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 confirms Peer-reviewed
A claims-wide screen of SGLT2 inhibitors in kidney disease finds no new harms
A scan of all diagnosis codes in 31,246 matched pairs of US patients with type 2 diabetes and stage III to IV chronic kidney disease found only the already-known genital infection signal for SGLT2 inhibitors against GLP-1 receptor agonists, with nothing from inpatient or emergency codes.
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Item confirms Peer-reviewed
Modelled measles scale-up in Kenya averts 879 deaths over ten years
A Markov model of measles vaccination in Kenya estimated that maintaining current funding would avert 213 deaths over ten years at $1,269 per DALY averted, while reaching 95% two-dose coverage would avert 879 deaths at $1,093 per DALY averted, at a very high cost to the health budget.
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Item refines Peer-reviewed
RSV awareness raised vaccination odds for White and Black but not Hispanic mothers
In a survey of 650 pregnant and postpartum US women, awareness of RSV was associated with a 26.4 point higher probability of maternal RSV vaccination among White women and 23.2 points among Black women, but only 6.9 points, not statistically significant, among Hispanic women.
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Item refines Peer-reviewed
Longer stays tracked higher death and longer waits lower, a triage artefact
A retrospective analysis of 593,673 emergency presentations at a New Zealand hospital between 2016 and 2024 found longer departmental stays associated with worse outcomes and longer waiting times associated with better ones, reflecting triage order rather than any effect of waiting.
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Item new Peer-reviewed
Projected cancer cases in sexual and gender minorities rise with self-identification
A projection applying cancer incidence rates to survey identification proportions estimated 15 times more cases at ages 55 to 59 among Millennial than Silent Generation sexual and gender minority Americans, 77,521 against 5,134 over five years, driven by who identifies rather than by risk.
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Item new Preprint · not peer-reviewed
Varenicline users had about half the dementia risk of nicotine-replacement users
Among 3,516 propensity-matched adults aged 50 and over starting smoking cessation in the US All of Us cohort, varenicline was associated with a lower rate of incident Alzheimer's disease and related dementias than nicotine replacement (HR 0.52, 95% CI 0.35-0.75), in a preprint.
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Item new Peer-reviewed
GLP-1 users with continuous glucose monitoring were more likely to stay on the drug
In US claims data on 4,681 adults with type 2 diabetes starting a GLP-1 receptor agonist, 68.4% of adherent continuous glucose monitor users were still on the drug at 12 months against 51.9% of matched non-users (adjusted hazard ratio for stopping 0.56).
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Item confirms Peer-reviewed
Families of children with cancer report debt and a lasting loss of household security
A meta-aggregation of 14 qualitative studies covering 524 participants, mostly parents of children with cancer in seven countries, found financial strain built from medical costs, lost earnings and thin insurance, with outside help and household reorganisation giving only partial relief.
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Item confirms Peer-reviewed
A nutrition-inflammation index tracked short-term mortality in ICU kidney injury
In 1,887 critically ill adults with acute kidney injury in the MIMIC-IV database, a higher advanced lung cancer inflammation index was associated with lower in-hospital mortality (HR 0.86 per log unit) and lower 90-day mortality (HR 0.81), mainly in non-septic cases.
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Item new Preprint · not peer-reviewed
An Amish founder-population cohort links genomes and cognition in 3,978 older adults
The Collaborative Amish Aging and Memory Project has enrolled 3,978 older Amish adults in Ohio and Indiana, 2,928 with consensus-adjudicated cognitive status, alongside multigenerational pedigrees, whole-genome sequencing and plasma biomarkers, and reports no findings beyond its composition.
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Item confirms Peer-reviewed
Plasma GFAP separated Alzheimer's stages while vascular markers overlapped heavily
In 2650 ADNI participants, plasma GFAP was 56.3% higher in Alzheimer's dementia than in cognitively unimpaired people (AUC 0.82), while the vascular markers VEGF and sVCAM-1 differed by about 14% with more than 80% overlap (AUC 0.61 and 0.63).
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Item new Peer-reviewed
An automated splenic measure on cardiac PET tracked later major cardiovascular events
In 16,650 patients having stress rubidium-82 cardiac PET at six sites, an automated splenic ratio was independently associated with later major cardiovascular events, most strongly among the 6,508 whose scans showed no ischaemia (HR 1.54, 95% CI 1.26-1.88).
