agonist or placebo; weight fell 16.65% versus 1.50% at 60 weeks, alongside high rates of nausea and vomiting.
A million-woman Danish cohort found a modest rise in antidepressant use among hormonal contraceptive users. A Cochrane review of weight found no evidence the pill causes weight gain.
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.
A UK Biobank analysis broke ultra-processed food into 37 specific ingredients rather than treating it as one block. Flavours, colourings, sweeteners and sugars carried the signal; processing aids and added fibre did not.
Cochrane's living review of 104 trials rates high-dose atropine and orthokeratology moderate certainty. The low-dose atropine most widely used sits at very low certainty, and two Western trials disagree.
A network meta-analysis found six treatments clearing the clinically important threshold in the short term. It also graded 98.6% of the evidence very low certainty, and found nothing that held up past a year.
In a meta-analysis of 25 randomised trials and 26,610 participants, stretching produced no reduction in sports injuries. Strength training cut them to under a third — on a much smaller evidence base.
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 community study of 2,340 residents, run after the conflict that wrecked the region's health system, found presumptive tuberculosis above 10% in both town and countryside.
A cross-sectional study of 96 war amputees, 53 caregivers and 95 community controls found sharply elevated disability and psychiatric symptoms, and argued for combined physical and mental-health rehabilitation.
Two Cochrane reviews found low- to very low-certainty evidence that floss slightly reduces gum inflammation. Neither found a single trial measuring interproximal decay, the thing flossing is sold to prevent.
The LEAP trial cut peanut allergy in high-risk infants from 13.7% to 1.9%. A second trial found the benefit real but harder to achieve — and only in children who actually ate the food.
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.
In the phase 3 TORCH trial, following transarterial chemoembolisation with thermal ablation more than doubled median progression-free survival, to 17.7 months from 7.3, in unresectable liver-confined cancer.
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.
Patients in remission who stayed on the JAK inhibitor through a second year flared far less than those switched to placebo — 7.4% versus 59.5% — in an extension of the SELECT-GCA trial.
After four weeks, the comorbid-insomnia group's blood pressure fell 20 points more than the apnea-only group. The finding flips the usual framing of COMISA as simply a worse-outcomes phenotype.
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.
Pooling under 11,000 pregnancies, a meta-analysis found no statistically significant association either way, with the three underlying studies disagreeing on which direction the risk even points.
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.
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.
A tightly controlled crossover trial separated low energy availability from low carbohydrate availability for four days. One hormone moved clearly; most did not, and performance did not move at all.
In 53,100 California women, higher trihalomethanes in drinking water tracked with modestly higher uterine cancer risk. Nitrate, arsenic and uranium showed no link.
A registry study spanning 4.9 million people separates where the most deaths occur from where the inequality is largest. Heart disease and lung disease give different answers.
Two 2026 studies found people with no ultrasound background produced diagnostic-quality echocardiograms after about a day of AI-guided training. Quality varied sharply by view, finding, and who was holding the probe.
Both morning and evening chronotypes showed elevated risk against the middle ground, and the effect nearly doubled in people who also had sleep apnea.
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.
Four separate trial emulations, each with a different comparator, all pointed the same direction. The strongest effect appeared among people being treated for alcohol use disorder.
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.
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.
In the phase 3 CORALreef AddOn head-to-head, enlicitide dropped LDL cholesterol 64.6% at day 56 — far past ezetimibe, bempedoic acid, or the two combined.
A survey of 322 college students found a dose-response pattern: the more intensely someone specialized in a single sport young, the greater their odds of chronic injury, nearly fivefold.
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 viral idea that root-canal-treated teeth seed chronic illness traces to discredited 1920s work. Modern reviews find treated teeth are not implicated in systemic disease, and most survive for years.
A meta-analysis of six studies found a moderate effect on sleep duration and a small one on depressive symptoms — with high heterogeneity on both.
Petrelintide, a long-acting amylin analogue given without a GLP-1 drug, reduced bodyweight by up to 8.6% at 16 weeks across two small phase 1 trials and was well tolerated. The finding is early.
A Finnish registry of over 123,000 women found pre-eclampsia linked to an 11% lower breast cancer risk decades later. Hormone therapy raised risk by a similar amount in both groups.
