- 103 posts this week
- 21 drivers followed
- 3 trackers refreshed
- Releases this week
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Official figures
Where the evidence stands
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building mixedThe sources behind the numbers
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building mixedForecasts and their track record
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 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.
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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.
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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.
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building strengtheningWhat linked data reveals
What linked registries are making it possible to know about whole populations
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Item new peer-reviewed
Projected cancer cases in sexual and gender minorities rise with self-identification
A projection applying cancer incidence rates to survey identification proportions estimated 15 times more cases at ages 55 to 59 among Millennial than Silent Generation sexual and gender minority Americans, 77,521 against 5,134 over five years, driven by who identifies rather than by risk.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Modelled measles scale-up in Kenya averts 879 deaths over ten years
A Markov model of measles vaccination in Kenya estimated that maintaining current funding would avert 213 deaths over ten years at $1,269 per DALY averted, while reaching 95% two-dose coverage would avert 879 deaths at $1,093 per DALY averted, at a very high cost to the health budget.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
RSV awareness raised vaccination odds for White and Black but not Hispanic mothers
In a survey of 650 pregnant and postpartum US women, awareness of RSV was associated with a 26.4 point higher probability of maternal RSV vaccination among White women and 23.2 points among Black women, but only 6.9 points, not statistically significant, among Hispanic women.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Longer stays tracked higher death and longer waits lower, a triage artefact
A retrospective analysis of 593,673 emergency presentations at a New Zealand hospital between 2016 and 2024 found longer departmental stays associated with worse outcomes and longer waiting times associated with better ones, reflecting triage order rather than any effect of waiting.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Cost-effectiveness of antiobesity drugs varies widely across 26 published models
A systematic review of 26 full economic evaluations of approved antiobesity medications found the results heterogeneous and highly sensitive to model assumptions, with semaglutide consistently more cost-effective than liraglutide and tirzepatide often above lower willingness-to-pay thresholds.
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Item new peer-reviewed
Projected cancer cases in sexual and gender minorities rise with self-identification
A projection applying cancer incidence rates to survey identification proportions estimated 15 times more cases at ages 55 to 59 among Millennial than Silent Generation sexual and gender minority Americans, 77,521 against 5,134 over five years, driven by who identifies rather than by risk.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Longer stays tracked higher death and longer waits lower, a triage artefact
A retrospective analysis of 593,673 emergency presentations at a New Zealand hospital between 2016 and 2024 found longer departmental stays associated with worse outcomes and longer waiting times associated with better ones, reflecting triage order rather than any effect of waiting.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Particulate matter shows no overall association with venous thromboembolism
An updated meta-analysis of 19 observational studies covering more than 4.5 million people found no significant overall association between long-term particulate exposure and venous thromboembolism, with a modest one appearing only among studies reporting in the same units.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Only the cognitive part of education's polygenic score tracks Alzheimer's disease
Across four cohorts totalling 3,483 participants, the cognitive component of an educational attainment polygenic score was inversely associated with Alzheimer's diagnosis and with Braak stage, while the non-cognitive component showed no association with any outcome.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
A claims-wide screen of SGLT2 inhibitors in kidney disease finds no new harms
A scan of all diagnosis codes in 31,246 matched pairs of US patients with type 2 diabetes and stage III to IV chronic kidney disease found only the already-known genital infection signal for SGLT2 inhibitors against GLP-1 receptor agonists, with nothing from inpatient or emergency codes.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
RSV awareness raised vaccination odds for White and Black but not Hispanic mothers
In a survey of 650 pregnant and postpartum US women, awareness of RSV was associated with a 26.4 point higher probability of maternal RSV vaccination among White women and 23.2 points among Black women, but only 6.9 points, not statistically significant, among Hispanic women.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Current smokers were twice as likely to skip follow-up after lung CT screening
In a Japanese community low-dose CT screening programme, 19.3% of abnormal findings had no documented diagnostic follow-up within a year, and current smokers had roughly twice the odds of nonattendance as former smokers (adjusted OR 2.15, 95% CI 1.71-2.70).
