Social support and memory in postmenopausal women: a careful null
A secondary analysis of the ELITE hormone-therapy trial found hints that social ties tracked with cognition, but none survived correction for multiple testing.
What the Study Actually Says
Evidence-grading explainers on the week's viral study.
An Israeli HMO biobank sequenced 1,038 patients to hunt for deafness genes
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.
Tuning daytime and evening light did not improve older adults' sleep
In a 12-person crossover trial, blue-enriched daytime light with reduced evening blue did not cut time spent awake at night, though it nudged a brainwave marker of sleep.
Postpartum depressive symptoms linked to higher infant mortality
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 first-trimester blood protein flags preeclampsia risk months early
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 worrying ECG pattern was rare in screened high-schoolers — but not meaningless
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.
One pre-workout caffeine dose kept working across 3.5 hours of repeated sprints
A small double-blind trial found a single 5.5 mg/kg dose lifted sprint power for hours, alongside higher noradrenaline and lower perceived effort — but it was 12 people, mostly men.
Graft choice did not predict re-tear risk in a national cohort of footballers
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.
Light alone barely moved young adults' clocks; a combined package did
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.
Large US study finds no link between prenatal water fluoride and child behaviour
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.
A gentler drug pair beat intensive chemo on one measure in fit leukaemia patients
In the 172-patient PARADIGM trial, azacitidine plus venetoclax more than doubled median event-free survival versus induction chemotherapy — but it was a phase 2 study not powered for overall survival.
An oral RAS inhibitor shrank tumours in about a third of RAS-mutant lung cancers
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.
Ketamine beat midazolam in treatment-resistant bipolar depression
In the Ket-BD trial, four IV ketamine infusions over two weeks lowered depression scores more than an active placebo, with no manic switches observed in 63 analysed patients.
Which muscles hold their strength through weight loss? A gene hunt
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.
Two obesity-diagnosis systems agree on advanced disease, split early
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.
Higher pre-pregnancy weight tracks with offspring heart disease decades on
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.
Adding atezolizumab to chemo did not clearly help early triple-negative breast cancer
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.
An antifungal reshaped the gut microbiome and tracked with milder IBD in a small study
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.
A Shanghai cohort measured fathers' B12 too. It tracked with birth defects.
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.
What actually works for period pain: strong evidence for NSAIDs, weaker for exercise
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.
In a Gaza survey, those reporting severe oral pain rose from 6.5% to 73.8%
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.
The morning-after pill works less well the later you take it — and at higher weight
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.
Sleep studies count the oxygen you lose. This one measured what comes back.
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.
Scanning 16,808 adults with no known heart disease found plaque in more than half
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.
A faster heart-attack blood test was safe, and saved emergency departments no time at all
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.
PCBs and heart risk: what a predicted score can and cannot show
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.
Cannabis edibles impaired simulated driving below the legal blood limits
In a 40-person crossover trial, 10 mg and 20 mg of edible THC degraded lane-keeping while whole-blood THC peaked at 1.6 and 3.4 ng/mL — near or under the thresholds police enforce.
Sweden switched whole regions to a different heart-attack drug, and events did not move
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.
Aiming a pacing lead at the heart's slowest spot did not help 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.
A clot-busting catheter cut early deterioration in serious pulmonary embolism
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.
Dropping aspirin during a heart attack traded fewer bleeds for more events
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.
Traumatic birth ranged from 7% to 69% across 31 countries in one survey
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.
Stopping endocarditis antibiotics early bought two weeks — and more relapses
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.
Ablation for atrial fibrillation beat a sham procedure by 2.6 points, which is nothing
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.
Exercise beats no treatment for back pain, but only if the small trials stay in
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.
Pooling two trials, stopping beta-blockers years after a heart attack met noninferiority
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.
Not the oxygen drops: broken sleep tracked with depression, insomnia explained it
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.
A factor XIa inhibitor added nothing after heart attack — and, notably, no extra bleeding
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.
A gene-silencing drug missed its endpoint in transthyretin heart amyloidosis
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.
In two Yemeni governorates, 4 in 10 infants under six months showed anthropometric failure
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.
A trial finally tested blood thinners in the atrial fibrillation grey zone
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.
SGLT2 drugs slow kidney disease and cut heart events — with or without diabetes
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.
Norway vaccinated a generation against rotavirus. Type 1 diabetes did not fall.
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.