Tracking 3.6 million women over 24 years, researchers found women with endometriosis were nearly 3.5 times more likely to develop the condition before 40. Seventy percent of cases still have no identified cause.
A twelve-athlete study tested morning, late-afternoon and late-evening sessions across the fasting month — and found the deficit was specific to time of day, not spread evenly across it.
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.
In 328 patients with third-generation cephalosporin-resistant gut bacteria in the blood, an old, narrow-spectrum antibiotic met its non-inferiority mark, offering a way to spare carbapenems.
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.
Tirzepatide and semaglutide showed comparable psychiatric risk profiles against each other over two years. Against earlier GLP-1 drugs, semaglutide came out ahead on all three measures.
A registry snapshot of 13,455 adults measures how far the biologic era has moved severe asthma toward remission, and finds the inflammation these drugs target still detectable in most patients.
The KADS extension followed 130 patients who had already been through a ketamine trial. Response fell from 30% at treatment's end to 17% a month later.
A 398-caregiver study across all five island groups finds the single biggest predictor of HPV vaccination was knowing the vaccine was free — after a decade of the programme running.
In the head-to-head OVERLORD-MS trial, 92.2% on rituximab and 94.8% on ocrelizumab had no new MRI lesions from months 6 to 24, meeting the prespecified bar for noninferiority.
Stress peaked during the fasting month and fell afterwards, but depression and anxiety stayed flat. The consistent finding across every phase was that sleep quality tracked mental health.
An all-oral short regimen, its length set by chest-imaging severity, was non-inferior to 18-month treatment and caused fewer serious adverse events in a Chinese randomised trial.
In DigiSep, adding metagenomic sequencing to standard cultures did not improve the main 28-day outcome, though ventilation time and shock resolution were shorter in exploratory analyses.
Oral paltusotine kept median IGF-I near the normal ceiling through week 207 in an open-label extension, but only 20 of 43 patients remained by then and the study had no comparison group.
A registered report fit identical models to 11 longitudinal studies covering 175,070 people. The subjective feeling carried the signal; the objective count of social contacts largely did not.
Across 84,348 hospital admissions, 19.8% of children had severe anaemia; as malaria receded the burden moved to older children, and severe anaemia doubled the odds of dying.
REMEASURE randomised 73 patients to Kono-S anastomosis or mesenteric resection after ileocolic surgery for Crohn's disease; endoscopic recurrence at six months was 33% versus 32%.
The UK and Rwanda reported the highest anxiety, depression, and vasomotor symptom scores; Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Singapore reported the lowest. Burnout emerged as the symptom most connected to everything else.
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.
Gastric bypass patients lost roughly 28% of body weight at three years, against 7-11% for tirzepatide or semaglutide — even among patients who stayed on the drugs continuously for at least a year.
In 377 patients, hypoxic burden — a metric combining how often, how deep, and how long oxygen drops — tracked with abnormal nighttime blood pressure patterns where conventional measures didn't.
A quasi-experimental analysis of 23 hospitals finds about 95 additional self-harm and suicide-related emergency visits a month after the law changed, alongside fewer psychiatric admissions.
A burden-of-disease calculation built on EU noise-mapping data puts numbers on two outcomes that noise research has mostly ignored. The confidence intervals are as informative as the estimates.
A Danish registry study of 136,842 women found elevated antidepressant and anxiolytic prescribing in the decade preceding diagnosis, with psychiatric hospital contacts rising about five years before.
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.
In 230 adults followed a year, lower heart-rate variability and less moderate-to-vigorous activity at baseline were independently linked to developing hypertension. It is a risk signal, in one unreplicated cohort.
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.
A Bulletin of the WHO study recorded 168 maternal deaths between October 2023 and June 2024, alongside higher stillbirth, neonatal-death and preterm-birth rates than before the war.
Three cohorts, 147,374 people, 30 years and 35,798 deaths. The dose-response curve flattened above 120 minutes per week, and the cancer signal appeared at the low end, not the high end.
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.
A stepped-wedge trial across 165 women's and girls' Australian football teams shows how far implementation support moves uptake — and how much larger a trial would need to be to prove it prevents injuries.
