- 16 posts this week
- 21 drivers moved
- 3 trackers refreshed
- Releases this week
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Official figures
Where the evidence stands
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established strengtheningEnvironment: air, heat, cold
How air pollution, heat and cold affect how long people live, how the attribution is made, and how the balance is changing.
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building mixedCancer
Which cancers are rising and which falling, what screening and new tests find earlier, what treatment has done to survival.
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established mixedSocial connection
How isolation and loneliness shorten lives, proving the causal relationship and what can be done.
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established mixedSmoking and vaping
How far smoking has fallen and how many deaths it still causes, what vaping is doing to the people who take it up, and what generational bans will show.
No papers yet -
emerging mixedMedicine out of hospital
What wearables, remote monitoring and care at home add to how health is measured and delivered, and whether it shows in outcomes.
No papers yet -
building strengtheningObesity, diabetes and the GLP-1 drugs
Are obesity and diabetes still rising, understanding behavioural change and public policy, what difference do GLP-1 and friends make.
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building strengtheningNew medicines
Which new drugs and vaccines could plausibly move how long people live, whether they reach the people who would benefit, and what the record says about medicines and life expectancy.
No papers yet -
building strengtheningMigration and population change
How far fertility has fallen below what was projected, how migration has become the assumption that moves projections most, and what both do to the mortality statistics.
No papers yet -
building strengtheningWhat linked data reveals
What linked registries are making it possible to know about whole populations
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building mixedMeasuring and projecting life expectancy
How the numbers are made, how much they revise their own past, and how well mortality can be forecast — and by whom.
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established steadyInfectious disease and pandemics
Infectious disease and pandemics: understanding both the risks and how well prepared we are
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established strengtheningInequalities in health and length of life
Whether inequalities in health and length of life are widening, where, and what is happening to health at working ages.
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building mixedFrailty and multimorbidity at the oldest ages
Whether the years added after 85 are healthy ones, how frailty and multiple conditions are measured, and where the limits of the data lie.
No papers yet -
established mixedDiet and physical activity
What people eat and how much they move, what the measured evidence says each does to how long they live, and what has been shown to change either.
No papers yet -
contested mixedDementia
Whether dementia is becoming more or less common, what is found earlier and why that clouds the count, what treatment and prevention now do, and what the deaths say.
No papers yet -
building mixedCardiovascular disease
Whether deaths from heart disease and stroke have stopped falling, what is found earlier, what treatment and prevention now do, and what the deaths say.
No papers yet -
emerging strengtheningCapacity, funding and care
What waiting lists, workforce shortage and the slowing growth of health and care spending cost in lives & how societies are paying for and providing care for older people.
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emerging strengtheningBiotechnology against inherited risk and ageing
What are the benefits of genomic risk prediction, what gene therapies can now do and at what cost, and whether anything yet slows ageing itself.
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building strengtheningWhat changes behaviour at scale
What moves a population's behaviour — price, defaults, availability, incentives, information — and what the evidence on vaccination, screening and adherence says about which of them work.
No papers yet -
established mixedAlcohol, drugs and suicide
What is happening to deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide, whether they move together, and how much of it is behaviour and how much circumstance.
No papers yet -
emerging strengtheningAI in medicine
Whether machine learning predicts, detects and decides better than the tools we have, and whether that has yet changed an outcome for a population.
No papers yet
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Item new preprint
Canada's 2025/26 flu vaccine cut A(H3N2) subclade K illness by about a third
In Canada's sentinel outpatient network for 2025/26, vaccine effectiveness was 38% against A(H3N2) overall and 33% against the antigenically mismatched subclade K, 28% against A(H1N1)pdm09 and 55% against B/Victoria.
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Item refines preprint
Austrian registry data show vaccinated adults died less from causes vaccines cannot affect
In Austrian adults with no documented prior infection, vaccinated people had lower mortality from cancer and external causes, with adjusted all-cause hazard ratios of 0.24 to 0.32 in the two weeks after a dose, a measure of the healthy vaccinee effect.
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Item new peer-reviewed
GBD forecasts global life expectancy reaching 78.1 years by 2050, up 4.5 years
The Global Burden of Disease 2021 forecasting analysis projects global life expectancy rising from 73.6 years in 2022 to 78.1 years in 2050, with the largest gains in the lowest-income super-regions, alongside alternative scenarios in which selected risk factors are eliminated by 2050.
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Item new agency
France records 5 764 excess deaths during the June 2026 heatwave, 36% above expected
Santé publique France estimates 5 764 excess all-cause deaths (+36%) in the départements and days covered by the record heatwave of 17 June to 2 July 2026, across all age groups from 15 upwards, published three weeks after the event and not yet consolidated.
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Item new preprint
Mortality from secondary lung cancer rose 17.5% above 2000 levels in the US by 2024
Secondary malignant neoplasm of the lung (C78.0) recorded on death certificates rose from 7.22 per 100,000 population in 2008 to 11.38 in 2024, 17.5% above 2000 levels, with disproportionate increases among adults aged 25–34 years (70.5%).
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Item confirms preprint
Sub-Saharan African family carers report physical, emotional and financial burden
A scoping review of 15 studies found that family caregivers of older adults with chronic life-limiting illnesses in Sub-Saharan Africa reported physical exhaustion, emotional distress, financial hardship and social isolation, alongside minimal formal health system support.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Healthy working life expectancy at 50 averaged 11 years across 28 countries
In a 28-country cohort of 175,318 adults aged 50 and over, healthy working life expectancy at 50 was 10.98 years, 9.82 for women and 12.36 for men, with stroke associated with a 5.49-year reduction and higher health spending, governance quality and flexible work arrangements with longer spans.
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Item new preprint
Long-run mortality from tropical cyclones concentrates in socially vulnerable counties
Among high-vulnerability counties in Texas, tropical cyclone exposure was associated with elevated all-cause mortality persisting long after landfall, whereas the effect in lower-vulnerability counties was not statistically significant.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Social role participation shows dose-response association with lower systemic inflammation
Greater social role participation was associated with lower systemic inflammation, with a graded pattern showing progressively stronger benefits across increasing levels of social integration compared to isolation.
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Item refines preprint
Chronic loneliness associates with worse health and functioning in older age
Chronic loneliness was longitudinally associated with worse general health, functional capacity and mental wellbeing in 4,090 older English adults, with isolation patterns showing reversible effects on cognition and mental health.
All items · Data watch · Revisions
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Releases this week
Next seven days: ONS weekly deaths (Wed 16); Eurostat excess mortality (Wed 16); ONS monthly deaths (Thu 17); UKHSA all-cause mortality surveillance (Thu 17); CBS Eenzaamheid, in Dutch (Fri 18); Eurostat Healthcare personnel - dentists, pharmacists and physiotherapists (Fri 18). Full calendar