- 12 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 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 to the people who quit with it, and what the first generational bans will show.
No papers yet -
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 mixedSocial connection
How much isolation and loneliness shorten lives, how far the association is causal, and whether anything has been shown to change it.
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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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emerging strengtheningCapacity, funding and care
What waiting, 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, and where the evidence for both comes from.
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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.
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 -
established strengtheningEnvironment: air, heat, cold
What air pollution, heat and cold do to how long people live, how the attribution is made, and which way the net effect is moving.
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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 -
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 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 strengtheningWhat linked data reveals
What linked registries are making it possible to know about whole populations
No papers yet -
established steadyInfectious disease and pandemics
Infectious disease and pandemics: what they now cost in deaths, and how well we are defended
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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.
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 -
emerging strengtheningBiotechnology against inherited risk and ageing
Whether genomic risk prediction is good enough to use on whole populations, what gene therapies can now do and at what cost, and whether anything yet slows ageing itself.
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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.
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 strengtheningObesity, diabetes and the GLP-1 drugs
How far obesity and diabetes are still rising, what is found earlier, what the new drugs do at population scale and who takes them, and what the deaths say.
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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, 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.
No papers yet
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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.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Home-based care use varies across Japan's municipalities despite universal insurance
Home-based long-term care services in Japan show significant geographic clustering and variation despite universal insurance coverage, associated with municipal characteristics including financial strength and care provider availability.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Polygenic score for osteoporosis shows modest discrimination gain in Japanese adults
A Japanese-ancestry polygenic score for ultrasound-defined osteoporosis added little to discrimination beyond age and sex, but quintile stratification gave incidence rate ratios of 1.42 in the lowest and 0.70 in the highest quintile over a mean 3.5 years of follow-up.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Early-onset colorectal cancer shows distinct molecular profile but mixed survival
A scoping review of 46 studies from 22 countries found early-onset colorectal cancer (≤50 years) had more MSI/dMMR tumours and less BRAF V600E than late-onset disease, while survival differences varied across populations and tracked mainly with stage at presentation.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Weight loss drives bone loss through endocrine, nutritional and mechanical mechanisms
Weight loss raises bone turnover and lowers bone mineral density via endocrine, nutritional, mechanical and microbiota-mediated pathways, with greater loss in older and lean adults and after severe caloric restriction such as with GLP-1 drugs or bariatric surgery.
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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