In 273,466 people with substance-related hospital admissions, psychosis was far more common after hallucinogen admissions, until adjustment for preexisting conditions erased the link.
Final ALIGN results show the endothelin blocker preserved kidney function over 2.5 years in a rare kidney disease, yet the difference at week 136 just missed statistical significance (p=0.057).
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.
In two industry-funded phase 3 studies, every child followed at least 16 months met the goal — but all had a grade 3 or 4 event, and one died of a conditioning-drug complication.
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.
Extremely dense breasts on a routine screening mammogram were linked to a 20% lower likelihood of menopause over the following years, a possible marker of reproductive aging.
Games missed to rest or load management rose 125% over nine NBA seasons while serious injuries rose 43% — and players who sat out for rest showed no significant reduction in subsequent injury risk.
In TRANSCEND-T2D-1, the triple-hormone agonist cut HbA1c up to 1.12 points beyond placebo over 40 weeks and trimmed bodyweight 15.3% at the top dose in early type 2 diabetes.
The association held across most demographic subgroups, but not among Black patients, a gap the study doesn't explain. Two-year follow-up limits what it can say about longer-term risk.
In the FIND-CKD trial, non-diabetic patients on finerenone lost kidney function at 3.3 versus 4.0 ml/min/1.73 m² a year — a small edge that extends a diabetes drug to a new group.
Nearly twice as many CPAP-treated patients saw their HFpEF-like markers improve at one year compared with those who went untreated — in a population sleep specialists have historically deprioritized for treatment.
In a 122-patient South African proof-of-concept study, a four-month all-oral combination of quabodepistat, delamanid and bedaquiline cleared TB from sputum as often as the six-month standard.
In the phase 3 GCAptAIN trial the interleukin-17A blocker did not significantly beat placebo for sustained remission at one year, leaving the IL-6 inhibitor tocilizumab as the proven steroid-sparing option.
A national database of ~90% of public facilities found all-cause diarrhoea incidence in under-fives dropped 50% and hospitalisations 58% after 2020, with no rise in intussusception.
After 12 months, HbA1c was 6.5% among people managed by community health workers versus 7.1% among those referred to clinics. With 103 participants analysed, the confidence interval crosses zero.
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.
Switzerland allows limited psilocybin use for treatment-resistant depression. A review of 19 patients found meaningful improvement, but remission in barely a fifth to a quarter.
The anti-alpha-synuclein antibody did not significantly delay motor progression in the phase 2b PADOVA study, though a non-significant trend and secondary signals keep a phase 3 trial alive.
Two GSK-funded phase 3 trials found roughly 20% of patients on bepirovirsen reached a functional cure at 72 weeks versus none on placebo — alongside more adverse events and liver-enzyme rises.
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.
In the phase 3 DRAGON-01 trial, delivering paclitaxel directly into the abdominal cavity on top of standard chemotherapy raised median survival to 19.4 months from 13.9 in gastric cancer with peritoneal spread.
Two large trials of the anti-ST2 antibody gave discordant results: a modest signal in the phase 2b study, and a missed primary endpoint for the same dose in the confirmatory phase 3.
Orexin antagonists were long avoided in sleep apnea over fears they'd suppress the arousals that end dangerous breathing pauses. Sixteen patients on daridorexant showed no meaningful change in breathing severity.
Developing countries paid a record US$1.4 trillion in debt service in 2023. A 105-country study finds debt servicing nudges the health-financing mix toward out-of-pocket, but only modestly.
A single-author analysis of Global Burden of Disease estimates finds the region's neurodevelopmental picture split in two — and argues the flat autism curve reflects diagnostic capacity, not risk.
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.
In 38,283 nurses tracked through the transition, low-insulinemic and planetary-health eating patterns had the strongest associations with less weight gain. The average woman still gained 0.8 kg a year.
An all-oral, bedaquiline-based programme treated 277 patients through six years of conflict in eastern Congo and reached 77.6% treatment success — above WHO's 75% mark — but mortality stayed at 13.4%.
