TV might actually be rotting our brains. Watching television for extended periods of time could increase the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, new research says. To combat this danger, experts recommend taking breaks from binge-watching and engaging in more mentally stimulating activities.

Your brain on TV

Frequent TV watching in midlife was associated with reduced volume in the parts of the brain vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia. The diminished brain systems include those associated with memory and cognition as well as executive functioning. More surprisingly, the brain volume reduction was not tied to sedentary behavior but specifically to watching TV. “People whose jobs involved sitting for much of the day tended to have healthier-looking brains,” said ScienceAlert. Also, “when the researchers accounted for differences in overall physical activity, that didn't seem to impact the outcome.”

The results also showed that men were particularly vulnerable to these brain changes. “This could be because men and women accumulate sedentary time differently,” Natan Feter, a biological scientist and the lead author of the study, said to ScienceAlert. “Women may interrupt their sitting more often,” or “biological differences in how the brain responds to prolonged sedentary behavior” may be to blame. In general, “women tend to prefer TV programming in shorter chunks, though they spend more time watching overall,” said ScienceAlert. By contrast, “men’s preferences for watching sports and movies” mean they are are “more likely to spend long, uninterrupted periods on the couch.”

Researchers analyzed a sample of 1,712 adults with an average age of 53 years who did not have a diagnosis of dementia when the research began. Between 1987 and 1989, “participants completed a detailed physical activity questionnaire during an in-person interview” where they reported “how often they watched television during their leisure time,” as well as “answered specific questions about how often they sat down during their work hours,” said PsyPost. Between 2011 and 2013, the participants underwent an MRI of their brains.

The study “shows an association, not a cause-and-effect relationship” between TV and dementia, Feter said to Healthline. The researchers also “relied on self-reported data for TV consumption, which can be less precise than timed tracking,” said a news release about the study.

Beyond the screen

“For years, we’ve focused on how much people sit,” David Raichlen, a professor of biological sciences and anthropology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the senior author of the study, said in the news release. But these findings “suggest we should also pay attention to what they’re doing while they’re sitting.” For example, working from home, while sedentary, is more “intellectually stimulating” compared to watching TV, said the release.

Because TV watching appears to specifically affect the brain, “we might eventually see a different approach to health guidance around sedentary activities,” said the release. “Rather than just directing their patients to move more, for example, physicians might recommend they reduce television time and add cognitively engaging activities for when they do sit.” Activities like “puzzling, crafts and even texting, which require your brain to work while you are sitting might also change how much sitting negatively impacts your brain,” said ScienceAlert.

“The goal is not to eliminate passive rest,” Dung Trinh, a doctor at the MemorialCare Medical Group and the chief medical officer of Healthy Brain Clinic in Irvine, California, said to Healthline. It is to “build more cognitively engaging moments into the day.”

What happened

Ariana Grande “will be taking a step back from visibility” following the conclusion of her world tour due to “endless, ongoing public scrutiny,” a representative for the Grammy winner told People over the weekend. The announcement follows the Friday release of Grande’s “Petal” music video, which “reignited fan concerns about her weight loss,” Variety said.

Who said what

“She looks emaciated” in the video, with “sunken” cheeks and a “protruding” ribcage, said critic Monica Hesse in The Washington Post. Grande’s team is “thoroughly irresponsible for not guiding her away from this deeply damaging image for her young fans to see so glamorized,” actor and activist Jameela Jamil said in a now-deleted Instagram post.

The hiatus decision “was made from a thoughtful and empowered place,” Grande told fans during a tour performance in Chicago. “Human beings can need a break sometimes.” She “performs a very physical show,” a source close to the star told People, “and there is a lot of athleticism involved.”

What next?

Grande will finish her Eternal Sunshine tour on Sept. 1 and then take a “much-deserved break,” her representatives said. Her team confirmed that she is also pulling out of leading a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George,” which was expected to open next summer in London’s West End.

What happened

Michigan health officials on Monday confirmed the first two deaths linked to the ongoing cyclosporiasis outbreak. The fatalities mark the “first known deaths related to the multi-state outbreak of explosive diarrhea in the United States,” CNN said.

Who said what

Both victims had “significant underlying health conditions” that may have been “impacted by cyclosporiasis and dehydration,” Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services said in a website update. The parasitic infection is “generally not a life-threatening illness.” This is the “worst year on record for cyclosporiasis” in the U.S., said The New York Times, and Michigan is “at the center” of the “nine-state outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms.”

What next?

Health experts in Michigan are “cautiously optimistic” that the outbreak there is “starting to wane,” said the Times. But the deaths reinforce the “importance of continuing efforts to investigate the outbreak, identify its source, and prevent additional illnesses,” food safety expert Wade Syers said to the Detroit Free Press.

Microplastics could be responsible for a lot of heartache. The tiny pieces of plastic have been found in high amounts in patients who suffered from heart attacks, leading experts to question their effect on cardiovascular health. Plastic likely has a more significant impact on health than we currently know and should be taken into account in analyzing environmental risk management.

Heart of plastic

Microplastics were “detected significantly more frequently” in patients who suffered heart attacks, said a study published in the European Heart Journal. Among those who had heart attacks, “micro and nanoplastics were detected in 84% of patients, compared with 40% of patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and 32% of patients with normal coronary arteries,” said a press release about the study.

The “highest levels of plastics were in blood drawn from the blocked artery itself, at the site of the blockage,” said Time. These tiny plastic particles are “found virtually everywhere in the environment, including the air we breathe, the water we drink and many foods we consume,” Pasquale Paolisso, the first author of the study, said in the release. “Scientists have begun to detect these particles in human tissues and organs, raising concerns about their potential health effects.”

The study also found that “people who smoke were six times more likely to have detectable micro and nanoplastics in the blood supplying their hearts than non-smokers,” David C. Gaze, a senior lecturer in chemical pathology at the University of Westminster, said in The Conversation. Therefore, along with the well-known detrimental effects of cigarettes, they “may also act as an efficient delivery system for microscopic plastic particles.”

The same pattern for smoking held for those who were exposed to bad air quality. “Both exposures appeared to amplify each other,” Paolisso and Emanuele Barbato, another author of the study, said to El País. “All patients who smoked and lived in areas with high air pollution had detectable plastics, compared with only one in eight of those who neither smoked nor were highly exposed.”

World of plastic

The study’s findings “do not prove that microplastics cause heart attacks, but they reveal a strong association between environmental exposures, microplastics in the blood and cardiovascular disease,” Barbato said in the press release. Microscopic plastic particles are present in “synthetic clothing fibers, tire wear, degraded packaging and countless other environmental sources,” Gaze said in The Conversation. But “at the moment, we cannot measure our exposure to plastics” in an accessible way, Rocco Montone, an interventional cardiologist at Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli in Rome, said to Time.

Microplastics were previously “found inside the liver, kidney, intestine and human brain, among other tissues,” said El País. Scientists have been interested in the health implications for some time. This study “reframes the issue of microplastics not as an isolated curiosity but as another link in a wider environmental exposome interconnected with the air we breathe and our habits,” the study authors said to El País.

The apparent connection between microplastics, smoking and air pollution also “underscores the urgent need to shift from isolated risk factor management toward comprehensive environmental health strategies,” said the study. Such strategies may include the “integration of air quality monitoring, anti-smoking interventions, plastic pollution reduction and exposomic assessment into cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines.”

Almost three in 10 Britons now use AI chatbots to get health advice. And UK medical-policy experts are concerned that this could create confusion, undermine trust in GPs and other healthcare workers, and make it more difficult to take an informed decision about your health.

The warning, from The Academy of Medical Sciences, comes as Open AI rolls out ChatGPT Health in the US. It allows users to “securely connect” their medical records and wellness apps to “ground conversations” in their own health information, so that the bot can “take a more active role” in their health.

ChatGPT Health is not yet available in the UK but, with more than 300 million people worldwide regularly directing their health-related questions to ChatGPT, it could swiftly become a “democratising force in healthcare”, Tanzeem Choudhury, a health-innovation expert at New York’s Cornell University told CBS News. But there are definite risks and trade-offs. “Used well,” an AI tool such as this can “help direct people to trusted sources”, said Yvonne Doyle, a fellow of The Academy of Medical Sciences and former medical director of Public Health England. But it can also mislead “convincingly”.

‘Zero awareness of fallibility’

People have been using the internet to answer their questions for decades, but the “danger” with an AI chatbot is that it responds with “fluent, emotionally convincing paragraphs” and “remembers context”, making it “sound more ‘human’ than many humans”, said Celina Cartoto and Anthony Kelly on RTE. Yet it has “zero awareness of its own fallibility”, always providing an answer, “even when one doesn’t exist”. People need to remember that, though it “speaks like a doctor, listens like a therapist and remembers like a friend”, it is actually “none of them”.

We know that all AI chatbots can “hallucinate” and provide “misleading, inaccurate or even dangerous” information, said CBS News. Open AI has been careful to state that ChatGPT Health is designed to support, not replace doctors, but it has not responded to questions about whether it is “equipped to recognise when to advise a user to seek help from a medical professional”. It seems that “onus is on the user”.

Even before the rollout of the Health feature, there were indications that users could become dangerously reliant on ChatGPT for medical advice. Last month, a 55-year-old US pastor sued OpenAI, claiming its bot “brought him to the brink of death”, by “repeatedly and insistently” misdiagnosing his symptoms of near-fatal pulmonary embolism, said the BBC. An OpenAI spokesperson told CBS News that “ChatGPT is not a doctor and should never be a substitute for medical care, diagnosis or treatment”.

AI can be a “useful educational tool” for health information, said Leana Wen, an emergency doctor in the US, and a clinical associate professor at George Washington University, told CNN. It can “explain medical terminology” and “compare treatment options at a high level”, helping “people prepare questions” for their doctor and be “more engaged” in their care. But “it has important limitations” and “should not replace clinical judgement” by a medically qualified human.

Privacy concerns

There is also the question of privacy. How risky is it to share so much of your individual medical information with an AI tool, such as ChatGPT Health? Open AI has said that Health has “enhanced privacy” and encryption, and that conversations used in the Health tab won’t flow into non-Health chats. But it’s no accident that Health has not yet been rolled out in the UK, or the EU, where data protection and digital privacy laws are stricter than in the US.

“If you are providing data directly to a technology company that is not providing any healthcare services, then it is buyer beware,” Bradley Malin, a biomedical informatics expert, told Time. OpenAI says it will protect your data but “what exactly does that mean”?

It all comes down to whether or not “you trust OpenAI to keep to its word”, Robert Wachter, a medic who has written extensively about AI and healthcare, told the magazine. OpenAI does have “really strong corporate interest in not screwing this up”. Its brand is “dependent” on the user “feeling comfortable” in sharing their information, and any sort of data breach would end that trust.

The end of doctors?

The increasing use of AI programmes for health queries is becoming “existentially threatening” for medics, Jonathan Chen, a doctor at Stanford University Medical Center, told The New York Times. What is our purpose going to be now? Should we “get out of the way and let a computer take over”?

Not for a while yet, Lee Schwamm, associate dean for digital strategy and transformation at Yale School of Medicine, told the paper. And that’s because chatbots can’t yet think critically enough about the health information people are providing – and more importantly, not providing – them with. AI is “really good at matching patterns and making predictions”. But it can only do so “based on the data that it is given about the patient. It has no way to extract” what may be crucial further information itself.

Besides, patients still need a human connection. If you’re going to be told you have a serious health issue, or even how much longer you have to live, “you want to look someone in the eye”.

While the jury is still out on whether diet and zero-sugar drinks are really better for your health than sugary sodas, a recent study has found that the artificial sweeteners they use may have one very unintended side effect: memory loss, particularly among younger consumers. But even though the study found a significant link between artificial sweeteners and memory issues, experts say this is still only a correlation, not causation.

What did the study find?

Several widely used artificial sweeteners may be “associated with faster declines in memory and thinking skills over time,” according to the study published by the American Academy of Neurology. It followed 12,772 adults in Brazil for about eight years and examined their intake of seven sugar substitutes: aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame K, erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol and tagatose. These are “frequently added to ultra-processed products, including flavored water, soft drinks, energy drinks, yogurt and desserts marketed as low in calories.”

Researchers found that the people who consumed the highest amount of artificial sweeteners “experienced a 62% faster rate of cognitive decline than those with the lowest intake,” said USA Today, a rate “estimated to be comparable to about 1.6 additional years of brain aging.” People who were in the mid-range of consumption “experienced cognitive decline that was 35% faster than those in the lowest-intake group.” The memory loss itself was also most prevalent in study participants who were under 60; researchers “did not find the same association among participants older than 60,” said the study.

When it came to the amount of sweetener consumed, those in the “lowest consumption group averaged 20 milligrams per day, while those in the highest group averaged 191 milligrams per day,” said the study. Regarding aspartame, one of the most common artificial sweeteners, the “amount consumed by the highest group was roughly equal to the aspartame in one can of diet soda.”

What is the bigger picture?

This study suggests that sugar substitutes are not as good for you as their marketing makes them seem. “Low- and no-calorie sweeteners are often seen as a healthy alternative to sugar; however, our findings suggest certain sweeteners may have negative effects on brain health over time,” the lead study author, Dr. Claudia Kimie Suemoto of Brazil’s University of São Paulo, said in a press release.

This is not the only new study to suggest that artificial sweeteners have negative health effects; recent research published in the journal Current Atherosclerosis Reports showed that these chemicals are “linked to higher fasting insulin levels and a higher HbA1c — a measure of long-term blood sugar control,” said HealthDay. It also “found that people who consume more artificial sweeteners may have a higher risk of cardiometabolic conditions, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.”

When it comes to memory issues, scientists are careful to point out that this research doesn’t necessarily mean artificial sweeteners cause lapses. The study “identified a relationship between sweetener intake and cognitive decline but could not determine whether the sweeteners caused the changes,” said USA Today. The data also “did not include every artificial sweetener currently used in foods and beverages,” and Suemoto emphasized that more research was needed.

It’s widely assumed that eight hours is the perfect amount of sleep but a new study found the “sweet spot” is a little less than that, said sleep specialist Dr Allie Hare in The Telegraph.

Getting it right matters because new research, published in Nature, found that “falling short, or exceeding” the “precise window” discovered by the research, is “linked with poorer brain, heart and immune health”.

What did the research say?

People who got between six hours 24 minutes and seven hours 48 minutes of sleep a night were found to have better functioning immune systems, brains and hearts, according to researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

This ideal amount of sleep was associated with less ageing, as measured by organ-specific biological clocks. Duration alone doesn’t cause organs to age faster or slower, but the findings do suggest that insufficient or excessive sleep may be “markers of poorer overall health across the body”.