Loud workplaces are common. The evidence that the noise harms the heart is thin
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.
A myosin inhibitor helped in the form of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with no approved drug
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.
Vaginal oestrogen around prolapse surgery: better symptoms, same anatomy
A 293-woman Dutch trial found more women reported improvement at 12 months with perioperative oestriol cream than placebo. Anatomical success, surgical success and reintervention were unchanged.
Head in front of the tackle: where rugby's concussion risk concentrates
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.
Only about 3% of children follow the 'atopic march' from eczema to asthma to hay fever
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.
Lowering high uric acid did not protect the kidneys in two randomised trials
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.
Long COVID before or during pregnancy was not linked to preterm birth in a US cohort
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.
In 43% of energy-availability studies, menstrual status is reported too vaguely to grade
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.
A brief insomnia therapy worked during chemotherapy. Light glasses did not.
SleepCARE randomised 219 Australian women receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer to CBT-I, bright light therapy, both, or sleep hygiene. Only CBT-I moved insomnia — and nothing moved fatigue.
Alcohol disrupts REM sleep from about two drinks. It only speeds sleep onset at five.
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.
A chemically edited tRNA, delivered to the lung, read through a cystic fibrosis stop codon
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.
A hard physical job may not count as healthy exercise: the activity paradox
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.
A quarter of NFL players who died had CTE. Or almost all of them did.
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.
PEARL rapamycin trial results: safe over a year, primary endpoint unmoved
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.
JAK inhibitors regrow hair in severe alopecia areata. About a third reach the endpoint
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.
Open Dialogue missed its primary endpoint. It still cut inpatient admissions.
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.
GLP-1 drugs, death rates and serious mental illness: a very large, very soft signal
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.
A vaccine switch created a natural experiment on shingles shots and heart disease
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.
Eighteen years of follow-up tie menopause age to brain change. The effects are tiny.
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.
In Tuvalu, secondhand smoke tracked with sleep apnoea more closely than smoking did
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.
Dubai's premarital genomic screening flagged 8% of couples as at risk
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.
Court-documented child maltreatment did not register on two epigenetic clocks
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.
Stimulants beat behaviour therapy for ADHD at 14 months. By 8 years the gap was gone.
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.
Do pelvic floor exercises work? For stress incontinence, the evidence is strong
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.
Each 30 minutes of weekly aerobic exercise produced half a kilogram of weight loss
A meta-analysis of 116 randomised trials found weight, waist and body fat falling steadily up to 300 minutes a week. In one 24-week trial, 48% of participants compensated by about 308 kcal a day.
Chile is past vector control for Chagas. Its cohort shows what comes next.
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.
Heart health scores drop during perimenopause, a national analysis finds
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.
Pregnancy itself wasn't the injury risk military doctors expected, a big study finds
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.
CTE in 2026: what the new evidence established, and what it still cannot
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.
An AI read one night of sleep and forecast 130 diseases. Read the fine print.
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 daily zinc pill cut infections by nearly 40% in young children with sickle cell anemia
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.
Largest single-site psilocybin brain-imaging study finds context shapes the response
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.
Large German cohort finds data-driven evidence gut bacteria contribute to depression
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.
Lebanon investigated only 52% of suspected measles cases adequately, a review finds
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.
Removing one mitochondrial protein protected mice from diet-induced obesity
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.
Cranberry does cut recurrent UTIs — in the people it helps, and not the ones it doesn't
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.
In a 322-patient MENA study, most granulomatous disease was recessively inherited
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.
Brazil's childbirth haemorrhage deaths have not fallen in a decade
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.
17,598 people were randomised to a PPI or placebo for three years. One harm signal emerged
Observational studies had linked proton pump inhibitors to fractures, dementia, kidney disease and more. A randomised trial collected all of those outcomes and found only enteric infections.
Irregular sleep is sticky: after six irregular months, it continued 80% of the time
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.
A BCG replacement vaccine missed its target in 6,950 African newborns
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.
Sleep training works short-term, and the follow-up trials find no lasting harm
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.
Eight weeks of mindfulness matched a first-line anxiety drug in a randomised trial
The TAME trial randomised 276 adults with diagnosed anxiety disorders to mindfulness-based stress reduction or escitalopram. The difference on the primary measure was 0.07 points, inside the noninferiority margin.
Fewer than a dozen trials: the whole human evidence base for longevity rapamycin
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.
Before surgery, 3.7% of these children had normal hearing. After, 44.7% did
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.