In the phase 3 Integral-1 trial, cefepime plus the new β-lactamase blocker nacubactam cured 82% of complicated urinary infections versus 61% for imipenem, offering a way to spare carbapenems.
EPISODE randomized 144 people with treatment-resistant depression across four arms. High-dose psilocybin missed its main outcome, even as secondary measures showed symptom benefit.
Women who reported vigorous physical activity had a lower arousal index, less time awake after falling asleep, and more total sleep time. The same association didn't hold for arousal index in men.
In the FDA study, self-fitted AirPods matched a professional fitting for perceived benefit. Independent testing finds the hearing test accurate to about 10 dB — and the amplification short of a fitted aid.
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.
A 150-woman real-world comparison found combination therapy cut symptom scores further and produced more clinical responders. Endometrial thickness rose slightly but stayed normal.
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.
The comparison group matters: against veterans with unspecified narcolepsy diagnoses, the mortality gap widened to 140% higher odds. The study can't yet say what's driving the excess deaths.
Against a laboratory gas-exchange test, the Series 10 underestimated VO2 max by about 6 mL/kg/min on average, with wide limits of agreement. It reads trends better than absolute numbers.
Using genetic variants as instruments, researchers found exercise and wellbeing lowered risk of PCOS, endometriosis and menstrual disorders, while screen time and mood swings raised it.
Twenty-four healthy volunteers received all three drugs in a crossover trial. At 30 mg, 2C-B matched MDMA's intensity and produced psilocybin-like states, without psilocybin's anxiety.
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 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.
PRoMPT BOLUS, a 9041-child trial across 47 emergency departments, found kidney-injury events at 30 days in 3.4% on balanced fluid and 3.0% on saline (P=0.85) — no meaningful difference.
In women 41 to 50, late perimenopause and postmenopause brought measurable declines in lung volume, with postmenopausal women losing up to 310 mL of FEV1. HIV status didn't change the pattern.
The first federal survey to ask about psilocybin specifically finds 2.8% past-year use, concentrated among young, white, college-educated men. People with recent depression had 37% higher odds.
Cemdisiran, a gene-silencing drug given under the skin once every three months, cut daily-living scores more than placebo in antibody-positive generalised myasthenia gravis, a rare complement-driven disease.
Among 1.2 million participants in Paris endurance races over ten years, 17 suffered sudden cardiac arrest. Nearly all of them lived, and researchers still can't explain almost half the cases.
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.
A 20-point rise in apnea severity tracked with about three times more blood pressure increase in adults with a BMI of 20 than in those with a BMI of 30, flipping a common assumption.
Moderate-to-severe sleep apnea alone roughly doubled all-cause mortality risk. Adding comorbid insomnia to the same patients raised it further — evidence for treating the combination as its own risk category.
Rated against other symptom-management strategies women already use, masturbation scored among the highest for relieving mood changes and sleep disturbance. Nearly half said they'd try it if a doctor suggested it.
A survey of 243 people reporting persistent difficulty after a psychedelic trip found that how they responded in the moment, avoiding versus accepting, predicted whether trauma symptoms followed.
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.
Both machine types cut breathing interruptions equally well in a 108-patient study. But auto-adjusting PAP's constantly shifting pressure came with more time awake and less total sleep on night one.
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.
In an industry-funded, open-label trial of 3,048 patients with heart disease, targeting LDL below 55 rather than 70 mg/dL lowered a composite of cardiovascular events over three years.
A Finnish national registry of over 11,000 women found up to 94% of endometriosis patients used menopausal hormone therapy after surgery, against 82% of a comparison group. The mix of hormones used is changing too.
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 1,362 Shanghai dialysis patients followed for over three years, hemoadsorption plus haemodialysis lowered all-cause mortality versus dialysis alone — a borderline result from an open-label trial.
The barriers parents named most often were cost and the absence of any nearby service — not stigma, which the field has spent years treating as the main obstacle.
Relacorilant kept blood pressure under control when patients who had responded were kept on it rather than switched to placebo. The pivotal trial randomised just 62 people.
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 the phase 3 PATCH trial, oestrogen skin patches were non-inferior to LHRH injections for three-year metastasis-free survival, with fewer hot flushes but more breast swelling.