Is it different for men and women?

There is also a gender factor because women “seem to do better with a little longer”, Marie-Pierre St-Onge, a professor at Columbia University, told The Washington Post. They need “15, 20 minutes” more sleep, which reflects the “slightly longer” sleep duration reported by the “general population”, which “tends to be slightly longer in women than men”.

Previous research found that sleep is “largely linked to ageing and the pathological burden of the brain”, said Junhao Wen, an assistant professor at Columbia and lead author of the study. But the new research "goes further” and shows that “too little and too much sleep” are “associated with faster ageing in nearly every organ”.

Should we all be getting seven hours?

There are a number of conflicting theories about how much sleep we need. According to individual needs theories, there is no single ideal amount of sleep, because genetics, age, health, activity level and even life circumstances influence how much sleep someone needs. Adaptive or evolutionary theories hold that the correct amount of sleep varies depending on factors such as season, workload, stress, illness and safety.

But we “might be overthinking it”, said Emma Beddington in The Guardian. Sleep is “important and fascinating for science to explore, but surely, for the rest of us”, it’s “best left mysterious”.

There’s “so little we can do” to reach the “ideal” amount of unconsciousness, so “knowing precisely how bad that is for us is unhelpful”.

Social media feeds full of hiking content and glorious views have contributed to a growing interest in the outdoors among young adults. But a worrying number of young people have also needed rescuing from mountainous regions.

Hiking influencers have become an “inadvertent source of inspiration” for their followers to take treks “without understanding the scale of the challenge” and that are “beyond their skill set”, said The i Paper.

#Hiking

Hiking posts can make the “toughest climbs look like a walk in the park”, said Kate Davis, from the Ramblers walking charity. While no influencer would “encourage novices” to take intermediate hikes without proper preparation, said The i Paper, not “everyone is honest” about their experiences.

For example, some content creators will “walk to a scenic spot” and “pose with merchandise” before heading back down, said Nige, who posts on TikTok as W33k3ndwanderer. This can “mislead viewers into thinking” that certain mountains with challenging inclines and scrambles are “easily accessible”.

This combination of misleading content and hikers unaware of factors like weather, technical clothing and time needed to complete a hike could be behind the rise in rescue call-outs.

‘Excitable explorers’

In the Scottish Highlands the number of “mountaineering incidents” involving the 17–25 age group has “nearly quadrupled since 2022”, said The Economist.

In England and Wales last year, 18 to 24-year-olds “kept mountain rescue services busy”, said The Times, with almost 400 incidents, “more than double the 166 in 2019”.

This trend of “excitable explorers” following in “influencers’ footsteps without fully understanding” what the hike entails has led to more rescue call-outs in the US, France, Italy and Switzerland.

Nathan Mburu, 24, a fitness influencer, told the BBC that he and his two friends being “overconfident” and “under-prepared” led to them getting into difficulty on Crib Goch in north Wales last year. The weather conditions quickly turned a “manageable day into something extremely dangerous”, resulting in the group being stuck on a ridge waiting nearly six hours for a rescue team to reach them.

Last year, nearly “a quarter of rescues” in England and Wales were the result of “slipping or tripping”, with common injuries being to the “ankles, lower legs and head”, said The Times. Almost “one in 10 incidents” was because of “poor equipment” and around 20% were due to “severe weather conditions”.

While it’s “great to see more young people going outdoors”, the question is how to make sure every hiker is prepared for the journey ahead. Since people “rarely use maps and compasses”, some parks are “developing signage with common routes”, said Nick Phillips, from Mountain Rescue England and Wales. An initiative will allow people hiking in the Lake District, Peak District and Wales to “scan a QR code” and “upload a map” on to their device with the route “they need to follow”.

“Overlooked and underfunded” adult social care has become “the Cinderella service of our wider welfare system”, said Labour List. Now Andy Burnham, whose father has Alzheimer’s and lives in a care home, has told the BBC that he will put “whatever political capital I have” into fixing it.

He is not the first prime minister to vow to tackle the issue. But “successive governments have come undone when faced with the tricky reality” of adequately funding state support to help older people live safely and independently, said The Times.

What did the commentators say?

There have been 22 botched attempts to the reform the English adult social care system in the past 30 years. And those successive failures carry “a heavy political cost”, said Chris Smyth in the Financial Times: long-term underfunding has made pay and conditions in the sector so unattractive to British workers that “visa rules were loosened after Brexit” and care workers arriving from abroad became “the single biggest reason why net immigration to the UK rose to all-time high”.

Now, as Britain’s “demographic centre of gravity” tilts towards retirement, social care is reaching its “most painful financial pinch point” yet, said The Telegraph's editorial board. In 50 years, more than 25% of the population could be over the age of 65, according to the Office for National Statistics. The “best solution” for funding social care on that scale would be an “insurance-based system, where Britons would be encouraged to pay into a fund that would cover their own care in old age, should they need it”.

But Burnham has said social care should be delivered “on an NHS basis”. This implies “a public service free at the point of delivery and funded by some form of taxation”, said The Guardian’s editorial board. When Burnham was health secretary in 2010, he proposed a “national care service” to be funded by a deferred levy on dead people’s estates. Other options could include “a new form of social insurance” or “a combination of private and state payments”.

A more “ambitious” solution would be take responsibility for funding social care away from local councils, whose “revenues don’t map neatly on to local care needs”, and simultaneously reform council tax as a central tax that better reflects current property values and generates revenue for a national social care service, said Ben Zaranko in The Observer. That would “create losers, be complicated and take time but the course of true radical social care reform never did run smooth”.

What next?

Burnham is scheduled to deliver a speech on adult social care on Wednesday. In it, he will “stop short of unveiling” any concrete plans, said the BBC, instead announcing that he is speeding up Louise Casey’s independent review of possible solutions for the system.

Yet “the veteran Whitehall troubleshooter on whom Burnham is relying to come up with answers” has already warned there is no quick fix, said the FT’s Smyth. Earlier this month, she said “we cannot keep pretending that a few tweaks will fix adult social care, or attempt major reform without the public’s backing”.

“Ticks are small, and you might not notice when they bite,” but their bites have the potential to “dramatically harm” your health, said Amanda Roome, co-director of the University of New York’s Tick-Borne Disease Center, on The Conversation. Ticks can carry viruses that “really pack a punch” in terms of “how sick they make you” or even trigger an allergy to red meat. And, in the UK, the number of ticks are on the rise.

What are ticks?

They are small arachnids that feed on the blood of animals, including humans. They tend to live in woodland, heathland or scrubland, climbing to the tips of grass blades or other vegetation and using the sensory organs on their front legs to detect carbon dioxide, body heat and movement from a passing animal host. When they bite, they inject an anaesthetic that prevents you from feeling pain or itchiness as they dig in.

The majority of tick bites don’t cause illness – many ticks don't carry disease-causing pathogens and not all bites from an infected tick cause infection. But the illnesses some of them can cause can be pretty nasty.

The most common is Lyme disease, carried by the castor-bean tick, which can do long-term damage joints, heart and the nervous system. Cases of Lyme disease are spiralling in the US but, in the UK, it’s still pretty rare – although 1,168 cases were recorded last year, a 20% increase from the previous year. But cases could well in increase as the number of ticks in the UK grows.

Some ticks can also carry a type of encephalitis, with symptoms that range from a mild flu-like illness to a stiff neck, brain inflammation and loss of consciousness. These ticks have been detected in a small number of areas in England but very, very few cases of tick-borne encephalitis have been diagnosed. The UKHSA classes the risk to the general population as “very low”.

In the US, other tick-borne illnesses, including Heartland virus disease, Powassan virus disease, babesiosis and anaplasmosis, have been causing concern. They can all cause “serious health problems” and in, “severe cases”, even death, said Roome on The Conversation.

There’s also been much media coverage of a rare allergy that can be triggered by tick bites: Alpha Gal syndrome. Affected people can develop a potentially fatal reaction to red meat, dairy products and some animal-derived medicines and vaccines. There have been more than 110,000 suspected cases in the US and an estimated 5,000 in Australia but hardly any in the UK.

Why are there more ticks?

“Tick populations are expanding geographically because we’re changing the climate,” Vett Lloyd, a tick expert at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, told The Guardian. Our milder winters and warmer summers are boosting ticks’ survival rates, and there are also more mice to act as hosts: ticks “feast on rodents” as well as deer and birds. Reforestation and the expansion of green spaces closer to residential areas also play a role. Ticks – and the pathogens they can carry – “are expanding almost exclusively because of human changes” to the environment.

What can we do?

The best way to prevent infection is to avoid a tick bite “in the first place”, said Roome. If you’re planning a walk away from paths over areas of long grass, make sure you’re wearing socks, sturdy enclosed shoes, long trousers, and a long-sleeved shirt. Choose light-coloured clothing if you can: it can help you spot – and brush off – a tick before it bites. When you get home, check your skin thoroughly for ticks: they tend to lurk in armpits, the groin, behind the knees, around the waistband, the wrists, the back of the neck and the hairline.

If you do get bitten, “try to get the whole tick out”, Charlotte Mao, a US doctor who works with the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, told The Guardian. She recommends using “fine tip tweezers with firm gentle pressure” to grasp the tick at its head and pull it up. “You want to try to not have the mouth parts break off and stay stuck in the skin.” Then you should wash the site of the bite, and your hands, thoroughly with soap and water or rubbing alcohol.

After a tick bite, if you notice a spreading “bullseye” rash at the site of the bite (a common of Lyme disease infection) or symptoms including feeling flu-ey, a facial droop or numbness or tingling in the hands or feet, do seek advice from your GP.

Scientists are testing the “surprising theory” that “splitting sleep into two separate blocks” may be “the most effective sleep pattern for people working through the night”, said the BBC.

Better management of insomnia

Biphasic sleep means two distinct sleep periods in 24 hours instead of one. Researchers suggest it may be a more natural rhythm, even if the biological reasons for it are still being debated.

The concept has “captured the interest of many today”, said MediaFeed, and some individuals are “experimenting with segmented sleep patterns”. Its supporters say the benefits include “improved restfulness and better management of insomnia”.

During pre-industrial times people often slept in two blocks. Roger Ekirch, a historian at Virginia Tech, found that sleeping in two halves was the “predominant pattern” in the Western world until the mid-19th century. A “typical family” would “go to bed around nine, wake naturally after midnight for an hour or so – for prayer, chores, conversation – then sink back into what they called their ‘second sleep’.”

This changed when artificial light transformed the “economics of the night” and gas lamps “began lighting London’s streets in 1807”. As a result, “people stayed up later, the gap between the two sleeps narrowed and eventually closed”.

‘Dubious’ findings

The shift to a single period of sleep came at the time of the Industrial Revolution, as people changed to new work schedules, which were dictated by “mechanised time”, said MediaFeed.

But Ekirch believes the old approach hasn’t fully disappeared because the prevalence of “middle-of-the-night insomnia” represents a “persistent echo, a relic of this earlier pattern of sleep”.

A study in 1992 sought to discover whether, without industrialisation, humans would have remained natural biphasic sleepers. It limited participants to just 10 hours of light per day and found that they naturally shifted into a biphasic sleep pattern.

But the experiment drew criticism. In 2023, Niall Boyce wrote in the journal Medical History that its findings were “dubious” and suggested participants were simply restless.

Disrupted sleep, whether by working night shifts or insomnia, does have health implications. When we sleep, “our brain consolidates the memories of the day, processes emotions, and solves problems that defied it in the waking hours. It also strengthens immune defences and repairs muscle tissue”, said the BBC

So for those struggling to get enough sleep, “it’s not solely about being tired, but potentially about repeatedly disrupting a system that's doing far more behind the scenes than many people realise”.

Some experts have warned that biphasic sleep could have health risks, including from disruptions to circadian rhythms. Existing research on the topic is “fragmented” because some studies treat biphasic sleep as “one long sleep plus a brief nap”, but others “count only two equal periods”, so there is “no agreed definition”.

Spring forward, fall back — that old rule of thumb for resetting clocks at the start and end of daylight saving time may soon be a relic of the past, as the House of Representatives last week overwhelmingly supported a bill to make the time change permanent. And President Donald Trump has expressed his support. After all, people like later sunlight hours. But keeping the clock on summer hours could have negative ramifications.

‘Hidden consequences’

Americans are “tired of the biannual time change,” and making daylight saving time permanent is a “commonsense reform that will improve everyday life for millions,” bill sponsor Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) said in a statement, per The Hill. Trump agrees. Passing the bill would be a “very nice WIN for the Republican Party,” he said on Truth Social. But there would be “hidden consequences” to year-round daylight saving, said Axios. Under the reset the “sun won't rise until 8 or 9 a.m. in the winter,” leaving “millions of children” and commuters to start their days “in the dark.”

There would probably be health consequences too. Morning sunlight is “key to maintaining our circadian rhythms” and “overall health,” said The Washington Post. “Circadian misalignment” can cause lost sleep, which in turn is connected to “obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mood disorders” and other health challenges. Americans “would be misaligned all year long,” Vanderbilt University’s Beth Malow said to the paper.

The change would disrupt the daily prayer practices of Orthodox Jews, said NPR. Some prayers “can only be said communally” and are often performed “every morning before heading out for work or school.” The change would be a problem for a “synagogue that has had a morning prayer service for 100 years” if it cannot muster enough of the congregation to “show up at the prayer time close to 9 o'clock because they have jobs,” Rabbi A.D. Motzen, national director of government affairs for Agudath Israel of America, said to the outlet. “Some Muslim prayers and religious observances” would also be affected, said Axios.

Airlines “could take up to two years” to adjust their “complex scheduling” to permanent daylight saving, said CBS News. The shift could affect “crew and aircraft positioning” as well as “domestic and international connectivity,” trade group Airlines for America said in a statement. Trucking and railroad companies that are “also timetable dependent” would face challenges as well, said CBS.

‘Abandoned prematurely’

Congress authorized permanent daylight saving in 1973 to save energy during the oil crisis, said The Independent. The project was “abandoned prematurely” amid concerns about “children and criticisms from the construction and agricultural industries.”

Permanent standard time might be a healthier alternative, said Yahoo News. Stanford University researchers determined that sticking to the regular clock all year would result in “300,000 fewer strokes and 2.6 million fewer people with obesity.” People need “more morning light and less evening light” to have a balanced day, Stanford University’s Jamie Zeitzer said to the outlet.

What happened

More than 1,000 people have died of Ebola in Congo, in the fastest-growing outbreak on record, African health officials said Wednesday. Congo’s Ministry of Health said 2,536 cases have been reported since this outbreak was declared May 15. There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the Bundibugyo virus responsible for the outbreak.

