- 58 posts this week
- 21 drivers followed
- 3 trackers refreshed
- Releases this week
- 0 new on your watchlist
Official figures
Where the evidence stands
-
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.
-
building mixedCancer
Which cancers are rising and which falling, what screening and new tests find earlier, what treatment has done to survival.
-
established mixedSocial connection
How isolation and loneliness shorten lives, proving the causal relationship and what can be done.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
established steadyInfectious disease and pandemics
Infectious disease and pandemics: understanding both the risks and how well prepared we are
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Item new peer-reviewed
Combined GLP-1 and SGLT2 use was linked to lower mortality after AF ablation, not less AF
In propensity-matched US health records for 2018 to 2024, atrial fibrillation recurrence after catheter ablation was similar whether patients took a GLP-1 receptor agonist, an SGLT2 inhibitor or both, while all-cause mortality was 40% to 46% lower with the combination, on small numbers of deaths.
-
Item refines peer-reviewed
H-FABP discriminated coronary disease poorly (AUC 0.56) but tracked eight-year mortality
In 2,690 patients with suspected functionally relevant coronary artery disease, heart-type fatty acid-binding protein discriminated poorly at diagnosis (AUC 0.56), yet eight-year all-cause mortality ranged from 7.7% in its lowest quartile to 44% in the highest.
-
Item refines peer-reviewed
Adolescent movement behaviours explained 2.0 points of a 6.9-point CVD risk gap
In 6,608 US adolescents followed for over two decades, the 6.9 percentage-point gap in predicted 30-year cardiovascular risk by parental education fell to 4.9 points in a scenario removing all unhealthy physical activity, screen time and sleep, and the relative gap was unchanged.
-
Item confirms peer-reviewed
A Chinese dual GLP-1/GIP agonist produced 11% to 18% weight loss at 24 weeks in phase 2
In a 120-participant phase 2 trial in Chinese adults with overweight or obesity and no diabetes, once-weekly BGM0504 produced mean weight loss of 10.7% to 18.3% across three doses at 24 weeks, against a 0.1% gain on placebo, with mostly gastrointestinal adverse events rising with dose.
-
Item refines peer-reviewed
FAP relatives found by family screening had a median SMR of 0.66, symptomatic cases 11.09
In a UK registry of 1,917 people with familial adenomatous polyposis, relatives identified through family screening had mortality comparable to the general population (median SMR 0.66), while those presenting with symptoms had a median SMR of 11.09.
-
Item refines preprint
Plasma p-tau217 tracked Alzheimer's-type atrophy but not general brain ageing
In 818 cognitively unimpaired participants of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, plasma p-tau217 measured before symptoms was associated with later mild cognitive impairment or dementia due to Alzheimer's disease and was the only marker associated with medial temporal lobe atrophy.
-
Item new peer-reviewed
An enriched Head Start programme improved 7 of 11 well-being measures at ages 21 to 22
A randomised trial that added intensive social-emotional and language support to Head Start classrooms for 356 low-income four-year-olds found benefits on 7 of 11 well-being measures at ages 21 to 22, including loneliness, depressive symptoms and conduct problems.
-
Item new preprint
Daraxonrasib is estimated at $500,637 per QALY in pancreatic cancer at US launch price
A modelled economic evaluation of daraxonrasib in previously treated metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma estimated 0.506 additional QALYs at an incremental cost of $253,171, or $500,637 per QALY at the $39,800 monthly launch price, in a preprint not yet peer reviewed.
-
Item refines peer-reviewed
Cancer polygenic scores were weaker in African-ancestry than European-ancestry veterans
Among 560,287 US veterans, all 13 cancer-specific polygenic risk scores were associated with their own cancer in European-ancestry participants (OR 1.05 to 1.70 per standard deviation), but only 5 of 13 reached significance in African-ancestry participants, with smaller effects (OR 1.01 to 1.48).
-
Item new peer-reviewed
Women and deprived patients had higher one-year mortality in English aortic disease
Among 33,793 new thoracic aortic disease diagnoses in England between 2013 and 2018, one-year mortality was higher among women, older patients and those from deprived areas, and patients from deprived areas were less likely to receive early intervention or genetic referral.
All items · Data watch · Revisions
Follow
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 5 more. Full calendar