In 388 female athletes, a per cent fat Z-score below −1.0 more than doubled sensitivity for amenorrhoea against standard BMI thresholds. It gave up specificity to do it.
A meta-regression of 169 trials coded 34 therapeutic ingredients. The most common — psychoeducation, relaxation, mindfulness — were not the ones that best predicted getting better.
The same drug sold as Zepbound and Mounjaro reduced cocaine-evoked dopamine release and blocked drug-associated place preference in rodents. It's animal data, not a human addiction treatment.
In 3,873 middle-aged adults followed with repeated testing, waist-based categories of overweight and obesity showed larger effect sizes than BMI-based ones. The link to actual decline appeared only in men.
In a single-centre trial of 100 patients with decompensated cirrhosis, six months of atorvastatin cut recurrent complications from 72% to 36% — a striking but preliminary result needing larger confirmation.
The estimate covers only populations in humanitarian need across Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Mali, Niger and Nigeria — and it assumes nothing replaces the lost money.
In 30,446 Malmö residents followed for decades, each step up in soot exposure was tied to 15% higher cardiovascular mortality — a stronger, steadier signal than total fine particles or traffic gases.
OCULUS was halted at interim analysis: continuing a GLP-1 or GIP agonist before endoscopy left 25.0% of patients with clinically significant retained stomach contents, versus 3.1% who held one dose.
The elevated risk showed up even in babies with no detectable malformation — which is not what the standard recessive-disease explanation predicts.
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.
Reanalyzed EEG data from a phase 3 trial finds lemborexant and zolpidem leave distinct signatures on sleep architecture. Only the slow-oscillation increase predicted less insomnia severity.
Cooking with gas emits nitrogen dioxide indoors, and pooled studies tie it to a higher risk of childhood asthma. One US analysis attributes about one in eight cases to gas stove use — an association, not a proven cause.
747 postmenopausal women were tested; 182 were scanned. Gray matter volume partially mediated the link between menopause age and cognition — in a cross-sectional design that cannot establish direction.
Women whose habits aligned with a favorable estrogen-metabolism pathway had up to 61% lower endometrial cancer risk. The score explains only a tenth of the variation it predicts.
Researchers deliberately withdrew CPAP for three nights to simulate untreated sleep apnea, then tested propranolol against placebo. It slowed the heart-rate surges tied to apnea events, at the price of lighter sleep.
A test-negative study found the TYPHIBEV conjugate vaccine 89% effective against confirmed typhoid in Nepali children over 30 months, with weaker and far less certain protection under age five.
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.
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.
The first large instrumented-mouthguard dataset from elite Australian football finds women absorb greater rotational acceleration per impact, and that men's ruckmen sit in a category of their own.
In the open-label extension of the VIVID programme, remission rates stayed high at 104 weeks — but no placebo group ran alongside, so durability is described, not proven, against nature.
In the COSPIRIT-JIA trial, most children with two stubborn forms of juvenile idiopathic arthritis responded to ixekizumab by week 16 — but the main result had no control group.
In the ALLEGORY trial, 76.7% of patients with active SLE reached the SRI-4 response at 52 weeks on the B-cell–depleting antibody versus 53.5% on placebo, extending a drug already cleared for lupus nephritis.
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.
A Taiwanese cohort of 26,000 women aged 20 to 50 puts numbers on a known tamoxifen risk in a population — younger, premenopausal — where data has been thinner.
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.
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.
Compared with a diabetes drug from another class, GLP-1 agonists were followed by fewer new diagnoses of alcohol, opioid, nicotine and other substance use disorders.
In a 20,000-child trial across eight endemic countries, TAK-003 was 61.2% effective against symptomatic dengue and 84.1% against hospitalisation — but protection was narrower in children never previously infected.
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.
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.
In 2,286 patients with sleep apnea undergoing major surgery, a measure of how deeply and how long oxygen fell — not the apnea-hypopnea index — tracked 30-day cardiovascular events and death.
A double-blind trial randomised 750 women with polycystic ovary syndrome to one drug or the other. Letrozole produced more live births and more ovulation — and is now the guideline's first choice for fertility.
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.
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.