Who said what

“These are people dying” because “we don’t have vaccines, we don’t have medicine, we don’t have funding,” Dr. Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a health summit in Ghana. In the worst outbreak to date, which killed more than 11,000 people between 2013 and 2016, it “took about eight months from the first case to reach 1,000 deaths,” The Associated Press said. The current outbreak in Congo appears to be “spreading faster than health officials can track it.”

What next?

An Ebola vaccine from Merck licensed to target the Zaire virus could also offer some protection against the Bundibugyo species, according to a paper published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The World Health Organization has “expressed lukewarm support” for testing the vaccine in Congo, Stat News said, but Bundibugyo-specific vaccines are “still months away” from clinical trials.

What happened

U.S. health officials have linked an ongoing cyclosporiasis outbreak to iceberg lettuce from Mexico that was sent to Taco Bell locations across five states. The supplier has not been officially named, but “two individuals familiar with the inquiry” told The Washington Post the company is Taylor Farms. At least 1,645 cases of the parasitic infection, which can cause explosive diarrhea, have been confirmed as of Friday, most of them in Michigan.

Who said what

“Do not eat shredded iceberg lettuce from Taco Bell locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia,” the CDC said in a statement. Taco Bell itself has “taken immediate action” to “indefinitely” remove the lettuce from its nationwide supply chain, the company said in a press release.

What next?

The FDA said it had “increased screening at the border” for the “implicated” products and is working with the supplier to figure out if any contaminated lettuce remains on the market. Taylor Farms is “one of the largest producers of fresh lettuce and vegetables in the country,” serving many leading restaurant chains, The New York Times said. “Additional implicated brands, restaurants, retailers, or distribution channels” may yet emerge, the FDA warned.

What happened

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the Pentagon will introduce testosterone screenings for soldiers over the age of 30. The screenings will be available to troops under 30 by request, and any soldier found to have lower testosterone levels will have the option to undergo hormone treatment. The new policy is designed so soldiers “have the right testosterone levels to operate at” their “absolute best,” Hegseth said in a video on X captioned “The High-T Department of War.”

Who said what

The secretary’s messaging “blends known science” on testosterone with “broader and less substantiated claims,” The Associated Press said. The new policy shows the secretary “takes direction from the far corners of the manosphere,” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), an Air Force veteran, told the AP. Hegseth “did not address” whether the “thousands” of women who “serve in frontline combat roles” would also be “subjected to hormone testing,” Politico said.

What next?

The screenings will be “conducted annually as part of service members’ periodic health assessments,” said Task & Purpose. But Hegseth has not disclosed when the screenings will begin.

What happened

Health officials are investigating whether restaurant chain Taco Bell “played a role” in the ongoing multistate outbreak of cyclosporiasis, The Washington Post said Tuesday. The foodborne parasitic infection can cause explosive diarrhea and is suspected to have sickened nearly 7,000 people across at least 34 states.

Who said what

Salad greens could be a “potential source for this outbreak,” Michigan’s health department said in a statement. But no “specific food item” has yet been confirmed as the culprit, said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The public is “largely flying blind” about what foods to avoid, CBS News said. Taco Bell said it has started “voluntarily and temporarily” removing some ingredients from select restaurants “as a precautionary measure.”

What next?

Taco Bell said it will continue to “closely monitor the situation and follow the guidance of public health authorities.” The CDC is analyzing lab data “to find a signal connecting the cases,” said Gwen Biggerstaff, deputy director of the CDC’s division of foodborne, waterborne and environmental diseases. Reports of new cyclosporiasis infections will likely continue through August, she added.

Data from more than 747,000 participants has been made available to scientists and doctors, creating an unparalleled genomic and electronic health record database “powering next-generation discoveries” in so-called “precision medicine”, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US medical research agency, has announced.

What is it?

Precision medicine, as defined by the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute, is an “innovative approach that uses information about an individual’s genomic, environmental and lifestyle information to guide decisions related to their medical management”.

Generally considered analogous to “personalised medicine” or “individualised medicine”, its goal is “to provide a more precise approach for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease”.

What are the obstacles?

In theory, “therapies targeted to a person’s genetic make-up should be more effective and have fewer side effects”, said the BBC’s David Cox. But in practice, personalised medicine has in the past proved “erratic and expensive”. Another problem has long been that it “requires people to trust governments and companies with their genomic data, while the regulatory environment around medicines is ill-equipped to cope with therapies that are designed for just one person”.

That is the “paradox at the heart of precision medicine,” said NIH director Jay Bhattacharya. “To tailor treatments to individuals, you actually need very large populations to uncover the patterns that connect genetics, lifestyle, and the environment to health outcomes.”

What conditions could benefit from it?

NIH’s All of Us data has already fuelled more than 1,400 peer-reviewed publications across the US and around the world. Recent related breakthroughs range from a first-of-its-kind clinical genetic test predicting inherited risk of heart disease to the development of a low-cost prostate cancer risk model.

In a small-scale trial in California, people with early-stage dementia were given bespoke treatment plans targeting their personal nutritional deficiencies, ongoing infections and environmental exposures, which saw their symptoms improve.

A new “groundbreaking” genomic test could see millions of women with breast cancer spared debilitating chemotherapy, following the results of a trial that could “transform healthcare guidelines worldwide”, said The Guardian.

And in April, The New York Times reported on the story of KJ Muldoon, born in 2024 with an incredibly rare enzyme deficiency. In the space of just six months, a team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine designed a personalised therapy that was able to correct the single misspelled letter in his DNA using gene-editing technology. It was perhaps the “most important medical story of the decade”, said the paper.

AI modelling has also made analysis of huge datasets cheaper and more efficient. A recent study in the Annals of Medicine and Surgery suggests this is already having an impact on a range of critical specialities, including cardiology, infectious diseases, and oncology where machine learning models are able to analyse new sets of biomarkers so enabling “ultra-targeted therapies that strike tumour-specific mutations with remarkable precision”.

Even in psychiatry, AI is increasingly being used to predict treatment resistance for antidepressants well in advance. “This is the future of tailored, bespoke medicine,” said Forbes.

What happened

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) revealed Sunday that a fall at his Washington home last month led to a hospital stay. His announcement ends a “weekslong silence” that had “spurred speculation about his condition,” The Wall Street Journal said.

The 84-year-old senator said he briefly lost consciousness after the incident but did not break any bones or suffer a concussion, stroke, heart attack or other serious injury. He was later diagnosed with a mild case of pneumonia.

Who said what

McConnell acknowledged the delay in explaining his condition, saying in a statement that “folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older.” McConnell’s injuries were “minor” and he “responded rapidly” to pneumonia treatment, his attending physician said. The Kentucky senator “has faced a string of health concerns in recent years that have caused some to question his ability to serve in the legislature,” The Hill said.

What next?

McConnell said he remains focused on completing his Senate work before retiring when his current term ends in January.

The series of heatwaves “afflicting” Europe this summer have been the “worst ever”, said The Guardian. Cities have become practically “unliveable” and higher temperatures are “further exacerbating” socioeconomic and economic divisions.

The unfortunate consequences of the current heat for many in the UK are “disturbed sleep and sticky days in the home office”. But around the world, high temperatures often exacerbate gender inequality, and women, particularly in low-income families, are “at the sharp end”.

Why are women more affected?

Women are more at risk of health complications during a heatwave for two main reasons, Dr Nighat Arif, an NHS GP who specialises in women’s health, told the BBC. First, women respond differently to men in the heat – they sweat less and start sweating at a higher temperature. These thresholds make it harder to “quickly shed heat” and fewer visible indications mean women can find it hard to judge how much their “bodies are under burden”.

The second reason is hormone regulation. Levels of oestrogen and progesterone shift “most substantially” during the menstrual cycle, perimenopause, menopause, pregnancy and while breastfeeding. This can knock the brain’s temperature regulation systems “out of kilter”, said Dr Arif.

Periods may feel more uncomfortable, while hot flushes and night sweats are more likely for perimenopausal and menopausal women. A recent study published by The Lancet suggested that heat stress may “increase the likelihood of adverse outcomes for the mother and child, particularly in higher-risk pregnancies”, said the BBC.

How does this present itself socially?

“How people experience heat is often gendered” and “socially and culturally determined”, said researchers Febe De Geest and Sergio Jarillo on The Conversation. In domestic settings, particularly across Africa, Asia and Oceania, women are forced to spend more time indoors in “poorly ventilated homes”, acting as primary caregivers. In Bangladesh, Cambodia and Nepal, heatwaves have also been linked to increases in child marriages: “struggling families force unions on their daughters to ease financial stress and reduce household costs”.

In workplace settings, research shows that women are sometimes required to wear more clothing for religious reasons and tend to receive “inadequate sanitation”. So they are likely to drink less to “avoid using unhygienic toilet facilities, leading to dehydration and further health problems”. These factors are not “trivial inconveniences; they compound heat exposure in ways that shape how women experience hot weather”.

Even in countries typically associated with better provisions for the heat, there is a “seasonal upswing in violence associated with hot weather”, said The Guardian. This could be due to the “temperature-aggression theory”, where hot weather increases “discomfort, frustration, impulsivity, and aggression, all of which make violence more likely”, or could be linked to greater alcohol consumption, which in turn “increases the opportunities for interpersonal conflicts and subsequent violence”.

Depressingly, it only takes “fairly small shifts” in temperature to increase the likelihood of domestic violence, particularly for the most vulnerable, said the European University Institute. A 1C rise in daily temperature is associated with “approximately a 2.7% increase in domestic violence reports”.

And in disadvantaged areas the effect is “much more intense”, due to more crowded living arrangements, lower cooling capacity and lower access to outdoor spaces. “Each degree of additional temperature is associated with up to a 50% larger relative increase in domestic violence incidents compared to richer areas.”

What can be done?

In practical terms, during periods of extreme heat it is important that women drink “least six to eight cups of non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated, transparent-liquid drinks” to help with temperature regulation, Dr Anisha Patel told ITV. Above all, women should continue to take prescribed medication as normal, including HRT or other drugs designed to help with the menopause.

Across the world, women are “already adapting creatively, and often without institutional support” to improve their situation, said De Geest and Jarillo on The Conversation. In Ahmedabad, India, women have painted their roofs white and used “coconut husks and paper waste” to make the structures cooler, and in Jakarta women have “established shaded communal areas that function as informal cooling centres”.

Policymakers need to realise that women suffer on many fronts, not just in biology but across “culture, power and intersections of class, caste and migratory status”. Their suffering is “largely invisible” to those heading climate responses.

Making sure women can cope with the heat is “not a woman’s problem”, Dr Arif told the BBC. “This is a societal problem. If we get it right for women, we get it right for everyone.”

The Thistle, which opened as a three-year pilot in Calton in Glasgow in January 2025, allows people to take drugs under the supervision of NHS staff.

Upon arrival, users receive a needle, spoon, swabs and advice on injecting technique – an infrared vein scanner is used to help people locate safe injection sites. There are eight mirrored booths, where they can inject their own drugs – mostly cocaine, heroin or both (“snowballing”). Staff check they haven’t overdosed.

Users, for whom the facility offers an alternative to unsafe, unsanitary public spaces, can then move to a recovery area equipped with comfortable chairs. After that, they can visit the lounge area, which has a kitchen, TV and board games, as well as showers and laundry facilities. Here nurses, mental health workers and other staff offer support, from treating wounds to referrals for rehabilitation or housing services.

Why was The Thistle opened?

The first drug consumption room (DCR) opened in Bern, Switzerland, in 1986. Now, there are more than 100 operating worldwide, mostly in western Europe, Canada and Australia. Such rooms are designed to prevent overdose deaths and the spread of needle-borne diseases; to help connect “hard to reach” users with services that might help them; and to reduce public nuisance (discarded needles, crime, and so on).

Calton, a deprived area of Glasgow’s East End, has a high concentration of homeless drug users. The Thistle was first proposed in 2016 in response to a major HIV outbreak among drug users. By 2018, Scotland had Europe’s highest drug death rate per capita. It still does today, while Glasgow’s rate is more than double the national average.

How is the facility legal?

The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 makes not just possession of drugs but the supply of drugs paraphernalia an offence; and, though this is a grey area, the occupiers of buildings where drugs are used may also be liable. Holyrood was supportive of The Thistle, but drug laws are reserved to the UK Parliament, and the Home Office was opposed. After a decade of wrangling between Holyrood and Westminster followed, Scotland’s Lord Advocate cleared the way, by issuing a statement that it is not in the public interest to prosecute individuals inside the facility for possession of drugs.

How many people use it?

So far, some 752 individuals have used the service, almost 80% of them male. In its first year, The Thistle made more than 600 referrals to health and social services, and delivered 13,000 care interventions. Seven in ten injections at The Thistle are of cocaine – linked to 52% of Glasgow’s drug-related deaths in 2024.

Demand for the service has risen sharply: monthly visits climbed from 336 in January 2025 to 1,533 in May 2026 – a 356% increase. Overdose figures there rose in tandem: in May 2026, staff responded to 19 overdoses, usually by administering oxygen or the drug naloxone. Yet after more than 13,600 injections, and 186 emergencies, no one has died in the facility (a man died outside in March, in circumstances not yet explained).

So it helps prevent drug deaths?

While a detailed evaluation is ongoing, Scotland’s policing inspectorate has already credited the facility with a “small but significant” reduction in local drug deaths. The research suggests DCRs are effective in this respect. According to the most recent studies, no death has ever been recorded inside one, though tens of thousands of overdoses have occurred. Sydney’s DCR alone has overseen more than 1.35 million injections and responded to over 12,000 overdoses without a single fatality in 25 years. By comparison, one study found that outside DCRs around one in 15 overdoses were fatal, rising to one in eight with heroin.

Advocates stress, however, that The Thistle is “not a silver bullet” for citywide and national issues. Drug deaths in Scotland actually rose in 2025. Public Health Scotland identified an influx in nitazenes, a synthetic opioid much more potent than heroin, as a likely factor.

What do critics of The Thistle say?

DCRs are a “harm reduction” strategy. Opponents argue that they sustain addiction at the expense of rehabilitation. “We have to take out addiction as a norm,” says Dr Carlton Brick of the University of the West of Scotland. “If all we can do is intervene to keep them alive when they overdose, I think that is a problem.” The Thistle is also relatively expensive, with annual running costs of £2.3 million; it spent £5,000 on two needle bins. Critics argue this money could be better spent promoting recovery.

