COIOS — International risk research catalyst focused on medical advances, behavioural insights and data science
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Official figures
Where the evidence stands
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building mixedRevisions and new sources
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established mixedDiet, exercise and sleep
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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building strengtheningInnovation in treatment
Treatments that did not exist before — drugs, operations, devices — and whether they reach the people who would benefit.
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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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building strengtheningObesity, diabetes and GLP-1
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 strengtheningWhat linked data reveals
What linked registries are making it possible to know about whole populations
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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 at a distance
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 mixedHeart and stroke
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 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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established mixedAlcohol and drug use
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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established steadyInfection and pandemics
Infectious disease and pandemics: understanding both the risks and how well prepared we are
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building mixedAdherence and persistence
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building mixedForecasts and their 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 strengtheningA changing climate
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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established mixedMental health
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emerging mixedSlowing ageing itself
Whether anything yet slows ageing itself, rather than treating one disease at a time, and how we would know if it did.
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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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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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emerging mixedValue in health
What a treatment, programme or policy is worth against what it costs, and how far the models that decide it can be trusted.
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building strengtheningChanging 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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building mixedFrailty and multimorbidity
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 strengtheningHealth funding and inequalities
Whether inequalities in health and length of life are widening, where, and what is happening to health at working ages.
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Item refines statistics
Scottish drug deaths rose 11% in 2025, with nitazenes linked to a fifth of fatalities
Drug-related deaths in Scotland rose by 11% to 1133 in 2025, with 247 (22%) linked to nitazenes, more than triple the 2024 figure, although routine postmortem testing for etonitazene began only in May 2025.
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Item new preprint
Safe 7-day primaquine package costs US$6,636 per DALY averted in Indonesia
A decision-tree model of a G6PD-screening and high-dose primaquine package for Plasmodium vivax radical cure in Indonesia gave an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of US$6,636 per DALY averted from the health system perspective, above the 1x GDP per capita threshold of US$4,925.
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Data new preprint
A UK database of ultra-processing markers is released for Nova classification research
Researchers have built and released a freely accessible UK database of food additives and non-culinary food substances coded as markers of ultra-processing, with two alternative definitions reflecting ambiguity in additive technical functions.
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Item new preprint
Modelled July COVID vaccination averts most hospitalisations in US over-65s
A US transmission model calibrated to 2024-25 hospitalisation data found that universal annual COVID-19 vaccination in July gave 441 hospitalisations per 100,000 among adults aged 65 and over, against 578 with none, and the gain vanished if coverage fell by 5-10 points.
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Item refines preprint
Higher-than-usual personal particulate exposure precedes less walking the next day
In 67 UK adults aged 50-85 wearing personal air quality monitors and accelerometers for five days, a rise of 2.6 micrograms per cubic metre above usual PM2.5 exposure was followed by 8 minutes less light activity and 483 fewer steps the next day.
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Item new peer-reviewed
A multicancer blood test did not cut late-stage cancer diagnoses in 142,250 adults
In the NHS-Galleri randomised trial of 142,250 adults aged 50 to 77 in England, three annual rounds of a blood-based multicancer early-detection test alongside usual care did not reduce stage III or IV cancer incidence across 12 prespecified cancers (rate ratio 1.03).
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Unemployed and unmarried Danes start cardioprotective diabetes drugs less often
Among 81,361 Danes with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, initiation of SGLT2 inhibitors and GLP-1 receptor agonists was 23% lower in unemployed men and 19% lower in unemployed women than in the employed, while the educational gradient vanished after adjustment.
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Item new peer-reviewed
Photo checks put a quarter of surveyed US GLP-1 users on compounded products
In an online US survey of 322 adults reporting at least three months of weekly semaglutide or tirzepatide use, blinded review of photographs of the medication classified 25.8% as using compounded products, and self-report agreed with the photo coding for 82.6% of participants.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Faster door-to-balloon time tracks lower STEMI mortality only in higher-risk patients
In 4,513 Chinese STEMI patients treated by primary PCI, a door-to-balloon time over 60 minutes was associated with higher 3-year mortality among those with GRACE scores above 140 (HR 1.69), with no difference seen in lower-risk patients.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Gait speed predicted mortality at ages 90-94 but not at 95 and over
In 502 US adults aged 90 and over, each 0.21 m/s faster gait speed was associated with 20% lower mortality overall, but the association held only at ages 90-94 (HR 0.70) and disappeared at 95+ (HR 1.02).
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Item refines preprint
Higher-than-usual personal particulate exposure precedes less walking the next day
In 67 UK adults aged 50-85 wearing personal air quality monitors and accelerometers for five days, a rise of 2.6 micrograms per cubic metre above usual PM2.5 exposure was followed by 8 minutes less light activity and 483 fewer steps the next day.