A nationwide register study found a hazard ratio of 0.96 for all-cause death among users of menopausal hormone therapy. The raw death rate in users was higher — which is the part worth understanding.
In the LATITUDE trial, monthly cabotegravir–rilpivirine injections cut regimen failure to 22.8% from 41.2% on oral therapy among people with a history of missed doses, prompting an early stop.
A pooled analysis of five trials in treatment-resistant depression found sex differences in response. The largest ones appeared in both arms, which points at something other than the drug.
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.
A cluster-randomised trial across 15 population clusters found mosquito abundance collapsed in intervention areas and protective efficacy of 71–72% against symptomatic dengue.
The clearance story about sleep has been brain-centric. A Nature paper reports that in Drosophila, immune cells from the circulation do part of the job — and that blocking them shortens sleep.
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 444,000-patient records study found a two-thirds lower rate of endometrial cancer when GLP-1 receptor agonists were added to progestin therapy. The two groups differed by eight years in average age.
Efimosfermin, an FGF21 analogue given every four weeks, was well tolerated over 24 weeks in 84 patients with fatty-liver disease — but this trial was designed to test safety, not whether it heals the liver.
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.
A Lancet study across 547,000 adults and 925 infectious diseases finds obesity raises the risk of severe infection across almost every pathogen type. The global estimate rests on modelling, not on the cohorts themselves.
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.
WHO and CDC estimate cases climbed about 20% in a single year, and the number of countries hit by large or disruptive outbreaks jumped from 36 to 57 — while global first-dose coverage stayed flat.
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.
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.
Seven seasons of records on 569 students found 9.0 injuries per 1,000 exposure days in the upper school. Most injuries came on gradually, and a quarter were recurrences.
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.
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.
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.
An Israeli case-control study found an apparent fourfold risk that vanished once the year before diagnosis was excluded. A Nordic study of 17,232 cancers found no association at all.
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.
In the RECOVER extension, about a fifth of participants were in remission at 24 months and some who had not responded at 12 months did later. The second year had no control group.
In 85 people with mild cognitive impairment, transient beta-band events recorded at rest differed years before diagnosis. The sample is small and the finding has not been replicated.
Black cohosh, Chinese herbal medicine and vitamin D reached moderate certainty for specific outcomes. Most of the rest of the field — 158 studies deep — sits at low or very low certainty.
In a Pennsylvania cohort followed 7.5 years, the combination carried the highest risk when insomnia came with objectively short sleep. Insomnia with normal sleep duration showed no significant association.
An analysis of 104 trials found a 10 to 20 percent reduction under some diagnostic criteria and none under UK criteria. A separate review found a GDM diagnosis is not associated with more stillbirths.
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.
An Oxford meta-analysis of 37 studies puts average regain at 0.4 kg a month across all weight-management drugs, and 0.8 kg a month for semaglutide and tirzepatide. Almost none of the newer-drug data runs past a year.
A transformer model trained on 17,119 scans beat expert and non-expert examiners on every metric and cut simulated referrals by 63%. The catch is who built it and the validation the rest of the field still lacks.
Among 16-to-24-year-olds in NHANES, those who slept longer on weekends had 41% lower odds of daily depressive symptoms. The survey measured both at the same moment, which limits what can be concluded.
Standard questionnaires found no daytime difference between suvorexant and placebo. Four-times-daily smartphone prompts found fatigue worse in the morning and better later. The trial had 40 people.
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.
Matched against a comparator diabetes drug, incretin agonists were associated with an 8% lower rate of CPAP procedures — alongside a 32% lower mortality that should make readers cautious.
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.
A ten-season analysis of 3,750 matches quantifies the load argument footballers have been making. It also states plainly what it cannot show: anything about injury.
A UK Biobank analysis of 96,365 people found a dose-response relationship between lifetime night-shift exposure and cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic disease — amplified in those who also slept short.
A study of 1.8 million Medicare beneficiaries found vaginal estrogen prescriptions went unfilled by the overwhelming majority — and were least likely of all in women with recurrent urinary tract infections.
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 population study covering all 15 million residents of Ontario found the rate of new ADHD medication prescriptions accelerated sharply after 2019 — and shifted decisively toward adults.