In 2025, its costs worked out at more than £4,000 per person – approaching the £6,000 starting price of a standard 28-day private rehabilitation. The Thistle is also unpopular among some local residents, who argue that it attracts drug users and anti-social behaviour. In its first four months, 175 complaints were made about needles left near the facility, although the council said drug litter found at local hotspots actually fell by 79% between May and November.

Will more DCRs be rolled out?

While the Home Office says it will consider “any evidence” the pilot produces, it has shown little appetite for supporting DCRs. Its longstanding position is that it opposes them, owing to concerns that they break the Misuse of Drugs Act, pose ethical quandaries for medical staff, and could create a “honeypot effect”, attracting drug users to a particular area. Even The Thistle’s fate is itself unclear, and will depend on an independent evaluation, which will continue until late 2029.

In 2024, the last year for which figures have been released, England and Wales recorded their highest rate of drug-related deaths since records began: 63 per million. The EU average is around 25. Scotland’s is still exceptionally high, at 191 per million. The next highest in Europe is Estonia, at 135 per million; the USA’s is around 230.

A parasite capable of causing extreme diarrhea has been found in 18 states, with a particularly large outbreak in Michigan. Though the source of the infections has yet to be identified, experts recommend taking precautions with fresh produce and practicing good hygiene to reduce the risk of contracting the disease.

What is cyclosporiasis?

Cyclosporiasis is a form of food poisoning that comes from the parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis. It can cause “watery, and sometimes explosive, diarrhea and other stomach problems,” as well as a low-grade fever in some cases, said the Cleveland Clinic. Symptoms can start any time between two and 14 days after consuming contaminated food or water. The parasite is more common in tropical countries, but in mid-June, 145 cases were reported in the U.S.

“People became sick after eating food in the United States and did not report any travel during the 14 days before they got sick,” said the CDC. Those infected ranged from ages 5 to 86 years old, and though there have been hospitalizations, there have yet to be any deaths from the condition.

There has been growing concern about cyclosporiasis because Michigan, “which typically identifies about 50 cases of cyclosporiasis in a year, has reported at least 170 cases” in under two weeks, said CNN. There is “currently no evidence of a single, multistate Cyclospora outbreak linking all cases,” said the CDC. Instead, researchers are “working to identify various potential clusters and sources of illness in multiple states.” Though Michigan has had the most cases, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin have also had reported infections.

Investigators have yet to pinpoint the cause of the current outbreak, but the most likely culprits are “cilantro, basil, plants that grow and that you might put in a salad or use as a garnish,” or “strawberries, blueberries, melons, things that grow in fields,” David Freeman, a professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said to CNN.

What can be done?

Taking precautions is key to preventing illness. Cooked food is safer than fresh produce, as heat can kill the parasite. Washing produce can also help reduce the chance of ingesting the parasite. “Thoroughly washing hands and kitchen counters, as well as cutting surfaces, is important too,” but “bleach doesn’t kill the parasite,” said CNN. “Handwashing with soap and water and a follow-up with an alcohol-based hand sanitizer are safer bets.”

If you contract cyclosporiasis, antibiotics can help clear the infection. If not treated, “symptoms may last for a month or longer” and increase the “risk of severe dehydration and other complications,” said the Cleveland Clinic. “With proper diagnosis and treatment, most people feel better after a week or two,” but you “may still have occasional bouts of diarrhea for up to a month.”

New medicine can be found even in the iciest of locations. During an expedition to Antarctica, scientists discovered a species of sea squirt that may promise a new cancer treatment. The marine organism contains bacteria capable of producing a toxin that could eventually become a widely available drug. However, research still needs to be done on the species and bacteria before it can be tested on humans.

The dive

The cancer-fighting sea squirt, also called an ascidian, was first discovered 20 years ago and identified as a potential cancer therapy. The bacterium in the organism, Candidatus Synoicihabitans palmerolidicus, can “produce the metabolite palmerolide A, which kills melanoma cells without causing too much harm to healthy human cells,” said Discover.

Scientists have now conducted a second expedition to Antarctica to “better understand the compound and explore whether it could someday contribute to new therapies for patients battling melanoma,” said a news release by the University of South Florida. “Our expedition focused on determining where the ascidian’s melanoma-killing bacterium occurs and how widespread it is,” Sam Afoullouss, a postdoctoral researcher who participated in the dive, said in the release. “We also wanted to understand how it lives inside the organism and how that connects to the compounds linked to melanoma research.”

Sea squirts are “sac-like marine invertebrates that tend to live on sloped sea beds,” said the BBC. The ascidians found in Antarctica have “evolved over millions of years to cope with the harsh conditions there, producing chemical defenses that can deter predators and disease.” The discovered species was found at “depths between 60 and 80 feet, often along sloped or vertical seafloor surfaces where water currents are strong,” said the release. These “currents help deliver nutrients that sustain the organisms.” Such conditions allow for the organisms to be highly specialized.

The test

The researchers tested the sea squirt’s bacteria on melanoma cells in mice. “The good news is it didn’t kill the mice,” Bill Baker, a chemistry professor at the University of South Florida who led the first expedition and advised the second one, said to The Guardian. “It did kill their cancer, so we know it has the physiological properties to act like a drug.” The scientists are also analyzing the “quantity and distribution of palmerolide A, the bacterium, and the molecular target of palmerolide A,” Baker said to Discover. “These analyses will help us determine, for example, whether the ascidian and bacterium are working in concert, whether the bacterium is detrimental to the ascidian, or one of several other potential relationships between the two.”

Most FDA-approved drugs originated in nature, and Antarctica could be a rich source of new possibilities. While the sea squirt shows promise, the “pathway to producing a safe and effective anti-melanoma drug, with approval for use in humans, is long,” said The Guardian. It would “require a succession of strictly regulated and ever-expanding trials even after a drug was formulated.” Still, the knowledge gained from this expedition “could significantly advance the timeline.”

There may be a few sore heads and impeccably timed phone-calls to bosses in England this morning, after last night’s win over Mexico in the World Cup, but any football fans must be thankful they don’t live in Germany where workers will have to report to a doctor in person, to get a sick note on the first day they are ill, under sweeping new reforms.

The government is “tired of its workers calling in sick”, said the Deep Dive, but unions and family doctors are opposed to the new law.

What is Germany doing?

“The number of sick days is too high,” said Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, announcing the plan. The government is “creating a set of tools that will enable those involved, both employees and companies, to correct this,” he added.

The “tough” new rules are “aimed at boosting Germany’s stagnating economy”, wrote Hans van Leeuwen, international economics editor of The Telegraph.

Although they will be “welcomed” by employers, they have “angered” the country’s “powerful trade unions”. The services sector union, Verdi, accused Merz of creating a “culture of distrust of employees”.

Doctors also have “opposed” the new system because they believe the new requirements will “swamp” GP surgeries with “unnecessary appointments”.

What are sickness policies like elsewhere?

In the Netherlands, employers are generally obliged to pay employees on sick leave 70% of their wages for up to two years. If that amount is less than minimum wage, then the employer must boost this to the minimum wage for the first year. Norway is even more generous: it provides up to a year of income replacement at 100% of salary (subject to an earnings cap).

Although the US is one of the richest countries in the world, there is no nationwide entitlement to paid sick leave in the US, so access depends largely on state laws, local ordinances and employer policies. This means coverage varies considerably. Only 14 of the 50 states have paid sick leave mandates in place, which means sick workers are often forced to rely on health insurance pay-outs to cover their wages.

In the UK employees who earn over £125 a week and are off sick for four or more days in a row, are entitled to £123.25 per week of statutory sick pay for up to 28 weeks. This equates to around 15% of the average UK weekly wage. Employees need to give their employer proof if they’re ill for more than seven days. Many employers have a sick pay policy which is more generous.

How many sick days do people take?

In 2025, 149 million working days were lost to sickness or injury in Britain – an average of more than four days per worker. On average, Americans take roughly one to three days of sick leave per year.

In Germany, workers take about three weeks, or 15 working days, of sick leave per year. This is lower than in France, but higher than Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and Italy.

Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive brain disorder that gradually degrades a person’s cognitive and memory functions, is the No. 1 cause of dementia. There’s currently no cure, but according to a study published in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience, a new copper-based treatment may be on the horizon.

Clearing out

Alzheimer’s is “driven by the buildup of toxic proteins called amyloid beta,” said a release about the study. These proteins are usually flushed into the bloodstream through the blood-brain barrier. However, in those with Alzheimer’s disease, the “pumps doing the heavy lifting, called P-glycoprotein (P-gp), weaken significantly, clogging the drain and trapping the toxic proteins in the brain.”

A buildup of these proteins in the brain leads to memory loss and cognitive decline. But the copper-based compound Cu(ATSM), which has “anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties,” can clear them from the brain, said senior study author Joseph Nicolazzo in the release. It does so by “increasing the number and activity” of the P-gp pumps, said Newsweek.

The study is the first to show that Cu(ATSM) can boost the amount of P-gp pumps “by 24.1%, effectively linking the repair of the blood-brain barrier to a reduction in toxic proteins and improved cognitive function,” said lead study author Jae Pyun in the release. “Over 56 days, the treatment reduced toxic amyloid-beta by 42% and improved spatial learning by nearly 44%.”

Not just yet

Alzheimer’s disease is the No. 1 cause of dementia, accounting for about 60% to 80% of cases, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. The condition also worsens over time. In its early stages, “memory loss is mild, but with late-stage Alzheimer’s, individuals lose the ability to carry on a conversation and respond to their environment,” said the association. “On average, a person with Alzheimer’s lives four to eight years after diagnosis but can live as long as 20 years, depending on other factors.”

Cu(ATSM) improved the long-term spatial memory of mice, showing promise for future human clinical trials. The compound has also “already progressed to clinical testing for conditions like Parkinson’s and ALS,” said Nicolazzo in the release. However, “despite its promising results in animals, a pilot comparative analysis found that Cu(ATSM) provided no significant benefit to humans with ALS,” said Science Alert.

More than 7 million Americans 65 and older are estimated to be living with Alzheimer’s. By 2050, that number is projected to rise to close to 13 million, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. A drug that could prolong cognition and lifespan would be a game changer for patients and their families.

The disease itself is still full of unknowns. Alzheimer’s “involves the biological environment of the aging brain, including membrane biology, inflammation, vascular function, lipid metabolism and cellular resilience,” said neuroscientist Dayan Goodenowe to Newsweek. “So any single mechanism still has to be validated before we know whether it produces meaningful clinical benefit.”

“You can kill children in this country,” said doctor and grieving father Jack Hawkins in The Times last year. “As long as you do it in an NHS institution, you can go back to work the next day.”

His words are felt all the more keenly now, after an official review has found that hundreds of mothers and babies died or suffered potentially avoidable harm because of “long-standing and deeply embedded systemic failures” at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. On publication of the Ockenden Report yesterday, Hawkins, whose daughter Harriet died just before birth at Nottingham City Hospital in 2016, said its findings “must be treated with the utmost seriousness”.

What does the Ockenden Report say?

As she conducted her review of the NHS trust’s maternity and neonatal services, senior midwife Donna Ockenden heard from 2,500 families and more than 800 current and former members of staff. “She found that more than 500 babies and mothers might have avoided death or serious injury if their care had not been so abysmally inadequate”, said Poppy Koronka, health correspondent at The Times.

Ockenden uncovered a “toxic” and “bullying” environment, in which women were subjected to cruelty and brutality, while misgivings about their baby’s safety were ignored. Maternity wards were dominated by a “small minority of powerful leaders who had been allowed on ‘infect‘ the unit” and bully patients and staff. She described labouring mothers-to-be being “coerced” into inductions or interventions or told to stay at home “potentially longer than it was safe to do so”.

Nearly 30 pages of the 400-page report describe Harriet Hawkins’ case because, Ockenden said, her parents’ experience bore so many “hallmarks” of the way other families were consistently “cruelly” treated. An external review in 2018, commissioned after Jack and Sarah Hawkins challenged the hospital’s internal review, found that doctors and midwives had missed 13 opportunities to save Harriet’s life.

Ockenden also found evidence of “recurring examples of failure to protect the dignity” of women and children who had died. Bodies, including that of Harriet Hawkins, were allowed to decompose badly or were “disposed of as clinical waste”. One mother was told that her premature baby, who had died in 2020, was a boy but, five months later, received post-mortem results showing her child was actually a girl. The mother had “already buried the baby as a boy in a blue coffin”, said the report, and “given the baby a boy’s name, which she had tattooed on her body”.

How could this happen?

There was rarely a single issue or a particular failing, concluded the report. Instead there were multiple factors, including failure to monitor unwell babies, incorrect analyses of foetal heart monitoring, poor training, a lack of oversight, poor escalation procedures and a failure to recognise when a baby was in distress during labour.

Pregnant and labouring women repeatedly described feeling unheard, inadequately informed and unsupported, particularly when they were reporting reduced foetal movements or other medical complications. The Trust’s board and leaders were aware of failing maternity services for more than a decade but “sidelined or ignored” them, regarding the issues as “too difficult” or “of insufficient priority” to address.

The Trust’s chair and CEO have now issued an open letter, addressed to “the people and communities of Nottinghamshire”, in which they apologise “unreservedly to the women and families who have suffered harm, loss, trauma or distress while receiving care in our services”.

What can be done?

Ockenden has called for a series of “immediate and essential” measures to “directly address the failings” her team has identified, including urgent improvements to risk management and monitoring, plus strengthening of escalation protocols, communication and safe transfer of care.

She also recommended strengthening neonatal care with better training on spotting the signs of serious illness, and improving post-death care and bereavement processes.

Health Secretary James Murray has apologised on behalf of the NHS and said “no options are off the table” in terms of next steps. He did indicate, however, that the government might wait until the end of the year to develop any action plan. Ockenden has urged ministers to act sooner, saying: “How much more harm may happen in this country? We don’t have the luxury of six months.”

Infecting yourself with internal parasites doesn’t sound like the best way to feel better but scientists have “engineered” the genes of hookworms to deliver medicine – and “it’s just crazy enough to work”, said ZME Science.

US researchers have genetically modified hookworms to produce and secrete specific antibodies. This is a “first step” towards creating “living pharmaceutical factories” that can deliver therapeutic proteins “directly inside the host”, they said in their study, published in Nature Communications.

Internal leeches 

The hookworm has “spent millions of years perfecting how to assure long-term survival inside a human host, and how to get molecules out of its body and into ours”, said senior author Makedonka Mitreva, from Washington University in St Louis, on EurekAlert.

They are like an “internal leech”, infecting upwards of 400 million people globally, mostly in tropical regions, said LiveScience. As they latch on to the inner wall of the gut to feed on blood, they release “anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant compounds to prevent the body from flushing them out”.