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Text messages raised cardiovascular check-up visits where an online course did not
In a three-arm Australian trial of 941 adults aged 45 and over, a 12-week stroke prevention text message programme raised self-reported visits for cardiovascular risk assessment from 29.0% to 41.3% (RR 1.43), while an equivalent online course showed no effect.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Former US service members died of despair causes more often than civilians in two states
Linking Massachusetts and Minnesota death certificates for 176,719 decedents aged 18-64 to military personnel files, former service members had proportionate mortality ratios for alcohol, drug and suicide deaths of 111.9 in Massachusetts and 106.7 in Minnesota relative to non-military decedents.
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Item new preprint
Wastewater-triggered social media ads did not raise season-level vaccine uptake
A county-randomised trial in 40 New York State counties found an 11-week social media campaign triggered by community wastewater surveillance raised weekly COVID-19 vaccine doses and lowered weekly influenza doses during the campaign, with neither difference holding over the full season.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Modelled measles scale-up in Kenya averts 879 deaths over ten years
A Markov model of measles vaccination in Kenya estimated that maintaining current funding would avert 213 deaths over ten years at $1,269 per DALY averted, while reaching 95% two-dose coverage would avert 879 deaths at $1,093 per DALY averted, at a very high cost to the health budget.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Cost-effectiveness of antiobesity drugs varies widely across 26 published models
A systematic review of 26 full economic evaluations of approved antiobesity medications found the results heterogeneous and highly sensitive to model assumptions, with semaglutide consistently more cost-effective than liraglutide and tirzepatide often above lower willingness-to-pay thresholds.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Whole-genome sequencing gave a genetic diagnosis in 4.9% of kidney anomaly cases
Whole-genome sequencing of 1,052 people with congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract in the UK 100,000 Genomes Project gave a single-gene diagnosis in 4.9%, with common and low-frequency variants estimated to explain 23% of phenotypic variance.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
US life expectancy ranked 38th in 2023 as the gap with peer countries widened
An analysis of US and comparator mortality data finds US life expectancy ranked 38th globally in 2023, with the gap against 16 high-income countries widening and the rising death rates concentrated at younger and working ages.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Austrian all-cause mortality in 2024 sat at or below 2019 at every age over 60
An Austrian analysis of 2024 death certificates found all-cause mortality equal to or below 2019 in every group aged 60 and over despite 1,212 reported COVID-19 deaths, while weighting contributing causes put the COVID death rate at 0.51 to 0.58 of the unweighted figure.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
AI models predict death after hip fracture but are seldom externally validated
A systematic review of 40 studies published between 2010 and 2026 found that machine learning models for outcomes after hip fracture, most often death, achieved moderate to strong discrimination but were limited by inconsistent external validation and sparse calibration.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Remote exercise rehabilitation raised peak oxygen uptake in cardiac patients
A meta-analysis of 13 randomised trials in 958 adults with cardiovascular disease found exercise-based telerehabilitation improved peak oxygen uptake by 2.58 mL/kg/min against usual care, on a 95% prediction interval running from -1.28 to 6.44 and substantial heterogeneity.
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Item refines preprint
AI on breast biopsy slides flagged intermediate-risk patients who gained from chemotherapy
Applied without retraining to 6,735 TAILORx trial participants, an AI model reading H&E slides alongside clinical variables predicted disease-free interval (C-index 0.736) and, within the intermediate-risk group, separated patients who gained from chemotherapy from those who did not.
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Item new preprint
Peer-derived fMRI neurofeedback during a film reduced craving in opioid use disorder
A real-time fMRI study trained people with opioid use disorder to align prefrontal activity with a signal derived from peers further into recovery watching the same film, and reported reduced craving against sham feedback, in a preprint that gives no sample size.
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Item confirms preprint
Gradient boosting did no better than logistic regression on HPV vaccine hesitancy
In 1,156 Cameroonian parents of children aged 9 to 18, XGBoost, random forest and logistic regression predicted HPV vaccine hesitancy almost identically (AUC 0.841-0.870, XGBoost 0.870 against 0.869, p=0.965), with logistic regression the best calibrated.
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Releases this week
Next seven days: NCHS Deaths (Tue 22); ONS weekly deaths (Wed 23); NCHS Changes in Suicide Rates in the United States (Wed 23); UKHSA Cover of vaccination evaluated rapidly (COVER) programme 2026 to 2027 (Thu 24); UKHSA flu and COVID-19 surveillance (Thu 24); and 6 more. Full calendar