A small longitudinal study found reduced spindle activity over the temporal lobes in early Alzheimer's — and that lower temporal spindle density tracked with faster decline over up to seven years.
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.
Semaglutide moved Alzheimer's biomarkers without moving the clinic. A separate liraglutide trial missed its primary endpoint on brain metabolism. Together they close a decade-old hypothesis — or at least narrow it.
A national registry analysis found the highest burden among 20-to-29-year-olds and a notable rise among girls aged 10 to 19, with rates concentrated in the Sierra region.
In a US cohort followed eight years, average weekday sleep rose from 8.1 to 8.3 hours while reports of fatigue and trouble sleeping increased. The socioeconomic gap in duration closed; the gap in symptoms did not.
An industry-standard indirect comparison of fezolinetant and elinzanetant found comparable reductions in vasomotor symptoms. Elinzanetant improved sleep disturbance more, without a difference in overall quality of life.
Nearly a million conscripts followed for three decades: obesity carried a 3.1-fold hazard for sepsis, and high cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with a 42% lower risk of dying from bacterial infection.
In a US cohort wearing wrist actigraphs, self-reported sleep exceeded measured sleep by about half an hour, with the gap largest on weekends and among Black adolescents and those from lower-income households.
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.
In ATTAIN-2, the highest dose of the oral GLP-1 pill cut body weight 9.6% over 72 weeks in adults with type 2 diabetes, against 11.2% in the earlier trial of adults without diabetes.
In 59 facilities across Malawi and Uganda where 431,394 women gave birth, the APT-Sepsis programme reduced infection-related death, near-miss events and severe illness from 1.9% to 1.4%.
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.
Three papers published on 18 November argue the harm is not one ingredient but the replacement of whole-food diets. The evidence they assemble is strongest for diet quality and weakest where causation is hardest.
In 132 Minnesota school athletes, each step up a housing-based measure of socioeconomic status predicted about 24% fewer days to return-to-play clearance. Childhood adversity did not lengthen recovery.
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 meta-regression across 28 countries put pooled prevalence near 4-5% and standardised mortality ratios between 1.8 and 4.7, in a condition the Global Burden of Disease study does not count.
Age, sex, employment and socioeconomic level together explained under 1% of variance in insomnia severity. Perceived stress and generalised anxiety explained close to a third.
A decade-on review of chronic traumatic encephalopathy research reports that 5 of 70 veteran donors had features of the pathology and none met the full definition. A small UK rugby study looks elsewhere.
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.
CORE and CORE2 enrolled 1,061 patients with severe hypertriglyceridaemia. The pancreatitis rate ratio was 0.15, but the higher dose came with liver enzyme rises and low platelets.
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.
A within-individual analysis of 505,474 people in Finland and Sweden found lower psychiatric hospitalisation on clozapine in every disorder studied except borderline personality disorder, with no excess mortality signal.
Sequencing hundreds of single neurons from 15 donors with CTE and 4 with repetitive head impacts but no CTE, researchers found the genomic damage tracked the disease, not the exposure.
Among 1,000 adults in Mwanza, overnight oximetry found sleep apnea in 17% of people with HIV and 19% without. Excessive daytime sleepiness, oddly, was more common in those without HIV.
The external validation of a micro-RNA signature outperformed imaging in 971 symptomatic patients. How it would perform in a lower-prevalence population is the question the study does not answer.
SURPASS-CN-INS randomised 257 adults at 26 Chinese hospitals. The 10 mg and 15 mg doses performed almost identically against placebo, and diarrhoea affected roughly a third of those on the higher doses.
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.
An Australian laboratory trial played 20-second noise bursts to 68 sleeping adults. Arousal probabilities were low for both, and lower for wind farm noise at 40 and 50 decibels.
A small prospective cohort followed 62 reconstructions for a quarter century. The graft type made no difference, and the uninjured comparison group dropped out of sport faster.
A national insurance-claims analysis found long-term adherence far below what trial populations suggest, despite universal coverage and strict usage monitoring. The monitoring may be part of the problem.
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.