Scientists have already noted that this “cocktail of compounds” produced naturally by hookworms could help treat some metabolic disorders. But the new study takes things further – by engineering in an extra molecule for the worm to secrete.

Mitreva and her team used CRISPR gene-editing technology to insert into a hookworm egg genome “a gene coding for an antibody known to counteract” the pufferfish poison tetrodotoxin, a lethal, weaponisable neurotoxin with no known commercial antidote. They then infected hamsters with the modified parasites, and samples taken later showed the hamsters had antibodies to tetrodotoxin circulating in their blood.

“It was like the perfect moment,” Mitreva told R&D World. Now “we can start embarking on hookworms being a two-in-one platform” because we’ve shown they “can not only deliver a drug, but produce that drug and deliver it”.

‘Internal allies’ 

The goal now is to use this technology on humans. In the future, we “could see these worms engineered to produce a variety of other medications and excrete them inside the human body”, said LiveScience. They could potentially provide long-term treatments for chronic conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease, or even protective treatments for military personnel exposed to chemical or biological threats. Mitreva’s study was, in fact, funded by the US Department of Defense with a view to developing a treatment for tetrodotoxin poisoning.

This is an “exciting” approach that “paves the way for all sorts of injection-free biologic drug delivery”, said ZME Science. It’s “tantalising” to think that “engineered hookworms could one day” be our “internal allies, providing continuous therapeutic benefits while living safely within a human host”.

The upcoming release of the UK’s first weight-loss pill, Wegovy, has been described as “game-changing” by a leading pharmacy provider.

“We’ve already seen record demand ahead of the expected launch”, said James O’Loan, chief executive of Chemist4U. With the majority of people expressing interest in the new obesity treatment not being previous users of weight-loss injections, this indicated that the new pill “could widen access to millions of people across the country”.

How does it work?

Made by Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, the pill is an oral version of weight-loss medicine Wegovy, containing the same active ingredient, semaglutide.

Where GLP-1 injections “pass directly into the bloodstream, the pill has to first be absorbed through the stomach”. This is possible through “scientific innovation, creating a way of encapsulating semaglutide and shielding it from stomach acid”, said The Telegraph’s health and medical journalist David Cox.

As with injections, the Wegovy pill “mimics the effects of a gut hormone called GLP-1, released after eating, which regulates appetite and signals a feeling of fullness”.

The pill is taken daily, compared to the weekly injection, and comes in different doses which can be steadily increased each month.

How effective is it?

Early tests suggest it has a similar effect to injectable Wegovy. After 64 weeks, adults taking the pill lost an average of 14% to 17% of body weight, with about one in three people losing 20% or more.

Regulatory guidelines from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency state that only people classified as clinically obese, with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of more than 30, or those who are overweight (BMI of 27-30) with at least one weight-related health condition such as high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes, will be eligible to receive the drug.

How much will it cost?

To start with, it will be available in the UK only on prescription privately and not free on the NHS. While exact prices are yet to be set, Robert Bradshaw, a superintendent pharmacist at Oxford Online Pharmacy, told The Telegraph he expects the Wegovy pill to “come in roughly at the same price as the injections”.

“I suspect the pill will be priced somewhere around about £80 to start with, progressing to £130 [for the intermediate dose], and maybe £160 for the top dose.”

With other drug companies developing their own weight-loss pills, however, “competition could also drive down the costs of treatment, as first-generation drugs, or those that offer slightly poorer top-line results, command lower prices”, said The Economist. Some government-funded health systems are likely to make “population-scale deals in the coming years, which could broaden access” further.

Are there any side-effects?

“These are similar whatever the version and related to levels of the drugs in the blood rather than how they are administered,” said Dr Mark Porter in The Times. Common side effects include “nausea and vomiting (slightly more common with the pill version), diarrhoea and/or constipation and abdominal discomfort, but these generally settle once people get used to the medicine”.

The much rarer but more serious side-effects “such as gallbladder problems (stones), inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis) and visual problems (optic neuropathy) probably remain the same as with injectables”.

But with the latest NHS statistics suggesting 66% of all people over 16 in England are overweight, and with obesity rates “continuing to spiral”, doctors are “optimistic that the emergence of GLP-1 tablets can serve as a major boost to public health”, said The Telegraph.

And globally, if generic semaglutide were made available to everyone with obesity and diabetes, it could save between 2.1 million and 3.1 million lives a year, according to one model, said The Economist.

If you have ever felt like you couldn’t stop eating your favorite sweet treats and savory snacks, that’s by design. The tobacco industry had a heavy hand in the growth of ultraprocessed food in the U.S. And despite no longer being involved, its marketing tricks remain.

A new addiction

Big Tobacco employed its tactics in marketing cigarettes to also market ultraprocessed food, according to a series of papers published in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH). In the 1980s, U.S. tobacco giants Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds made a “major entrance into the food industry” when they had “strong cash flows yet experienced growing scrutiny regarding their tobacco products,” said one of the AJPH papers. Investing in food and beverages was an attempt to improve their corporate image, so the team acquired several major brands, including Del Monte Foods, General Foods, Kraft, Nabisco and 7UP.

Tobacco companies “spent decades amassing research on how to make cigarettes more pleasurable and addictive with chemical additives” and “deliberately applied this knowledge to food manufacturing,” according to “internal company records,” said NPR. Thus came the rise of added sugars and artificial flavorings in food and beverages. These additives are known to be “hyperpalatable,” activating the same part of the brain as cigarettes or other drugs.

Along with changing the composition of the products, aggressive marketing tactics became the norm. Big Tobacco “applied the same strategies to developing light and reduced food products with the express goal of retaining customers who might otherwise stop consuming some of their products,” said lead paper author Tera Fazzino, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, to NPR.

The companies “divested from the food system from 2000 to 2007,” said the papers. However, their impact has been long-lasting. Ultraprocessed foods “now account for 70% of packaged foods in the U.S. and 62% of the calories in children’s diets,” said Fast Company. These foods have been linked to a variety of health problems, including obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

“Children are really, really vulnerable to this kind of messaging,” said paper author Laura Schmidt, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco, to The Washington Post. “The goal is to hook the consumer at the youngest possible age because, as you grow up, they have instilled brand loyalty in you.”

Trying to quit

There have been growing calls for regulating the production and sale of ultraprocessed foods, notably as part of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again agenda. Last summer, for example, federal agencies “began a joint effort to define ultraprocessed food,” said Bloomberg. This definition could be “used on product labels in an effort to nudge consumers to reach for healthier items.” The ultimate goal is to implement labeling on the front of packaging that indicates what foods are ultraprocessed. But creating such a definition is not so simple, as it could “inadvertently ensnare some healthier items like yogurt.”

While Kennedy may be pushing back against ultraprocessed food, the Trump administration has made “policy changes that could exacerbate the problem,” said The Guardian. The administration also “failed to direct policy changes that could help, like redirecting government corn subsidies toward whole fruits and vegetables.”

But better monitoring could lead to needed changes. Countries might “consider establishing a baseline of ultraprocessed or hyperpalatable food availability in their food environments to monitor food system health,” said the papers. There may also be a “global need to consider regulation of multiple addictive products disseminated by tobacco companies.”

With many in the Trump administration pushing an anti-vaccine agenda, declining measles vaccination rates have forced scientists to reinvigorate the hunt for a drug that could fight the virus. While the FDA has not approved any measles drugs yet, researchers seem hopeful that a breakthrough is on the horizon.

Why are researchers revamping the measles drug search?

For a long time, the quest to create a measles drug was essentially dormant, as the virus “had been kept at bay in the United States for more than two decades thanks to a remarkably effective vaccine,” said The New York Times. But in 2025, amid anti-vaccine sentiment from the White House, a “series of outbreaks popped up in unvaccinated communities across the country,” marking the worst year for measles in the U.S. since 1991.

The outbreak led to a “‘very crowded’ hunt for new measles therapeutics that could prevent or treat infections,” said the Times. Currently, if an unvaccinated individual contracts the measles, doctors can “offer ways to manage symptoms, which often include fever, fatigue, cough and a hallmark blotchy rash,” said Science News. But they “can’t fight off the virus itself.”

How far away is an approved measles drug?

There have been several breakthroughs from various scientific groups, and many feel that FDA approval of a measles drug is imminent. At least one antiviral drug, GHP-88310, was recently shown to “help treat measles, croup and other related viral diseases that cause contagious and life-threatening respiratory infections,” said The Independent. The drug is the “most promising inhibitor” of this virus family that causes measles “we have encountered in years of research,” Carolin Lieber, a senior postdoctoral fellow at Georgia State University’s Center for Translational Antiviral Research, said in a statement.

GHP-88310, which is taken orally, could “offer a much-needed option to treat measles in the midst of increasing endemic transmission in the U.S. and throughout the world due to vaccine hesitancy,” said Drug Discovery News. The drug could provide an alternative to the typical measles defense mechanism, ring vaccination, in which “direct and social contacts around an infected person are vaccinated.” But with “increasing vaccine hesitancy in some population groups, ring vaccination is no longer a viable option in some communities.”

The success of the drug doesn’t necessarily mean it will become ubiquitous as a measles treatment, partially due to people’s feelings about the disease. “One of the biggest misunderstandings about measles is that it’s ‘not that bad,’” Kathryn Hastie, a structural virologist at San Diego’s La Jolla Institute for Immunology, said to Science News. The virus instead can “cause a range of complications that can severely impact people’s lives, including pneumonia and blindness.”

Another company, Saravir, is developing its own measles antibody treatment. The medication could be a “potential multi-billion dollar market opportunity,” Dr. Ronald Moss, Saravir’s CEO, told the Times. Moss estimates there are 44 million people in the U.S. and EU who are “uniquely vulnerable to measles,” and if even a small portion of that group is exposed, it’s a “pretty big population that we would want to protect.” Still, the antibody treatment and other measles drugs could be cost-prohibitive. If the “drug makes it through trials,” said the Times, Saravir “expects the infusions to cost roughly $2,500.”

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of bemotrizinol (BEMT) in sunscreens. The chemical has been used in European and Asian brands of sunblock for decades. BEMT can provide better sun protection and last longer while being less greasy on the skin.

New kid in the block

Sunscreens are supposed to protect against both ultraviolet A (UVA) and B rays (UVB). UVB is “high-energy radiation that is typically associated with sunburns and can cause genetic mutations that lead to skin cancer,” said Scientific American. UVA rays have also “increasingly become recognized as relevant for skin health,” and their “longer-wavelength radiation” can “penetrate deeper into the skin than UVB, breaking down the skin’s structure and creating harmful, skin‑aging molecules.” Unfortunately, while most U.S. sunscreens are effective against UVB radiation, they “provided significantly lower UVA protection with the average unweighted UVA protection factor just 24% of the labeled SPF,” said a 2021 study.

BEMT, though, is capable of ”protecting against both ultraviolet A and B rays while not leaving white streaks associated with mineral-based sunscreens,” said The Associated Press. The ingredient is “generally recognized as safe and effective for use in sunscreens by adults and children 6 months of age and older,” said the FDA. “For too long, American consumers have been applying sunscreen and believing they were fully protected, not knowing that their product was delivering far less UVA protection than the label implied,” Alexa Friedman, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, said in a statement.

Screening issues

There have been many efforts to get the government to approve new sunscreen ingredients, but they were “bogged down for decades by the FDA’s bureaucratic system for updating its lists of safe nonprescription drug ingredients,” said the AP. Bemotrizinol’s approval marks the “first ingredient to go through a streamlined process authorized by Congress in 2020.”

Sunscreen is an important step in preventing skin cancer, but there has been a mounting anti-sunscreen movement “amid an increasing distrust of the medical establishment and a desire by some for natural alternatives,” said The Washington Post. Much of the concern has surrounded chemical sunscreens, which get absorbed into the skin. In 2019, scientists from the FDA found that these sunscreens’ ingredients can stay in the body at unsafe levels after just one day of use. Bemotrizinol is “broad-spectrum and far more stable, so it doesn’t break down in the sun,” said NBC News. It “also has low levels of absorption into the body.”

What the US is trying to do in Kenya reeks of “neo-colonialism”, said The Daily Nation (Nairobi). To protect Americans from the deadly Ebola outbreak that is thought to have already killed at least 91 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Trump administration has decreed that no one with the disease may enter its borders, even if they’re a US citizen. Any American unlucky enough to have contracted the virus in DRC should instead be sent for treatment hundreds of miles away to a specially commissioned Ebola health centre in Kenya.

Cue outrage in Nairobi. “Kenya is NOT America’s biohazard dumping ground,” fumed a spokesman for one of Kenya’s doctors’ unions, echoing widespread fury at the proposal to set up a 50-bed quarantine facility at Kenya’s Laikipia Air Base. And hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Nanyuki, the town closest to the air base, fearing the disease might spread to their community. They blocked roads and set fire to tyres, and police had to fire tear gas to disperse them.

According to some reports, two people were shot dead. Yet despite the uproar, and a temporary court order blocking the site’s construction, Kenya’s President William Ruto has vowed to press ahead with it.

Potentially ‘catastrophic’

The debacle in Kenya is far from the only mistake the US has made over the Ebola crisis, said The East African (Nairobi). “Epidemics are best fought collectively”, but under Trump the US has withdrawn from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and shut down USAID, scuppering the international response needed to stem the current outbreak, which has now spread to Uganda.

Trump’s decisions have been disastrous, said Craig Spencer in The New York Times. Over the past year, critical surveillance networks in DRC have been dismantled, with the result that US officials only learnt of the first Ebola death a month after it happened, making it inevitable that the outbreak would turn “catastrophic” in scale.

To put this in context, the world’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak, which broke out in Guinea in 2014, went on to kill 11,300 and infect 28,600 others. That outbreak was first detected when there were around 40 to 50 cases; for this one, that number was 400 to 500. And to make matters worse, rapid tests and vaccines do not exist for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola that is behind this latest epidemic.

“We are not getting ahead of this virus. We are running after it,” said Denis Mukwege in Le Monde (Paris). It’s already the third-largest outbreak in history, and could well become the deadliest ever.

Deep mistrust

The challenges facing teams on the ground are immense. For a start, the epicentre of the outbreak is war-torn eastern DRC, where conditions make contact-tracing almost impossible. And as the US has cut aid to the DRC from $1.34 billion in 2024 to just $428 million in 2025, local responders have “far fewer resources” than in any comparable recent crisis.