Five lifestyle factors tracked with half the reflux risk in 42,955 women
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%.
Night shift work is a 'probable' carcinogen. The human evidence remains far from settled
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.
Weekend lie-ins did not undo a week of short nights in two laboratory studies
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.
Drinking more water did not slow kidney decline in the one trial that tested it
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.
Senolytics: two randomised trials, and no confirmed clinical benefit yet
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.
PFAS in pregnancy: a hypertension signal in Puerto Rico, smaller babies in China
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.
The HPV vaccine works, and the cervical cancer data now prove it in real populations
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.
Prenatal PFAS and two child outcomes: sleep scores and bone density
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.
The largest trial of hearing aids and cognitive decline found no overall effect
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.
Bacterial vaginosis keeps coming back — and treating the male partner cut recurrence
Most women have a recurrence within a year of standard treatment. A 2025 trial stopped early once treating a woman alone proved inferior to treating her and her male partner together.
In 7182 Soweto women, the standard sleep questionnaire did not hold together as one score
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.
Hair-loss drugs work. The trials measured hairs per square centimetre, not a full head
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.
For a child's night cough, honey beats over-the-counter cough medicine in the trials
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.
In blinded rechallenge trials, fructans — not gluten — produced the symptoms
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.
What egg freezing actually delivers: age at freezing and egg count decide the odds
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.
The post-workout protein window shrinks once total daily intake is accounted for
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.
Evening screens shift bedtimes. The blue light is the smaller part of it.
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.
Taurine does not fall with age after all, a second Science paper reports
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.
Fructose harms the liver mainly when it adds calories, the trials suggest — not by itself
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.
Oropouche virus damaged human brain organoids along the same pathways Zika does
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.
Most kinds of therapy for depression worked. Almost none outperformed another.
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.
AREDS supplements slow advanced macular degeneration. They do not prevent AMD.
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.
For recurrent yeast infections, suppression works — but mostly while you keep taking it
Weekly fluconazole kept most women free of thrush during treatment, yet by 12 months, six months after stopping, the advantage had narrowed sharply. A newer drug shows more durable suppression.
How much does fertility really fall with age? Less sharply than the scary numbers
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.
Korea's gastric cancer screening works — until about age 70, on new national data
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.
UK firefighters carry more PFAS in their blood than their neighbours do
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.
For recurrent UTIs, a non-antibiotic pill matched daily antibiotics in a trial
In the 240-woman ALTAR trial, methenamine hippurate was non-inferior to standard low-dose antibiotic prophylaxis over a year. Most other non-antibiotic prevention strategies still rest on weak evidence.
Can a cycle-tracking app work as birth control? The evidence, honestly
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.
Five cohorts, 44 sleep measurements, no association with dementia risk
A consortium reduced overnight sleep studies to nine composites. Two tracked with better cognition. None tracked with whether a person later developed dementia.
The strongest breastfeeding evidence is more modest than the slogan suggests
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.
Muscle soreness has no well-evidenced fix, and its standard explanation is shaky
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.
Brain-training games reliably improve one thing: your score on that game
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.
Peanut immunotherapy raises the dose children tolerate — and their anaphylaxis risk
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.
Does the pill change your mood or your weight? What the largest studies found
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.
Testosterone does look lower in each generation. The assays make it hard to be sure.
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.
Four of nine ultra-processing marker categories tracked hypertension risk. Five did not.
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.
Myopia control: strong evidence for high-dose atropine, weak evidence for low-dose
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.
551 back pain trials, 71,126 patients, and almost none of it is good evidence
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.
Stretching is the one injury-prevention measure the trials did not support
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.
No trial has tested whether flossing prevents cavities. Cochrane says so twice.
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.
Feeding infants peanut early prevents allergy. The old advice to avoid it backfired.
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.
The sperm count decline is real in one dataset and unproven in another
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.
Screen time's link to young children's development is real but small
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 with insomnia and apnea saw a bigger blood-pressure drop from CPAP
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.
No clear link between early-pregnancy GLP-1 use and hypertensive disorders
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.
Carbohydrate, not just calories, drove the hormone drop of underfuelling in 16 adults
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.
Severe mental illness in Europe: 2.6 times the death rate, mostly physical disease
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.
Strict morning people carried higher heart attack risk than intermediate types
Both morning and evening chronotypes showed elevated risk against the middle ground, and the effect nearly doubled in people who also had sleep apnea.