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Item new peer-reviewed
MDMA-related fatal poisonings in Australia rose to 2019 then fell through 2023
A national coronial series of 217 MDMA-related fatal poisonings in Australia found the population rate rising sharply to 2019 (annual percentage change 61.5) then falling to 2023 (-26.7), with 82.5% of deaths attributed to multiple drug toxicity and 78.8% occurring in private settings.
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Item refines preprint
High-volume vigorous exercise in mid-life tracks higher fracture risk in UK Biobank
In 322,749 UK Biobank participants aged 40-65, self-reported fracture in the previous five years was more common among those in the highest quintile of leisure-time physical activity, while activity at the level of WHO recommendations showed no such association.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Most US patients starting fostemsavir remained on it at 12 months in a 77-person cohort
A retrospective US cohort of 77 heavily treatment-experienced people with HIV initiating fostemsavir between 2020 and 2023 found most still on the drug at 12 months, with high adherence in the subset for whom dispensing data allowed proportion of days covered to be calculated.
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Item confirms preprint
Socially isolated UK Biobank participants had 34% higher all-cause mortality
In 490,114 UK Biobank participants followed from 2006 to 2022, baseline social isolation carried a hazard ratio of 1.34 for all-cause mortality and 1.49 for cardiovascular mortality, with only weak evidence that the association varied by usual transport mode.
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Item refines statistics
Scottish drug deaths rose 11% in 2025, with nitazenes linked to a fifth of fatalities
Drug-related deaths in Scotland rose by 11% to 1133 in 2025, with 247 (22%) linked to nitazenes, more than triple the 2024 figure, although routine postmortem testing for etonitazene began only in May 2025.
-
Item new preprint
Safe 7-day primaquine package costs US$6,636 per DALY averted in Indonesia
A decision-tree model of a G6PD-screening and high-dose primaquine package for Plasmodium vivax radical cure in Indonesia gave an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of US$6,636 per DALY averted from the health system perspective, above the 1x GDP per capita threshold of US$4,925.
-
Data new preprint
A UK database of ultra-processing markers is released for Nova classification research
Researchers have built and released a freely accessible UK database of food additives and non-culinary food substances coded as markers of ultra-processing, with two alternative definitions reflecting ambiguity in additive technical functions.
-
Item new preprint
Modelled July COVID vaccination averts most hospitalisations in US over-65s
A US transmission model calibrated to 2024-25 hospitalisation data found that universal annual COVID-19 vaccination in July gave 441 hospitalisations per 100,000 among adults aged 65 and over, against 578 with none, and the gain vanished if coverage fell by 5-10 points.
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Item new preprint
England's ECHILD linkage under-covers deprived and minoritised ethnic children
ECHILD, which links hospital, school and social care records for 21 million children in England, found lower coverage in London, deprived areas and minoritised ethnic groups, with 90% of birth records linked to school records and 88% of pupils linked to a patient record.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Korea's 2025-26 avian flu season carried diverse H5Nx genotypes, one of European origin
Genomic surveillance of 62 poultry outbreaks and 63 wild bird detections in Korea during winter 2025-26 found extensive clade 2.3.4.4b reassortment, including the European H5N1 genotype EA-2024-DI.2.1 that spread across Europe in 2025, alongside novel H5N1 and H5N9 poultry genotypes.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Pacemaker after cardiac surgery carries modestly higher long-term mortality in Sweden
Among 76 223 Swedish adults undergoing cardiac surgery between 2006 and 2020, the 2.8% who received a permanent pacemaker within 30 days had a 9% higher adjusted risk of all-cause death and a 36% higher risk of heart failure hospitalisation over a mean 6.8 years.
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Item new preprint
Wastewater sequencing in Lagos found enteric viruses, cholera and mcr resistance genes
Virus-enriched sequencing of untreated wastewater from open drainage canals in Lagos over July and August 2024 recovered a human virome dominated by enteric adenoviruses, astroviruses and caliciviruses, alongside Vibrio cholerae and mcr resistance genes.
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Item refines preprint
Immunosuppressed people are less protected than their antibody levels would suggest
A meta-analysis of antibody responses to mRNA COVID-19 vaccination found binding antibody levels 54.5-fold lower in people on B-cell depleting therapy than in healthy controls, and protection against infection and hospitalisation lower at any given antibody level.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Carbapenem resistance tracked death in ICU-acquired bloodstream infection
Among 352 adults who developed a gram-negative bloodstream infection at least 48 hours after ICU admission, half the isolates were carbapenem-resistant and 30-day mortality was 57.9%, with resistance independently associated with death and appropriate early treatment with survival.
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Releases this week
Next seven days: CBS Overleden door een val *, in Dutch (Tue 29); Eurostat Cancer screening (Tue 29); Eurostat Deaths due to diseases of the circulatory system by region (Tue 29); ONS weekly deaths (Wed 30); ONS Deaths of homeless people in England and Wales (Thu 1); and 6 more. Full calendar