To add to the crisis, front-line health workers are “deeply” mistrusted by the local population, said The Economist. Look what happened two weeks ago in the small town of Mongbwalu in northern DRC, where a group of young men made four different attacks on the local hospital in a bid to retrieve the body of an Ebola victim for burial. The day before that, townsfolk had torched an isolation unit.

The crucial requirement is for the response to be consolidated under a single actor, just as it was for the 2014 outbreak when the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) took charge, said Anthony Banbury in The Washington Post. Congolese health workers and international NGOs have done an excellent job so far, but the lack of coordination has been a serious hindrance. “It is like going to war with scattered, independent military units, but no central headquarters directing the overall effort.”

In the absence of a body like UNMEER to devise and oversee a strategy for containing the outbreak, this epidemic could “spin out of control”. And then the world would be in real trouble.

For the people of Gaza, “fear is no longer linked only to what falls from the sky”, but also to “what crawls from below”, said Prospect.

Rats and other rodents have “taken over everything in a frenzy” and, with summer approaching, their numbers are expected to soar even higher.

Physical and psychological threats

A “plague” of rodents is “terrorising” the area, said the Financial Times, as rats and weasels “chew their way into tents, biting children and contaminating food”. A Unicef spokesperson who visited Gaza this month said rodents are becoming “a huge, huge problem because of accumulated rubble everywhere”.

The threat they pose is more than psychological. Rats transmit diseases through urine and waste, causing fever and other illnesses. Diabetic patients are particularly vulnerable to rodent bites, as they may not feel it happening and serious complications can occur.

More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, and rats began “eating human bodies under the rubble”, Samah al-Dabla, who was displaced from Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, told Al Jazeera.

Rats are now appearing in the tents where many Gazans live. Al-Dabla has tried to buy rat poison but the prices are too high and she already struggles to afford enough food for her family. Any food she manages to obtain tends only to attract more rats.

Mounting problem

Dr Ayman Abu Rahma, director of preventive medicine at Gaza’s Ministry of Health, told Al Jazeera that the problem has three main causes: damage to sewage systems, decomposing bodies under the rubble, and the amount of rubbish building up in the territory. Gaza City’s main landfill site is a “breeding ground for rodents in a densely populated area”, said Al Jazeera.

Local officials want to convert waste into organic fertiliser, but the war has destroyed much of the equipment needed for such a process.

The urgency is clear: rubbish dumps are located close to tents in displacement sites, creating serious “health hazards that will increase as summer temperatures rise”, humanitarian officials and residents told the Financial Times.

Cogat, the Israeli Ministry of Defence body that monitors aid access to Gaza, said that “nearly 170 tons of pesticides and thousands of traps for rats, mosquitoes, and other pests have been brought into the Gaza Strip in recent weeks”.

But Salim Oweis, the Unicef spokesperson who visited Gaza, said the amount allowed in is “barely enough for a few weeks” and “the whole of Gaza” is affected.

A needle-free universal vaccine may soon be on the horizon. Scientists have successfully run the first trial, which showed the vaccine can safely elicit an immune response to several viruses. But more research is needed before it’s approved for widespread use, so larger trials are now planned.

How was the vaccine developed?

This universal vaccine is the first human-tested inoculation to have its active component designed by computer simulations, according to a study published in the Journal of Infection. The vaccine has an AI-created “super-antigen,” a “protein that mimics shared features across multiple coronaviruses, rather than targeting a single specific strain, which can trigger the body’s immune system to fight a broad array of pathogens with those base characteristics,” said Euronews. Researchers “used all the available genetic sequence data for Sarbeco coronaviruses,” which are “zoonotic viruses that primarily circulate in bats and can jump to humans or other mammals.” They then “applied machine learning to create the super-antigen.”

“Viruses like influenza, coronaviruses and the Ebola group are evolving continuously, and by the time vaccines are rolled out, they may be poorly matched,” Saul Faust, a professor at the University of Southampton and the study’s chief investigator, said in a news release. But this “new class of universal vaccines are future-proofed,” as they “not only protect against many variants simultaneously but potentially against related viruses that haven’t yet emerged.” The universal vaccine can therefore curb outbreaks and even prevent future pandemics.

The vaccine is also needle-free. It’s administered through a microfluidic jet, which “uses a high-pressure, hair-thin stream of liquid to push vaccine blueprints directly into skin cells,” said Sky News. Without needles, it has greater “global applicability by reducing volume requirements, eliminating sharps waste and improving uptake in settings where needle-based administration is a barrier,” said Euronews. And it also doesn’t have to be kept as cold as traditional vaccines, making it “well-suited for use in low- and middle-income countries and in rapid-response scenarios.”

Is it effective on humans?

The vaccine has already shown promise in humans. The first clinical trial was conducted with 39 volunteers, and it was “well-tolerated at all four doses with no significant safety concerns elicited,” said the study. It also “triggered immune responses in the volunteers not only to SARS-CoV-2 and SARS but to related bat viruses that could potentially jump from animals to humans and cause future pandemics,” said the release.

However, the “magnitude of the response was limited and did not increase predictably with higher doses,” though this is likely influenced by prior Covid-19 exposure and vaccination history among participants, said the study. A larger Phase 2 trial will “next assess the vaccine’s ability to induce immune responses in a wider and more diverse population and confirm that it generates strong, broadly protective immune responses,” said the release.

The clinical trial proves the success of a whole new way to create vaccines. The use of AI “could protect against future emerging virus threats” and reduce the “need for frequent reformulation, which is a fundamental limitation of current vaccines,” said the release.

The old vaccine development system was like a “dog chasing its tail,” study lead Jonathan Heeney, a researcher from the University of Cambridge’s Lab of Viral Zoonotics, said in the release. “We can escape the constant cycle of chasing the virus variants circulating in humans and updating the vaccines to try to catch up.”

Spinal-cord injuries are “notoriously difficult to treat,” said Rhys Blakely, science editor of The Times. But Zurich-based researchers think a solution may be in sight: injectable microrobots.

When the spinal-cord is damaged, recovery is often limited: nerve-fibre regrowth can be hampered by scarring, and the nerve cells usually cannot regenerate on their own. But studies by a team at the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich suggest that microrobots, made from stem cells with magnetic nano-particles, could “coax” these nerve cells to repair and regenerate.

The studies were carried out in a lab on zebrafish and mice, so there is “still a long way to go” before the microrobots can be tested on humans. But the results are promising, and scientists the world over are intrigued by the idea of “microscopic repair crews, guided by magnets”.

‘Near-complete recovery’

The decision to build this “fleet of living machines” came after other experimental treatments had fallen short, said Blakely. Attempts to inject immature nerve cells into the injured area, then implant electrodes to stimulate them to develop, had failed.

So the Zurich robotics team engineered microscopic machines about six micrometers wide – smaller than a red blood cell. Each one combines a neural progenitor cell (a spinal stem cell) with a cluster of customised nanoparticles. These nanoparticles have two layers: one is sensitive to magnetic fields, so the microrobot can be guided by a magnet; the other turns magnetic signals into electrical pulses. This “lets scientists steer the cells and then coax them, electrically, into maturing into new nerve tissue”.

Millions of these microrobots were needed during the animal trials. First, they were injected into injured zebrafish larvae and, in three days, the larvae were exhibiting “near-complete recovery of swimming and exploratory behaviours”, according to the study published in Nature Materials. Then, when tested on mice with severed spinal cords, the microrobots “promoted neural differentiation, and resulted in substantial improvements in motor function within four weeks”.

‘Reproducible and scalable’

Further research is needed before these microrobots can be tested on humans but the Zurich team is already thinking about ways they can be used in other medical settings. “The reproducible and scalable production of microrobots using our lab-on-a-chip system demonstrates” that there is a great deal of “application potential”, said study leader Salvador Pané i Vidal. With adaptations, the microrobots could be used in wound healing, and to make cardiology and oncology treatments “safer, more controllable and more effective”.

Different microrobots have already been shown to be successful in other areas of medicine, said Healthcare in Europe. Formed in droplets, they are effective at “precision-targeted drug delivery”, outperforming IV-delivery on the amount of drug than reaches the target tissue.

What happened

New World screwworm, a deadly flesh-eating parasite, has been confirmed in a calf in south Texas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said late Wednesday. It was the first case of the fly-borne parasite found in U.S. livestock since 1966.

Who said what

Screwworms are “parasitic flies whose females lay eggs in open wounds” on “any warm-blooded animal,” hatching hundreds of larvae that “use their sharp mouths to burrow through living flesh, eventually killing their host if left untreated,” Reuters said. Human cases are “rare,” and the fly “poses no food safety issues.”

The U.S. has been preparing for the parasite’s arrival, sealing the U.S. southern border to livestock since screwworms were found spreading north through Mexico in 2024. If “more screwworms are found” in the U.S. beyond this one case, it “could devastate the American cattle industry,” The New York Times said. The nation’s cattle herd is “already at its smallest since the 1950s,” The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

The USDA is “taking immediate action” to “contain” and “eradicate this case,” said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, including forming a 12.4-mile “infested zone” quarantine around the calf, increasing monitoring and releasing millions of sterile New World screwworm flies to shrink the population.

A class of synthetic drugs called orphines is throwing a new wrench into the ever-evolving opioid crisis in the United States. These drugs have tenfold the potency of fentanyl and have led to numerous overdose deaths in 2026. Experts say removing them from the streets, or even identifying them, could be extremely difficult.

What are orphines?

They are a “class of opioids that was created in the 1960s,” said The New York Times, as part of a project to find “rapid, safe pain relievers for surgery.” Orphines were developed by Paul Janssen, a Belgian doctor, the same man who originally synthesized fentanyl. It was soon discovered that “orphines had life-threatening side effects such as acute respiratory depression and were highly addictive,” which halted their development.

Orphines are generally considered to be at least “10 times more powerful than fentanyl, even in quantities no greater than a few sand-size grains,” said the Times. Like fentanyl, orphines can be “lethal with stunning speed, with victims slumping over abruptly, respiration shutting down, chest walls rigid.” Naloxone, a drug that reverses the effects of opioids, is effective against orphine, but “numerous doses may be required, many more than the one or two doses typically needed for fentanyl.”

Why are they prevalent now?

Orphines started to become ubiquitous among street drugs in the “wake of global crackdowns on fentanyl,” said the Times. The “emergence of orphines appears to follow regulatory actions targeting fentanyl analogues,” said the industry outlet Pharmacy Times, forcing dealers and users to pivot to new drugs. Most experts “believe the drug is produced at scale by international, multilevel drug distribution networks, likely originating from regions like South Asia or China,” and is then funneled to the U.S., said The Independent.

By the end of January 2026, orphine usage had been “detected in New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Illinois, Louisiana, Texas, Washington, Nevada and California,” said The Hill. Overdose deaths from the drug have been reported in nearly all these states. At least 41 deaths from an orphine called cychlorphine occurred in Tennessee alone between July 2025 and February 2026, according to the Knox County Regional Forensic Center.

What next?

Doctors and researchers are trying to find ways to stem the flow of orphines. Doing so is difficult because it is “not hard for labs to pump it out,” said The Hill. The drug isn’t simply coming from a bathroom brew made “from a couple of products or in the U.S.,” Timothy Wiegand of the American Society of Addiction Medicine told The Hill. It is coming from international “drug distribution networks, some of the cartels or other isolated networks.”

As orphines continue to plague U.S. cities, medical examiners have “become frontline drug detectives, pressing to identify the new substances causing deaths,” said the Times. Many are “coordinating with law enforcement and local health departments to swiftly warn communities about the latest killer in their midst,” though local medical examiners’ offices are often chronically underfunded.

These drugs represent a “dangerous shift in the opioid crisis,” Dr. Rachel Wirginis, an addiction medicine and family medicine physician at the Oklahoma State University Addiction Recovery Clinic, said in a press release. Physicians are “seeing increasingly powerful synthetic opioids that require rapid recognition and aggressive intervention to prevent fatal outcomes.”

What happened

A cancer drug decades in the making significantly extended and improved the life of patients whose metastatic pancreatic cancer had stopped responding to previous treatments, researchers reported Sunday in The New England Journal of Medicine and at an American Society for Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago. In a study of 500 last-stage pancreatic patients, those assigned Revolution Medicine’s daraxonrasib pill lived an average of 13.2 months versus 6.7 months for those undergoing chemotherapy. They also experienced fewer side effects.

Who said what

The “hotly anticipated” findings suggest researchers have “cracked one of the most stubbornly lethal cancers” by blocking mutated KRAS genes responsible for most pancreatic tumors, The Washington Post said. Daraxonrasib “ticks all of the boxes,” Dr. Rachna Shroff of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, who wasn’t involved in the study, told The Associated Press. “Having treated pancreatic cancer for 16 years, I actually started crying” at the results.

What next?

“Dozens of experimental drugs” targeting cancer-causing gene mutations are in development, stoking “optimism that this may be a turning point in the quest” for new treatment options, the AP said. Revolution Medicine is now testing daraxonrasib in earlier-stage cancer and in combination with other treatments.

Getting you the right medical treatment more quickly – particularly if your life is at risk: that’s the aim of an NHS reform to unify patient records, so that doctors, nurses and paramedics can see a patient’s complete medical history, no matter where they are treated.

Single Patient Records could mean 20,000 fewer A&E visits and 6,000 fewer hospital admissions annually, said Health Secretary James Murray. This would save doctors about 500,000 hours, and the NHS £20 million, every year.

But plans for SPR, which come before Parliament today, face strong opposition from those who are concerned about the security of patient data and who will have access to it. We need to make sure that this pooled data cannot “be used inappropriately”, said the British Medical Association’s GP committee. “Ambitions to address fragmentation, improve productivity and reduce bureaucracy are laudable but they cannot come at the price of undermining confidentiality and public trust.”

What did the commentators say?

“The ambition is good,” said Alex Lawrence, a data specialist at The Health Foundation think tank. With its “Lego bricks” approach of stacking information together, SPR is the “most legislatively ambitious attempt” to “make care faster and safer” by getting patient data to “flow more freely” through the NHS system.

But “federating” the data and rolling out the system “is easier said than done”. It is still “unclear” what SPR will look like in practice, and “questions about how access, oversight and public choice will be managed remain unanswered”. Current data-sharing and confidentiality arrangements will be changed but key details – such as an individual’s right to restrict access to their records – have “been deferred to secondary legislation”. Its “absence on the face of the bill is a significant omission”.

“NHS digitisation projects have a chequered history,” said Laura Donnelly, health editor of The Telegraph. “A £12 billion programme for an NHS IT system in 2002 was abandoned” after 10 years, “due to spiralling costs and delays”. And Care.data, which was supposed to “extract GP records into a central database”, had to be scrapped in 2016 “following a public backlash over privacy concerns”.