VENUSCANCER assembled individual records for 275,792 women from 103 cancer registries in 39 countries. The gaps it found are in what treatment women actually received, not only in whether they were diagnosed.
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.
Carriers of loss-of-function MC4R mutations had lower LDL and triglycerides than UK Biobank controls of similar adiposity, and lower cardiovascular risk. The brain sets body weight and lipids separately.
Seventy-two runners were sampled before and after the 2024 Boston Marathon. Every marker of kidney and intestinal injury rose, and staying hydrated did not change that.
Age-standardised incidence was 42.3 per 100,000 in Ghana and 43.1 in US non-Hispanic Black women, against 24.0 in white women. ER-positive rates diverged sharply in the other direction.
Pooling 31 studies of 556 patients, cortical 5-HT2A binding was lower in unmedicated depression than in controls. The post-mortem studies mostly found nothing, and the tracers used shape the result.
A Brazilian randomised trial found laser and radiofrequency equally effective for genitourinary syndrome of menopause. The one trial that used sham treatment found no benefit at all.
In 24,223 Swedish workers followed to 2018, insomnia and long sleep raised cardiovascular risk only when accompanied by daytime impairment — and rising sleep duration preceded disease.
A 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.
Fourteen Swedish primary care patients were interviewed alongside a trial of nurse-led group sleep restriction therapy. Depression and life circumstances were what got in the way.
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.
Loneliness tracked with depression, perceived stress, psychotic-like experiences and suicidal ideation. A prevalence that high raises a question about what the measure is capturing.
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.
Over 17.4 years, high ultra-processed food intake was linked to a 24% higher colorectal cancer risk overall — and a 58% higher risk for right-sided colon cancer specifically.
Across 20,121 adults and 25 years of registry data, morningness markers predicted lower educational attainment but also lower odds of the bottom income quintile. Effects were absent in women.
A pooled analysis of 72,776 Korean adults found an 11% higher type 2 diabetes risk in the top intake quartile. An updated meta-analysis of 17 cohorts put the dose-response at 10% per 10% of intake.
Three BJSM reviews underpinning the FAIR consensus pooled 1.5 million participants and 108 concussion studies. Women and girls were 2.4% of the lower-limb evidence base.
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.
Across 2.48 million survey responses in 159 countries, the share of people with no one to turn to rose 13.4% between 2009 and 2024 — all of it after 2019.
In 99 men hospitalised for stress-related disorders, roughly four in five met probable criteria for trauma-associated sleep disorder — a condition that is not yet a recognised diagnosis.
Two phase 3b trials tested semaglutide 7.2 mg against the approved 2.4 mg dose. The extra weight loss was real but modest, and gastrointestinal side-effects and dysaesthesia rose alongside it.
ALEG's position holds that testosterone in postmenopausal women should be limited to hypoactive sexual desire disorder, and that pellets and compounded formulations are not recommended.
Ten weeks of a legal broad-spectrum CBD product produced detectable cannabigerol and cannabidivarin in most participants. After a 90-minute ride, detection rates rose to 74% and 84%.
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 UK-wide survey found cognitive and psychological symptoms outranked the ones menopause care is organised around, with higher ratings among Asian and Black respondents.
A survey of all 211 FIFA member associations found screening near-universal in South America and rare in Oceania, with youth screening starting anywhere from age 6 to 17.
A French prospective cohort followed adults with rare genetic obesity treated with the MC4R agonist in routine care. Weight fell about 20% in the first year and hunger scores dropped 62%.
Seltorexant held its effect over two weeks while zolpidem's faded, in a 364-person study run in 2017-2019 and published only now. The delay is disclosed in the paper itself.
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.
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.
Applying prevalence figures to UN population data yields 852 million adults with insomnia. Only 31 of 237 countries had a usable national estimate of their own.
In 12 clusters, 6% of girls in the intervention group experienced a maternal or perinatal death against 13% in control. The trial was a pilot, and the authors present it as such.
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.
The first large replication project in the field found effect sizes shrank substantially on repeat, and reports that many original authors declined to engage with the attempt.
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.
The final analysis of a 28,130-child trial found roughly 78% efficacy over more than four years, evidence that underpins WHO's push to roll the conjugate vaccine out in endemic countries.