Semaglutide and tirzepatide cut alcohol-related hospitalizations by up to 65%
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.
Stockpiled Ebola vaccines make antibodies against the strain spreading in Congo
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.
The earlier a child specializes in one sport, the higher the odds of chronic injury
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.
Selection in Andean genomes appears to be pushing haemoglobin down, not up
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.
Delaying school start times bought 69 minutes of sleep. The mood effect was much smaller.
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.
Women with a pre-eclampsia history had lower breast cancer risk, Finnish data show
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.
Premature ovarian insufficiency is rising in Ontario, with endometriosis the top risk
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.
Elite karate athletes lost the most performance at 5pm in week four of Ramadan
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.
Transplanted insulin-producing cells still working at 14 months, without immunosuppression
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.
A meningococcal vaccine was supposed to prevent gonorrhea. In a trial, it didn't.
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.
Semaglutide users had 51% lower suicidal ideation risk than older GLP-1 users
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.
Most European severe asthma patients on biologics still had active disease
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.
Six months after a repeat ketamine course, only 17% still counted as responders
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.
Tongan caregivers trust health workers. Only 41.5% ever got a vaccine recommendation.
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.
Sleep got worse during Ramadan and mood mostly didn't — in a cohort of 30 Saudi women
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.
Across 18 countries, loneliness predicted decline and death. Being alone did not.
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.
A 13-country survey finds menopause symptom burden varies enormously by country
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.
Bariatric surgery still beats GLP-1 drugs on weight loss, 44,000 patients show
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.
A newer low-oxygen measure predicted disrupted blood pressure better than the standard
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.
Korea tightened its involuntary commitment rules in 2017. Emergency visits then rose.
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.
Traffic noise may account for half a million European depression cases a year
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.
The mental health gap in endometriosis opens years before the diagnosis does
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.
Lifting weights tracked with lower mortality, and the benefit stopped at two hours a week
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.
Workshops tripled use of an ACL prevention programme. The injury effect stayed unclear
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.
The hallucinogen-psychosis link mostly vanished after adjusting for prior illness
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.
A sugar-processing defect in the brain, and a supplement that made it worse in mice
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.
Europe's cystic fibrosis population became mostly adult in a single decade
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.
Women with the densest breast tissue reached menopause later, 429,000-woman cohort
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.
NBA teams rest players to prevent injury. Nine years of data says it didn't work.
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 160,000 nondiabetic adults, GLP-1 users had 41% lower obesity-linked cancer risk
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 heart patients with apnea but no sleepiness, CPAP still improved cardiac features
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.
A Lesotho trial let health workers start diabetes drugs. The result is inconclusive
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.
A single infusion cut LDL cholesterol 62% by rewriting one letter of DNA in the liver
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.
Outside trials, psilocybin's real-world depression response rate ran lower
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.
Can an asthma biologic get patients off long-term steroids? Mostly, a trial finds.
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.
An insomnia drug didn't worsen breathing in severe sleep apnea, a small trial finds
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.
Intellectual disability fell across South America. Autism diagnoses barely moved.
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 H5N1 case in Vietnam was found only in spinal fluid — and nowhere else
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.
Twelve diet scores compared across menopause. Two separated from the rest.
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.
The largest psilocybin depression trial yet missed its primary endpoint
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.
Vigorous exercise tracked with less fragmented sleep in women with apnea, not men
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.
Children with Down syndrome had eight times the cancer risk. In adults it vanished.
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.
Estrogen beat progestin alone in perimenopause, with three times more side effects
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.
Global waist thresholds missed 87.5% of Qatari women with obesity by body fat
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.
Veterans with narcolepsy had 64% higher odds of death, a 25-year VA cohort finds
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.
A genetics analysis ties screen time and mood swings to six gynecologic conditions
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.
2C-B produced MDMA-like and psilocybin-like effects in a head-to-head comparison
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.
An Alzheimer's trial's published results lead with a subgroup, not the full sample
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.
Seven days of low-plastic eating cut three chemical markers in urine
The PERTH trial is a 60-person pilot, and its outcome was urinary chemistry rather than health. Within those limits it answered a question people keep asking.
Lung function dropped as women moved through menopause — whether or not they had HIV
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.
An estimated 8 million Americans used psilocybin in the past year
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.
A decade of Paris marathon data puts a number on cardiac arrest risk. Most survive.
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.