Previous attempts to bring patient records together have been “beset by technical complexity, a mind-bending web of rules and roles, and some cultural intransigence”, said The Register. This time, the idea seems to be to use the current record systems in conjunction with the “controversial” Federated Data Platform run by US firm Palantir. “Either there’s going to be a new data store, which will be in Palantir, or there will be an infrastructure for bringing various independent APIs together” that uses Palantir’s FDP, Sam Smith, from data-safety campaign group medConfidential, told the news site.

There’s a reason why campaigners like medConfidential are calling SPR the “Single Palantir Record”, said investigative journalist Andrew Orlowski on Spiked. The company’s current contract with the NHS – which centres on using its FDP to improve efficiency – will be “worth over £1 billion if it runs its full course”. Palantir has had success in “winnowing” NHS waiting lists, but applying the singular goal of efficiency to patient data is “inimical to both interpersonal relationships – between patient and doctor – and trust”.

What next?

The plan is for SPR to be rolled out and made available on the NHS app as early as 2027. The Health Secretary has said that the Palantir contract was being reviewed ahead of its break point next year.

The NHS Modernisation Bill, which includes plans for SPR, as well as the abolition of NHS England, will have its second reading in the House of Commons today. Former Health Secretary Wes Streeting will speak from the backbenches to “back the bill he drafted”, said Donnelly in The Telegraph. He will no doubt “hail the changes” he made as health secretary and take “credit for the introduction of new AI tools and a funding uplift for GPs”. It’s a clear opportunity to boost his Labour leadership campaign.

The Trump administration’s moves to cut foreign aid and end ties with the World Health Organization could be making it more difficult to halt the latest Ebola outbreak in Africa.

Public health experts believe White House policies are “weakening critical networks” that respond to outbreaks in a “densely populated, politically unstable part of the world,” said Axios. The dismantling of U.S. support has “left the region dangerously exposed,” leading to the likelihood that Ebola was spreading “for some time” before it was detected, International Rescue Committee’s Heather Reoch Kerr said in a statement, per the outlet.

The Trump administration is pushing back against the criticism. The U.S. is “working with international partners” and “supporting response efforts” in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement to Axios.

What did the commentators say?

“This is what happens when you defund Ebola prevention,” Sara Herschander said at Vox. There are “no vaccines or treatments” for the strain of virus at the heart of the current outbreak and the disease is spreading quickly “under the heavy shadow of U.S. foreign aid cuts” that “gutted” Ebola detection and response programs. Many of the experts and researchers who once would have guided the response are “simply not there anymore.” The U.S. has now pledged $23 million in emergency funding to Congo and Uganda, but “you can’t expect a bandaid to make up for the damage.”

The Ebola outbreak is a story of “institutional erosion,” Columbia University’s Thoai D. Ngo said at Newsweek. U.S. aid “helped build laboratory networks, train field epidemiologists, establish emergency operations centers” and other public health infrastructure that made it possible for epidemics to be “detected early and contained quietly.” That system is being “hollowed out,” which is short-sighted. “Global health security is domestic health security.”

The world “doesn’t have to fail” the test posed by Ebola, Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said at The Washington Post. It is “not fair” to place blame for the outbreak at the “feet of the Trump administration.” This virus emerged in an “unstable area of Congo” and is able to avoid detection by Ebola tests designed to find more common strains. But the U.S. can choose to once again deploy its resources to help contain dangerous diseases, even when they emerge in foreign lands. That choice would protect Americans “at home and abroad from a highly lethal illness.”

What next?

American infectious disease experts “have been barred from speaking directly with the World Health Organization,” said CNN. The Trump administration-issued ban — which applies to officials at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — was in place for the recent hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship but was “relaxed slightly” for the Ebola outbreak.

These restrictions “hobble quick cooperation” in disease response, health officials said, per CNN. The United States has “written off most of the institutions with global health,” Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, told the outlet.

Vomiting, diarrhoea, sweating and a swollen face. Not the normal desired effects of a detox, but a kambo ceremony is not a normal detox.

Kambo is a poisonous secretion from an Amazonian tree frog, used by some indigenous people as traditional medicine. Its use as a wellness practice has spread to the US and Europe.

Last weekend it was reported that Kristian Trend, a 40-year-old wellness coach and cancer survivor from Leicester, had died after taking the frog poison. “He is believed to be the first British victim,” said The Times, but at least six deaths worldwide have been associated with kambo.

The substance is harvested from the defensive skin secretions of the Amazonian giant monkey tree frog. In the traditional medicine of some indigenous peoples of the Amazon, kambo “is applied to superficial burns on the skin of participants to produce an intense purging effect”, said Martin Williams, research fellow at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, on The Conversation.

‘Uncontrolled increase in fatalities’

Self-styled “kambo practitioners” have touted a range of supposed benefits for the purge and detox, including reduced anxiety, boosted energy and relief from chronic pain. Despite the documented side-effects, “the great majority of users of kambo anecdotally report positive physical, emotional and spiritual after-effects”, said Williams. Several celebrities have reportedly tried kambo, including actor Orlando Bloom, who told GQ that he had tried the treatment several times and claimed it left him with a “feeling of being clearer and wide open”. “You have this sensation of death and you kind of purge your body. But it’s incredible.” He did add, however, that “it was pretty brutal in terms of what it does to the body in the moment”, describing it as “coming out both ends”.

Kambo can also have more severe health consequences, with a paper published last year in Cureus, the online journal, warning of potential long-term issues. According to the scientists, the psychiatric effects were induced by hyperthermia and hyponatraemia, which were “often misinterpreted by participants as ‘astral travel’, instead of being recognised as potentially fatal conditions”. They added: “The widespread availability of kambo on the internet poses another pressing concern, contributing to an uncontrolled increase in fatalities.”

‘Absolute Western arrogance’

Governments around the world have acted to ban the poison. In Brazil, it’s illegal to sell or market kambo. In Australia, where two deaths after kambo rituals have led to coroner’s inquests, it was listed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in 2021 as a Schedule 10 poison: a “substance of such danger to health as to warrant prohibition of sale, supply and use”.

Trend’s mother Angie told The Telegraph that she wants the treatment to be banned in the UK following her son’s death: “He was going to cleanse himself, that’s what he said to me. He was very spiritual. He took a lot of vitamins.”

Despite the dangers, the adoption of wellness rituals involving kambo continues to grow worldwide. “A lot of these Western wellness practitioners are exploiting people’s gullibility and exploiting those who are sceptical about Western medicine,” Prof Roger Byard, a forensic pathologist at Adelaide University, told The Guardian.

“But the techniques of shamans and healers in Indigenous communities have been used for hundreds of years and they have been trained to safely use these substances for certain, specific situations. To think that we can go into a community or spend a bit of time in another country and then take one of their time-honoured, cultural practices and then just take it for our own use is absolute Western arrogance.”

Experts are warning of trouble ahead as the annual number of babies being born in England and Wales has fallen to the lowest level since 1977.

The consequences of the trend are already being felt and some have accused politicians of ignoring a “crisis”.

How many babies are being born?

According to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 585,396 babies were born last year, down from 594,677 in 2024. This means that in 2025, the number of babies born “fell to the lowest level in almost half a century”, which “continues the long-term trend of falling births going back over the past decade”, said Greg Ceely, ONS head of population health monitoring.

The average age of mothers and fathers has been steadily increasing since the 1960s, when the contraceptive pill was introduced. Parents were older than ever before: on average women were 31 when their child was born, and fathers were 34. In 1975, the average ages were 26 for mothers and 30 for fathers. In that year, nearly one-third of babies were born to parents who were not married, compared to almost half last year.

Why are numbers falling?

There is no single cause. The trend is mostly a mix of economic, social and cultural factors. The costs of housing and the instability of the housing market are making starting a family seem riskier. Also, the UK has some of the highest childcare costs in Europe, relative to wages, so even middle-income couples often find that one parent’s salary would mostly disappear into childcare.

People are having children later because they’re staying in education longer, or focusing on their career, or wanting to travel and enjoy years of independence before settling down. When people delay into their 30s, they often end up having fewer children than originally planned. Cultural changes mean that remaining child-free is more accepted than in the past when there was a stigma.

Is this a crisis?

The total fertility rate, which means the average number of children women are expected to have according to statistical trends, has fallen to 1.39 for England and Wales, the lowest ever recorded. For a country’s population to remain stable over time without relying on mass migration, the fertility rate needs to be around 2.1. The data will “fuel political anxieties” about the “plummeting birth rate”, said Eleanor Hayward, health editor for The Times.

A persistently low birth rate can create long-term demographic problems, because an ageing population means there are more retirees and fewer workers supporting pensions, healthcare, social care, and taxes needed for public services. A shrinking population means that more jobs will go unfilled and economic dynamism will reduce.

Other consequences are “already being felt”, said The Guardian. Some schools are being forced to close, businesses such as soft-play centres and childminders are struggling, and midwifery courses are facing challenges because students must attend a minimum number of births.

Meanwhile, people are also living longer: life expectancy has been rising since the late 18th century, and fertility has been declining since the late 19th century, aside from a short rebound in the middle of the 20th century.

But “Westminster dwellers” don’t always “take an interest in this crisis”, which “often seems to be the problem that cannot be named” for politicians who don’t want to appear “anti-feminist” or “overly interfering in people’s personal lives”, said Politics Home.

Is alarm around the issue justified? “I don’t think so,” the cognitive and evolutionary anthropologist, Paula Sheppard, told New Scientist. There are nearly nine billion people on Earth, so “we’re not going to go extinct any time soon”.

What happened

President Donald Trump on Tuesday spent more than three hours at Walter Reed Medical Center for his fourth publicly disclosed medical exam since returning to office last year. The White House did not release any details of the exam, but “everything checked out PERFECTLY,” Trump, who turns 80 next month, said on social media.

Who said what

Trump’s unusually frequent exams have put his health “under renewed public scrutiny after he has worked to dismiss concerns over his age and stamina,” The Associated Press said. He “frequently casts himself as more energetic and fitter than Joe Biden,” who left office at age 82 after “facing questions about his fitness for the job,” Reuters said.

Trump’s “health and fitness have been central to his political identity,” but as an “aging president, he now receives some of the same questions that dogged Biden — namely, whether he is mentally and physically fit” enough, The Washington Post said. “Independent doctors” have called the White House’s explanations for Trump’s bruised hands, neck rash, swollen legs and “occasional sleepiness” at meetings “insufficient.”

What next?

It was “not immediately clear whether the White House would release details” from Trump’s clinical exam to “support his claim” of good health, The New York Times said.

Forty-two athletes, including swimmers, weightlifters and sprinters, will compete in Las Vegas on Sunday in the first Enhanced Games.

Little in sport has “caused as much controversy – nor provoked as many questions – as the Enhanced Games”, said BBC sports editor Dan Roan. “Those behind it claim it is here to stay, and could soon expand to more events and other disciplines.”

But there is another side to the spectacle of juiced-up competitors trying to beat the world record in their discipline. Earlier this year, the company behind the event, Enhanced, launched a range of personalised performance and longevity medicines to sell to the public.

What did the commentators say?

Proponents of the games say the aim is “to challenge sporting norms by allowing athletes to push their potential with legal drugs under strict medical oversight”, said Chris Kenning in USA Today. “The approach is, let’s not be naive and pretend it’s not happening,” said Enhanced CEO Max Martin. “Let’s just take what’s happening in the shadows, put it out in the open.”

But that’s not sensible, say some sports medicine experts. “It’s akin to me saying I’m going to make smoking safe by supervising you while you’re smoking,” Aaron Baggish, professor of medicine at the University of Lausanne, told Yahoo Sports.

Most critics though “overlook the fact that the Enhanced Games is making obvious what society has always quietly accepted”, said Byron Hyde, philosopher of science and public policy at Bristol University, on The Conversation – namely “that most people are willing to watch athletes risk harm when the entertainment is good enough”. Brain trauma is the “potential price of boxing entertainment”, so “why the outrage about pharmaceutical enhancement risks?”

For Baggish, the “primary concern” is the message the event sends to the public that using these substances when taking part in sports “is in any way, shape or form OK. That’s the really scary thing.”

That appears to be one of the goals of the organisers. Aron D’Souza, founder of the Enhanced Games, told The Independent in 2024: “This is the route towards eternal life.” The games will “bring about performance-medicine technologies that then create a feedback cycle of good technologies, selling to the world, more revenue, more R&D, to develop better and better technologies”. Ultimately, “it’s about being a better, stronger, faster, younger athlete for longer. And who doesn’t want to be younger for longer?”

But, said The Economist, “the real purpose of the games is to push the limits of what the public sees as the acceptable use of performance-enhancing drugs”. The event is taking place “at a time when concerns are being raised over the medicalisation of Western society”, said Roan. Social media and ‘looksmaxxing’ are being “blamed for fuelling demand for weight-loss injections, cosmetic treatments and performance substances”.

What next?

The Enhanced Games “speak to a vision of the future in which medicines, rather than being simply used to treat disease, can extend human longevity and enhance well-being”, said The Economist.

But on Sunday, the athletes involved will effectively be the guinea pigs for this idea, albeit ones who have “burned bridges, risked their future livelihoods or their health”. And with the launch of Enhanced’s consumer business, “more and more people may soon be wagering their bodies on a chance to roll back the clock”.

Two things are true: Cruise ships can be breeding grounds for disease. Americans love cruises anyway.

Expedition cruise lines “haven’t experienced any slowdown in bookings” following the deadly hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius, said The Wall Street Journal. Oceangoing travelers “generally understand the realities” of long boat journeys, Expedition Cruise Network CEO Akvile Marozaite said to the newspaper. Despite the scary headlines, industry experts “expect a record number of people” to take cruises this year, said The Associated Press. The sector “seems to be somewhat Teflon” to the bad publicity, Cornell University’s Robert Kwortnik said to the outlet.

What did the commentators say?

“Why would anyone go on a cruise?” Dave Schilling said at The Guardian. The Hondius drew worldwide attention, but a separate ship that was briefly quarantined with a rash of stomach flu cases was largely overlooked by the media. The stories are “piling up” about cruise ships being ocean-bound “fetid petri dishes.” There is not “one thing” a cruise offers “that isn’t available in the safe bosom of dry land.” Cruises will remain popular anyway. If Covid-19 “didn’t kill” enthusiasm for the excursions, “I think the industry is safe.”

