Healthcare today
Healthcare across the world faces existential challenges: escalating demands against constrained resources, increasing co-morbidities and widening inequalities in health.
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Healthcare today posts, most recent first.
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Item refines Peer-reviewed
Scottish AF patients never started on anticoagulants had three times the annual costs
In 47,427 Scots with incident atrial fibrillation and a CHA2DS2-VASc score of 2 or more, continuous oral anticoagulation was associated with annual healthcare costs of GBP 7,288 per patient against GBP 22,751 for those never started.
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Item refines Peer-reviewed
Weight loss after a prediabetes diagnosis tracked lower mortality 34 years later
In 540 Chinese adults with impaired glucose tolerance followed for 34 years, those losing at least 5% of body weight during the first six years had a hazard ratio of 0.67 for all-cause death and 0.56 for cardiovascular death compared with those who lost none.
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Item refines Peer-reviewed
Digital interventions after stroke were linked to 5.8 mmHg lower systolic pressure
A meta-analysis of 29 studies and 8,389 stroke or TIA survivors found digital health interventions associated with a pooled 5.8 mmHg lower systolic blood pressure (95% CI -9.9 to -1.6), with prediction intervals crossing the null and no consistent effect on lipids or weight.
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Item confirms Peer-reviewed
Childhood disadvantage carried a 26% higher rate of adult all-cause mortality
A meta-analysis of 102 cohort studies covering about 8.5 million people in 24 countries found adult all-cause mortality 26% higher for those whose fathers held the lowest-ranked occupations, with a relative index of inequality of 2.33 for childhood economic circumstances.
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Item refines Peer-reviewed
Tirzepatide initiators stayed on treatment longer than semaglutide initiators
In propensity-matched US claims data on adults with type 2 diabetes, 12-month adherence was 60% for tirzepatide initiators against 45% for semaglutide initiators among GLP-1-naive patients, with persistence of 62% against 47%.
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Item refines Peer-reviewed
Proteomic organ clocks tracked 16-year mortality slightly less than epigenetic age
In the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936, accelerated liver, immune and heart proteomic ages were associated with 16-year mortality at hazard ratios of 1.38-1.43 per standard deviation, against 1.44-1.62 for GrimAge2, brain volume, respiratory function and cognition.
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Item new Peer-reviewed
GLP-1 prescribing to US children aged 8-11 with obesity rose but stayed under 1%
Among 3.5 million US children aged 8 to 11 with obesity and without diabetes recorded in Epic Cosmos between 2019 and June 2026, 0.6% received a GLP-1 receptor agonist prescription, with rates highest among 11-year-olds, girls, and those with obesity-related comorbidities.
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Item new Peer-reviewed
Daily cancer deaths in Japan rose 0.88% per 10 micrograms per cubic metre of PM2.5
A case-crossover study of daily deaths across all 47 Japanese prefectures from 2013 to 2022 found a 0.88% rise in all-cancer mortality per 10 micrograms per cubic metre of PM2.5 at lag 0-2 days, an association that did not survive adjustment for NO2 or SO2.
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Item new Peer-reviewed
Modelled depression screening in KwaZulu-Natal averted HIV infections at $480 per QALY
A compartmental transmission model for KwaZulu-Natal estimated that screening and behavioural treatment for major depressive disorder would avert HIV infections at $340 per infection and $480 per QALY gained, with combined alcohol and depression strategies averting 179,560 infections by 2030.
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Item new Peer-reviewed
One in nine older US cannabis users meets criteria for cannabis use disorder
In the 2021-2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 8.9% of US adults aged 65 and over had used cannabis in the past year, and 11.4% of those met DSM-5 criteria for cannabis use disorder, 76.0% of them at mild severity.
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Item new Peer-reviewed
Oral GLP-1 agonist safiglipron cut HbA1c by up to 1.45 points in type 2 diabetes
In the OUTSTAND-1 randomised placebo-controlled trial, the once-daily oral small-molecule GLP-1 receptor agonist safiglipron reduced HbA1c by up to 1.45 percentage points over 32 weeks in people with type 2 diabetes not taking glucose-lowering medication, with modest effects on body weight.
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Item refines Peer-reviewed
Loneliness carries most of the social signal for psychological distress
Across 48,377 respondents in 29 European countries and prospective US Health and Retirement Study waves, loneliness had the largest association with psychological distress of the social measures tested, with all other social variables adding a cross-validated AUC gain of only 0.006.