Europe scanned 30,000 livers and found undiagnosed liver disease in 1.6%
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.
The largest off-label cancer drug study found modest benefit, real for a minority
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.
Sleep apnea raised morning blood pressure more in lean patients than in heavier ones
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.
Sleep apnea plus insomnia tripled mortality risk in a six-year cohort of 2,401 patients
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.
One in five midlife women said self-pleasure eased their menopause symptoms
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.
After a lastingly distressing psychedelic experience, nearly a third met PTSD criteria
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.
Machine learning looked for the teenagers school mindfulness helps. It barely found them.
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.
On night one, fixed CPAP preserved sleep continuity better than the auto version
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.
A CRISPR sickle cell therapy looked highly effective in 28 patients, then stopped early
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.
After hysterectomy, endometriosis patients used hormone therapy far more than others
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.
Longer Paxlovid courses did not beat placebo for long COVID in a 964-person trial
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.
Only 5% of Lebanese children who screened positive had ever received care
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.
A DXA body-fat Z-score flagged twice as many athletes with absent periods as BMI did
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.
In rats, tirzepatide cut cocaine-seeking across every measure researchers tried
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.
Waist size carried a stronger cognitive signal than BMI in a Dutch cohort
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.
About 1,000 extra maternal deaths a year: modelling the USAID cuts in six countries
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.
A Qatar birth cohort found tripled stillbirth odds in consanguineous pregnancies
The elevated risk showed up even in babies with no detectable malformation — which is not what the standard recessive-disease explanation predicts.
Elite cricketers reported high skin cancer rates. The survey's authors flag their own bias
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.
Two insomnia drugs alter the sleeping brain differently. Only one tracked with relief.
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.
Earlier menopause, less gray matter: a Cambridge cohort finds both, and can't say why
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.
An estrogen-metabolism lifestyle score tracked with lower breast and uterine cancer risk
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.
A beta blocker blunted sleep apnea's heart-rate spikes, but cost some sleep quality
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.
In eight European countries, obesity added hospital nights. Underweight added far more
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.
AFL men take more head knocks per match than AFLW women. Per hour, the gap nearly vanishes
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.
A Canadian cohort links toddlers' ultraprocessed intake to later behavior problems
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.
In premenopausal survivors, tamoxifen was linked to fivefold endometrial hyperplasia
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.
Catheter ablation after a stroke didn't cut second-stroke risk, a Japanese trial found
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.
A hand squeeze and five chair stands predicted nine long-term conditions
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.
A 600,000-veteran study links GLP-1 drugs to lower substance use disorder risk
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.
A Qatari genome study found 180 genes switched off in living, healthy adults
Sequencing 6,141 people turned high consanguinity into a research advantage: it produced natural human knockouts that population studies elsewhere almost never see.
A single-cell hippocampus atlas finds neurogenic cells and a SuperAger signature
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.
Vitamin D before IVF raised blood levels and left live birth rates unchanged
An 876-participant double-blind trial across 24 Chinese fertility centres nearly doubled serum 25-OHD in women with PCOS. Live births were 52.0% against 50.2% on placebo.
The apnea number surgeons use may be the wrong one for predicting complications
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 278,000-person screening trial found more early cancers — and more early harms
SCREESCO randomised Swedish 60-year-olds to colonoscopy, stool testing, or nothing. After a median 4.8 years, overall cancer incidence barely moved; the stage distribution did.
Denmark followed 877,000 women for 14 years. Hormone therapy did not raise mortality.
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.
Women improved more than men on esketamine — and more on placebo too
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.
Adding exercise to sleep counselling beat either one alone in a small trial
A four-arm randomised trial in 112 young women tested whether high-intensity circuit training and sleep-health counselling add up. On objective measures they did — by minutes.
Releasing sterile male mosquitoes cut dengue risk by about 70% in a Singapore trial
A cluster-randomised trial across 15 population clusters found mosquito abundance collapsed in intervention areas and protective efficacy of 71–72% against symptomatic dengue.
Blood cells enter the brain during sleep to haul away lipids, a fly study finds
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.
Researchers trace a rare vaccine clotting disorder to one antibody gene and one mutation
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.
GLP-1 drugs alongside progestins tracked with lower endometrial cancer risk
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.
Autism's four-to-one sex ratio may be an artefact of when girls get diagnosed
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.
Gene therapy for GM1 gangliosidosis moved the biochemistry. The clinical picture is mixed
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.