People who criticize cruises are “wrong about nearly everything,” Nicole Russell said at USA Today. The hantavirus outbreak “won’t dampen my desire to go on a cruise.” There may be many stories of “terrible things happening on cruise ships,” but they are “worth the risk” because they can provide an “affordable, joy-filled family vacation.” Cruises, like life, are a “trade-off.” And life is “meant to be lived.“

“Do I think cruises are worth it, health-wise?” epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz said at Slate. The answer is a “bit complicated.” Cruises are “absolutely great places for illnesses to thrive,” but there is not a “great deal of evidence showing that infections are more likely” than on land. It is possible that people “just generally come into contact with lots of others on vacation.” Meyerowitz-Katz is considering taking his own family on a cruise. After weighing both the risks and benefits, “it doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.“

What next?

People planning to take a cruise should “practice great hand hygiene,” said CNBC. They should also “get up-to-date on your vaccines” before departing. And they should “keep a safe social distance” if illness rears its head. Best to stay clear of anyone who is coughing, “has difficulty breathing or is exhibiting fever,” Wellness Equity Alliance’s Dr. Tyler B. Evans said to the outlet.

The Hondius’ next voyage is already planned, said Forbes. After arriving in the Netherlands, the ship is to be “disinfected using chlorine and peroxide,” and the crew quarantined. Two scheduled voyages for the Hondius were canceled, but the plan “pending successful cleaning” is to sail in June from the Svalbard islands to the North Pole.

Rising Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are ringing alarm bells across a region still scarred by previous outbreaks of the highly contagious viral disease. The World Health Organization has declared a “public health emergency of international concern”.

At least 540 suspected cases and 131 suspected deaths have been reported by DR Congo’s health minister, and two cases have been confirmed in neighbouring Uganda. But the WHO’s initial sampling suggests the outbreak is potentially much more widespread.

And what makes this outbreak “extraordinary”, said the WHO, is that it’s caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus. This has a lower fatality rate (about 35%) than the more common Zaire or Sudan strains (up to 90% and 50% respectively) but there is no licensed Bundibugyo-specific vaccine or treatment – and the tests for it do not appear to work very well.

What did the commentators say?

Experts are alarmed that this outbreak “has been able to spread for weeks undetected across a densely populated ​area”, said Reuters. It took weeks to identify it as the Bundibugyo strain and then pinpointing cases was “slowed by limited diagnostic capacity”, with only six tests possible per hour.

The lack of a vaccine is why I am in “panic mode”, Jean Kaseya, the director-general of Africa-Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told Sky News. And ongoing attacks by Islamic State-backed militants in Ituri, the province at the centre of the outbreak, are “restricting surveillance and rapid response operations”.

Ituri is “rebel-held territory”, close to “porous borders” with Uganda and South Sudan that communities cross constantly, said The Times. That’s certainly one factor that’s “making containment so difficult”. Bundibugyo is also “among the least studied of the Ebola strains”: this is only the third outbreak on record.

We reached a “critical moment”, said the BBC’s health correspondent James Gallagher. Most Ebola outbreaks are small but specialists are still “haunted” by the largest, which started in 2014 and killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa. This time, there is a “significant threat” not only to DR Congo and Uganda but also South Sudan and Rwanda. But that doesn’t mean we’re “in the early stages of a Covid-style pandemic”. The risk to the rest of the world “remains tiny”.

DR Congo has “extensive experience in dealing with Ebola outbreaks”, and its response is “significantly stronger today than it was a decade ago”, Daniela Manno, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told the BBC’s Gallagher. But recent US-led foreign-aid cuts have taken their toll. Containing the 2014 outbreak “relied on US leadership from USAID”, said Devi Sridharm, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, in The Guardian. But “the USAID team dedicated to Ebola-like diseases was cut by Elon Musk”. Since Donald Trump withdrew the US from the WHO, the organisation’s emergency-response budget has shrunk by 37%. UK foreign-aid funding has also “fallen to its lowest level in two decades”.

The worry “is less about this becoming a global pandemic” (unlikely, as Ebola only spreads through contact with infected body fluids), and more about “the devastation it can cause” to the region and its “already fragile” healthcare systems. But this is an “interconnected world”: “if your neighbour’s house is on fire, you don’t wait and watch; you help to put it out before the fire spreads to yours.”

What next?

The WHO is sending a team of experts to Congo and, on Friday, will host an emergency scientific consultation of researchers, clinicians, public health bodies and funders. “The cash-strapped organisation has already released almost $4 million (£3 million) to combat the outbreak,” said the BBC, “but much more may be needed.” Public health officials are also considering using a combination of the existing approved vaccines for the Zaire and Sudan strains.

But communities in the region “have little trust in government or external aid agencies”, said Sridhar. If Ebola spreads to a major urban hub, it will be “much more difficult to stop”.

“I don’t think that, in two months, we will be done with this outbreak”, Anne Ancia, the WHO’s representative for the DRC, told reporters in Geneva at the World Health Assembly. The 2014 Ebola outbreak took two years to end.

What happened

The World Health Organization Sunday declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a “public health emergency of international concern.” More than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths have been reported, with at least one confirmed case in the rebel-held city of Goma and two others in neighboring Uganda.

There have been more than 20 Ebola outbreaks in the region since the deadly virus was discovered in 1976, but this is only the third caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which there are no approved vaccines or treatments.

Who said what

This is not yet a “pandemic emergency,” the WHO said, but all indications “point toward a potentially much larger outbreak than what is currently being detected,” with “significant local and regional risk of spread.” The emergency declaration “indicates that the outbreak requires coordination among countries, given its risk of international spread,” Politico said.

What next?

A “handful of Americans” in the DRC “may have been exposed to suspected cases of Ebola,” and one or more with symptoms “may need to be medically evacuated,” The Washington Post said. “The risk to Americans is low,” said Satish Pillai at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As the Iran war continues, food and vital medicines in the country are becoming increasingly scarce, said The Australian. The costs of some medicines “have risen by 400%”, and antidepressants and sleeping pills are reportedly being “dispensed without prescriptions”.

This is not unique to the Middle East, as other countries around the world face the threat of conflict, or suffer under pressures of economic and political repression. As mental health crises and resources continue to stretch, many fear the consequences could echo the fallout from the Covid pandemic.

A ‘kind of coma’

Some pharmacists in Iran have called the boom in antidepressants a form of “mass sedation”, said The Australian. These healthcare professionals believe that relaxing the strictness of distribution policy keeps the public in a “state of artificial calm” designed to “delay any popular uprising while the war continues”.

Access to the country’s black market has also been damaged since the start of the war. Built on sanctions, import shortages and “hoarding” by middlemen, the black market is “not new”. But with the joint threat of war and internet shutdown, the “shadow supply chain” has been significantly “disrupted”. As the war continues, Iran is stuck in a “kind of coma, caught between economic collapse and the dream of a better future”.

The rise in antidepressant use is part of a broader system to “doctrinise control of Iranians’ minds and bodies”, said Atlantic Council. Observers from abroad have “overlooked the concerted regime strategy to deliberately engineer this state of depression as a suppression mechanism”. By outlawing cultural events such as Valentine’s Day, “Chaharshanbe Suri (the festival of fire)” and “Shabeh Yalda (winter solstice)”, the regime has arguably “promoted gloom and hopelessness to the extent that citizens become paralysed and incapable of challenging the political status quo”.

Like Iran, Lebanon has been struck by the ongoing conflict, and has appeared to follow a similar pattern of “pushing anxious residents toward sedatives and sleeping pills”, said Y Net News. Though no official data has been released, news outlet Al-Akhbar, which has ties to Hezbollah, claimed that the “demand for sedatives had jumped by 300% since the fighting began”, said Y Net. This figure, though unverified, “points to a population under mounting psychological strain”.

Global impact

And in Cuba, economic and political crises present an “outlook that feels bleaker than the collapse of the Soviet Union”, said The Guardian. As a growing mental health crisis “envelops the island”, many citizens are “turning to prescription drugs” to cope with the US-imposed oil blockade, and still reeling from years of economic decline.

Cuba is stuck in a vicious cycle, as the economy shrinks – GDP has “contracted by 17% since 2019” – it means state pharmacies lie “empty”, while demand for their services increases. People are “leaving in large numbers”, which exacerbates the cycle further. In the last five years, “up to 20% of the population” has emigrated, which has in turn added to the “psychological load on those who chose (or were forced) to remain”.

In its ongoing campaign against Ukraine, Russia is experiencing a “spiral” of antidepressant use, said El País. The country has registered “record sales” of the medications every year since 2020. Last year’s total “nearly tripled pharmaceutical consumption” from 2019. In the same year, figures from Russian consultancy DSM show that after peace negotiations were “unsuccessfully reinitiated” in 2024, sales of antidepressants grew 36%. It appears the war, with its subsequent health crises, has had a “larger emotional impact on its population” than the Covid pandemic.

In the early 1950s, thousands of UN troops in Korea fell ill with a mysterious fever, said Chris Smith in The Spectator. Doctors suspected that a virus might be to blame – but it wasn’t until 1978 that a Korean scientist isolated the culprit in a mouse, and named it after a nearby river, the Hantan.

He also showed that hantaviruses, which are carried by rodents, can be inhaled by humans in dust contaminated by droppings or urine. The troops had likely kicked the virus up as they dug foxholes.

Old vs. New World

Since then, numerous strains that can be transmitted to humans have been identified. They divide into two groups: Old World hantaviruses, in Europe and Asia, cause kidney dysfunction and have a mortality rate of 1% to 15%; New World ones, in the Americas, lead to severe lung infections and are fatal in around 40% of cases. It was the latter group that caused the outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius, and specifically the Andes strain, the only hantavirus that – in very rare cases – can pass from human to human.

It is not yet clear how this outbreak started, said Esther Addley in The Guardian, but it is thought that one, or possibly two, passengers were carrying the virus, which has an incubation period of up to 42 days, when they boarded the ship in Argentina on 1 April. A Dutch ornithologist who fell ill on 6 April and died five days later has been identified as “patient zero”. He had spent months travelling in South America with his wife – who died on 26 April. A German woman then died on 2 May. By 10 May, seven others had fallen ill.

No pandemic

This week, 20 British nationals on board flew home to the UK, and were bussed to an isolation facility on the Wirral, said Sarah Knapton in The Daily Telegraph. Described as healthy, they were assessed for 72 hours and then asked to self-isolate at home for 42 days.

Health officials have stressed that we are not facing a pandemic. The Andes strain does not spread easily: it requires intimate or very close contact. And though many passengers left the ship weeks ago, there have so far been no “third-generation” cases – among people who were not on board. Given the virus’s incubation period, clinicians say that 21 June is the date to watch: if there have been no third-generation cases by then, it means the outbreak has run its course.

What happened

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday preserved access to mifepristone, a common mail-order abortion drug. The decision, which extends a pause on a lower court’s ruling while a Louisiana lawsuit on the issue plays out, means women can continue to order the pills through telehealth communications without seeing a doctor in person. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

Who said what

This decision is “remarkable” because easy access to abortion pills is a “scheme to undermine” the court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Alito wrote in his dissent. Mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories said the ruling meant a “safe and effective drug Americans depend on will continue to be available.” The court “has thrown abortion providers and patients a lifeline — albeit a temporary one,” said Politico.

What next?

The Court of Appeals is not expected to rule on the Louisiana suit until after the November midterms, and the issue “could ultimately return to the justices on their normal docket,” said The Hill. In the meantime, the Federal Drug Administration is conducting a safety review of mifepristone.

After years of combined effort, an international coalition has come up with a new proposed name for one of the reproductive disorders affecting millions worldwide. Women’s reproductive health has long been a blind spot in the medical industry, but the group hopes that renaming polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) will help illuminate a better path forward in treating it.

Why the push to change the name PCOS?

For decades, millions of patients with symptoms like “irregular periods, pelvic pain, excess body hair and acne” have been diagnosed with PCOS, said The New York Times. Getting a diagnosis can be difficult, and those who do encounter stigma and imperfect treatment options along the way. An international consortium of doctors and researchers concluded that the condition’s name was part of the problem. Many PCOS patients “don’t have ovarian cysts at all,” but they often have “widespread hormonal and metabolic dysfunction.”

After more than a decade of “vigorous debate” over the need for a different name that more precisely describes the syndrome, a gathering of 56 organizations debuted the result: polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS, said Stat News. It was introduced in a policy paper published in The Lancet and presented at the European Congress of Endocrinology in Prague.

Since the previous name of the illness didn’t accurately describe the condition, it contributed to “delayed diagnosis, fragmented care and stigma, while curtailing research and policy framing,” the consortium members said in the paper. The change was based on input from dozens of organizations and experts, as well as feedback from more than 14,000 patients.

The new name “moves away from the incorrect focus on cysts” to recognizing this as a “much broader condition,” said lead study author Helena Teede, the director of Melbourne’s Monash Center for Health Research and Implementation, to The Guardian. The effects of PMOS on the body are “virtually all endocrine — hormonal.” Patients instigated a name change because they knew “how much they have suffered because of the name, and they were really passionate.” The efforts were “unprecedented,” and nobody has “put this much effort into a name change ever.”

In the policy paper, the authors lay out a plan for the World Health Organization and the International Classification of Diseases to adopt the new name over the next three years, potentially making it the international standard by 2028.

How will the name change affect treatment?

The researchers hope the name change will “transform how patients understand the condition” and “how doctors treat it,” said the Times. When a condition affects one organ, everything from research funding to education to clinical guidelines is “all in that box,” Teede said to the outlet. “And in this condition, it was in the wrong box.”

The change could also have “immediate implications for some patients,” prompting doctors to “recommend more screening for metabolic and cardiovascular problems,” said the Times. Renaming it should “redirect” professionals “into thinking about this as a long-term chronic condition and not just a period problem,” Basma Faris, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said to the outlet.

Funding for studying the disorder and treatments will no longer be limited to sources focused on ovarian health, Teede said to Time. Despite affecting “170 million reproductive-age women” and creating a “health and economic burden” that is “huge,” the illness hasn’t had much investment in research. Getting it categorized differently means “we get more evidence on how to treat it.”

Women’s health is “notoriously underfunded,” Christina Boots, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said to CNN. Recognizing that it “spans not just reproductive issues, but mental health and metabolic health as well,” may help “enhance the number of dollars and the number of studies that are to understand it and treat it.”

About 5 million to 6 million American women have PMOS, according to the Endocrine Society and the CDC. It affects up to 12% of American women of reproductive age. Despite how common it is, the condition “remains misunderstood and underresearched,” said The Cut, and the World Health Organization estimates that nearly 70% of women who suffer from it have never been diagnosed. Even though the “diagnostic criteria have not changed,” experts hope that a new, more accurate name will “help more people get a diagnosis sooner.”