- 40 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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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.
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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.
No papers yet -
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.
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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.
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.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Greenspace tracks lower pollution-related respiratory mortality, mainly via mediation
A systematic review of 14 good-quality cohort studies, mostly European, found residential greenspace associated with lower air-pollution-related respiratory mortality and better lung function, with the association appearing more consistently in mediation than in moderation analyses.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
Diabetes was commoner in older US flu inpatient deaths than in COVID deaths
Among US inpatient decedents aged over 65, 46.6% of those dying of COVID-19 had diabetes compared with 63.1% of influenza decedents after age standardisation, indicating the widely cited diabetes share of COVID deaths was not distinctive to that virus.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
GLP-1 pancreatic cancer hazard shifts with the comparator diabetes drug
In a TriNetX cohort of adults with type 2 diabetes, GLP-1 receptor agonist initiators had a lower hazard of pancreatic cancer than insulin users (HR 0.43), higher hazards than metformin, sulfonylurea, thiazolidinedione and DPP-4 users, and no difference against SGLT2 inhibitors.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Lowering colorectal screening to 45 still misses much early-onset cancer, review finds
A systematic review of 45 studies found that colorectal neoplasia detection rates rise steeply with age across the under-50s, so screening from 45 captures the most yield, yet a considerable share of early-onset cases arise before 45 and fall outside eligibility.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Cardiogenic shock deaths fall stepwise with hospital cardiac capability in US data
Across an estimated 1.18 million US cardiogenic shock hospitalisations from 2016 to 2022, crude in-hospital mortality fell from 64.4% at hospitals without percutaneous coronary intervention to 36.5% at transplant and LVAD centres, with the gradient persisting after adjustment.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
GLP-1 drugs cut weight by 6.7 kg in antipsychotic-treated patients in eight small trials
A meta-analysis of eight randomised trials in 664 patients taking antipsychotics found GLP-1 receptor agonists reduced body weight by 6.74 kg, BMI by 2.37 kg/m² and HbA1c by 0.61 percentage points, with semaglutide the largest effect and more gastrointestinal adverse events.
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Item new peer-reviewed
Second primary lung cancers in Sweden have risen steadily since 1980
A Swedish national registry analysis covering 1961 to 2021 identified 853 second primary lung cancers, rising almost linearly from 1980, with a relative risk of 3.59 compared with first lung cancer and up to 20-fold after early-onset female adenocarcinoma.
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Lung screening invitations in Scotland drew a 24% response, lowest in deprived areas
Inviting people with a recorded smoking history from Scottish primary care records to a lung health check produced a 23.8% response across four health boards, lower in more deprived practices, and non-responders were more often current smokers (69.3% vs 49.8%).
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Item confirms peer-reviewed
Québec's first universal nirsevimab season cut infant RSV hospitalisations by two-thirds
A province-wide evaluation of Québec's first universal nirsevimab campaign found RSV-associated hospitalisations in infants aged 0-5 months fell 66% (95% CI 58-71) in 2024-25, with acute bronchiolitis emergency visits down 35%.
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Item refines peer-reviewed
GLP-1 drugs did not lower new sleep apnoea diagnoses in UK diabetes records
In UK primary-care records covering 206,000 adults with type 2 diabetes and obesity, starting a GLP-1 receptor agonist rather than a weight-neutral DPP-4 inhibitor was not associated with fewer new diagnoses of obstructive sleep apnoea (HR 1.07, 95% CI 0.93-1.23).
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Releases this week
Next seven days: CBS Eenzaamheid, in Dutch (Fri 18); Eurostat Healthcare personnel - dentists, pharmacists and physiotherapists (Fri 18); NCHS Deaths (Tue 22); ONS weekly deaths (Wed 23); NCHS Changes in Suicide Rates in the United States (Wed 23); and 3 more. Full calendar