About one in ten infection deaths worldwide may be attributable to obesity
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.
Eight phone calls cut loneliness in older adults — and the effect held a year later
A 1,151-person Hong Kong trial used trained lay counsellors, not clinicians, and no internet. The effect sizes are small, and the authors are explicit that they do not know whether it travels.
At an elite ballet school, a third of the older students were injured at any given time
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.
Three months of an osteoporosis drug matched twelve on bone density in a 50-woman trial
The LIDA trial tested whether romosozumab's bone-building window closes early enough to shorten treatment. It met non-inferiority on hip bone density — at a single centre, with 50 participants, over one year.
A model screened 2.6 million cancer papers and flagged nearly one in ten
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.
DeepMind's genome model passed peer review. It reads the part that isn't genes
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.
A six-month habit programme left more people in metabolic remission two years later
In a 618-person randomized trial, 27.8% of the intervention group met the sustained-remission endpoint at 24 months against 21.2% of comparators. The confidence interval nearly touches no effect.
Two January studies took apart the link between acid drugs and stomach cancer
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.
Implanted vagus nerve stimulation held its benefit into a second year in severe depression
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.
Brief bursts of brain activity flagged who would go on to develop Alzheimer's
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.
A review of 158 studies grades the evidence for non-hormonal menopause remedies
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.
Sleep apnea plus insomnia raised hypertension risk — but only in one insomnia subtype
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.
Lifestyle changes in pregnancy cut gestational diabetes — by how much depends on the test
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.
A first treatment for Menkes disease, tested against children who received none
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.
After stopping obesity drugs, weight returns about four times faster than after a diet
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.
Weekend lie-ins tracked with fewer depressive symptoms in a national youth survey
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.
A small insomnia trial asked when in the day a sleeping pill helps — and when it hurts
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.
An enzyme engineered to cross into the brain cut a Hunter syndrome marker by 91%
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.
Do GLP-1 drugs get people off CPAP? A 74,000-patient emulation says: barely.
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.
A tau antibody drove a tangle marker down 90% — in seven people
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.
Premier League players sprint far more than a decade ago, and play more congested minutes
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.
Twenty years of night shifts, and a 32% higher risk of heart, kidney or metabolic disease
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.
Nine percent of older women diagnosed with a menopause syndrome filled the treatment
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.
A trial screened women by risk instead of age. Late-stage cancers did not rise.
WISDOM randomised 28,372 women to annual mammography or a risk-tailored schedule. The risk-based arm met its non-inferiority mark for advanced cancers — with caveats about who enrolled.
New ADHD prescriptions rose 157% in nine years, fastest in women aged 25 to 44
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.
The sleep signal tied to faster cognitive decline sits where sleep studies don't look
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.
Two GLP-1 trials in Alzheimer's report out in one week. Neither slowed the disease.
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.
Ecuador logged 93,680 mental health hospitalisations in a decade
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.
Sleep got longer between 14 and 22 — and fatigue got worse anyway
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.
Two non-hormonal menopause drugs look similar on hot flushes, differ on sleep
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.
Fitness at 18 tracked with sepsis risk decades later in a Swedish cohort
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.
Teenagers overestimate their own sleep by 28 minutes — and not evenly
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.
Sequencing TB in a Brazilian prison shows most transmission happens outside the cell
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.
Orforglipron's diabetes trial lands below its obesity-only result
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.
A hand-hygiene and sepsis-bundle programme cut severe maternal infection by a third
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%.
Argentina's maternal RSV vaccine cut infant hospitalisations by a third in year one
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.
The Lancet's ultra-processed food series makes a displacement argument
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.
Two studies ask what outside the injury shapes concussion recovery
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 mRNA flu vaccine beat a licensed shot by 34.5% — and made more people feel rough
An 18,476-person phase 3 trial and a small human challenge study landed the same day. Both favour the mRNA vaccine against influenza A; neither settles what it does against influenza B.
Personality disorder is common and shortens life — and is absent from the GBD
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.
In an Ecuadorian survey, stress and anxiety predicted insomnia — demographics did not
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 military brain bank found no definitive CTE among 163 donors
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.
A PCSK9 inhibitor cut first heart attacks and strokes in people who had never had one
VESALIUS-CV randomised 12,257 patients with atherosclerosis or diabetes but no prior MI or stroke. Evolocumab reduced the three-point event rate from 8.0% to 6.2% over a median 4.6 years.
Two trials of olezarsen cut triglycerides — and, unusually, cut pancreatitis too
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.
One infusion of a CRISPR therapy cut ANGPTL3 levels by about 80% in 15 people
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.
Fish oil halved serious cardiovascular events in a dialysis trial. The size is the puzzle
PISCES randomised 1,228 haemodialysis patients in Canada and Australia. The headline hazard ratio of 0.57 counts every event, not just the first — and that choice explains part of the gap.
Clozapine outperformed other antipsychotics across six diagnoses — but not in BPD
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.
Neurons in CTE carry mutation patterns seen in Alzheimer's. Head impacts alone did not
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.
Sleep apnea was common in a Tanzanian cohort — and HIV was not the reason
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.
A saliva test for endometriosis reported 96.6% accuracy — in a 77% prevalence group
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.
Tirzepatide added to basal insulin cut HbA1c by 1.5 points in a China trial
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.
Doubling the aspirin dose did not prevent more preeclampsia in a 365-woman trial
The 162 mg group had 14.1% preterm or severe preeclampsia against 17.1% on 81 mg — a difference the trial could not distinguish from chance. Eight placental abruptions occurred on the higher dose and none on the lower.
Wind farm noise woke sleepers less often than road traffic at the same volume
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.
Twenty-five years after ACL reconstruction, patients were playing more sport than controls
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.
Only 12% of 102,564 Korean sleep apnea patients stayed on PAP therapy
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.
An off-the-shelf COVID mRNA vaccine made cold tumours respond in mice
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.
Guideline-consistent breast cancer surgery ranged from 13% to 82% by country
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.
A review of low energy availability in team sport found prevalence between 0% and 80%
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.
Obesity from MC4R mutations came with lower cholesterol, not higher
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.
Finishing a marathon well hydrated does not spare the kidneys or the gut
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.
ER-negative breast cancer rates in Ghana matched those in US Black women
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.
The receptor psychedelics target is less abundant in depression, imaging review finds
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.
Four vaginal energy devices tied on symptoms — with no sham arm to beat
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.
Night-time insomnia predicted no extra heart risk without daytime symptoms
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.
Aspirin halved colorectal cancer recurrence in patients with PI3K pathway mutations
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.
Patients said group sleep restriction was hard, and the group is why it worked
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.
Vaccinating small newborns on day one cut neonatal deaths 17% in an Indian trial
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.
A survey of 1,408 UK students found loneliness almost everywhere it looked
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.
Treating a cloth baby wrap with permethrin cut childhood malaria by two thirds
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.
In 77,100 Norwegian women, processed food risk landed on one side of the colon
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.
Finnish data links chronotype genes to schooling and pay, in men only
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.
Ultra-processed food and diabetes risk, tested outside a Western diet
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.
A female-athlete injury consensus finds almost nothing rated above low certainty
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.
A sham-controlled trial finds brain shunts help walking, not memory
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.
Social isolation rose worldwide after 2019, and it started with the poor
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.
Insomnia flagged a disputed parasomnia in Ukrainian combatants
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.
A triple dose of semaglutide bought about three more percentage points
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.
A Latin American statement narrows testosterone for women to one indication
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.
A CBD supplement left WADA-banned cannabinoids in urine, and exercise raised them
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%.
What protects a teenager from self-harm depends on how old they were
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.
Asked which menopause symptom mattered most, 7,285 women said brain fog
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.
81% of football associations screen players' hearts. Few do it the same way
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.
Seventeen patients, one clinic: setmelanotide outside the trial setting
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%.
An orexin-2 blocker beat zolpidem on night 13 in a dose-finding insomnia trial
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.
An automated internet CBT-I programme held its gains in older adults at 12 months
In 311 adults aged 55 to 95, remission rates were 40% and 51% in the two intervention arms at one year, against 16% for online patient education. Adding human support helped a little.
A Danish trial of virtual-reality therapy for voices found a small, real effect
In 270 patients whose voices persisted despite antipsychotics, the therapy beat matched clinical contact on hallucination severity by 2.26 points — significant, with a Cohen's d of 0.27.
A global insomnia estimate built from 18 studies and 31 countries
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.
A mentoring scheme for pregnant teenagers halved deaths in a Sierra Leone pilot
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.
Massaging lymph vessels through the skin doubled brain fluid drainage in mice
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.
Seven of 25 sports science studies replicated on all three criteria
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.