The Medical News

Ancient DNA from 46 Lake Baikal hunter-gatherers revealed two early plague outbreak phases about 5,500 years ago, with Yersinia pestis detected in 18 individuals. The findings suggest these basal plague strains caused lethal, child-heavy outbreaks long before dense farming societies, cities, or classical flea-borne bubonic plague emerged.

MIRA, an autonomous AI agent tested in a sandboxed electronic health record, diagnosed 574 real emergency department cases with 88.9% accuracy and outperformed physicians in a matched 311-case comparison. The system ordered tests, generated medication plans, and made admission decisions in simulation, but the authors stress that prospective validation, governance, and physician oversight are stil…

A new study led by researchers at The University of Texas at El Paso found that use of weight loss drugs like Ozempic and other GLP-1s is associated with a lower risk of developing alcohol, opioid, nicotine and cocaine use disorders.

Researchers created a DIA-MS atlas of 13,609 proteins across 2,856 samples from fetal, healthy adult, paired non-tumor, and tumor tissues. The resource maps tissue-specific protein patterns, cancer-associated changes, organ-specific drug-toxicity signals, and candidate therapeutic targets.

Global health policymakers should focus on the way entire healthcare systems work together - improving one element does not always create better outcomes if the wider system is not ready.

Creatine, the organic acid that is popularly taken as a supplement by athletes and bodybuilders, supercharges a critical class of immune cells that activate and prepare the body’s key cancer-fighters, according to new UCLA research.

An international survey has highlighted major gaps in cardio-oncology training, despite its increasing clinical importance. These results were presented at ESC Cardio-Oncology 2026, the second annual conference of the European Society of Cardiology's Council of Cardio-Oncology.

Nearly half of Americans with kidney failure who are referred for transplantation never begin the process required to be considered for a new organ, a new study shows, while less than a fifth actually complete the assessment and get on the waitlist.

A natural quasi-experiment in Suba, Bogotá, found that more stringent COVID-19 mobility restrictions were associated with larger reductions in PM₁₀ and PM₂.₅ air pollution. The findings suggest targeted traffic and emissions controls could improve urban air quality, although ozone responses were more complex, and the results may not generalize beyond this high-traffic district.

Google’s AMIE research AI matched primary care physicians overall in simulated, multi-visit disease-management reasoning and scored higher on several measures of plan appropriateness, treatment precision, investigation precision, and guideline alignment. The study highlights the promise of conversational AI for longitudinal care, while emphasizing that AMIE is not ready for clinical use and still…

A 28-day wearable-sensor study of 26 healthy naturally menstruating women found that active energy expenditure varied across the menstrual cycle and was higher in the early follicular phase than the late follicular phase.

Synthetic microbial communities give researchers controlled models for testing how diet reshapes gut microbial ecology, metabolism, and host-relevant responses. The review highlights how SynComs can strengthen causal inference, improve intervention testing, and support future precision nutrition, while noting major challenges in stability, standardization, and ecological realism.

A new Review reveals how aging can push the immune system into a paradoxical state, weaker against threats yet more prone to attacking the body’s own tissues.

Researchers at the Medical University of Vienna, in collaboration with ETH Zurich, the Technical University of Munich and Medical Faculty Belgrade, have developed a wearable neurorobotic system that combines electrical neurostimulation with hand exoskeletons.

When H5N1 bird flu first began infecting U.S. cattle in early 2024, diagnosis was elusive, because in cows, the disease looked completely different.

The altered presence of tiny fragments of neuronal genes, called microexons, causes hyperarousal in zebrafish. This is the main conclusion of an international study led by the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG).

The world's first HIV-positive-to-HIV-positive lung transplant was performed at NYU Langone Health.

Instagram use could influence not only how we see our bodies, but also how our brain perceives as "ours" the bodies we inhabit.

In a paper published in Cell, a USC Stem Cell-led team reports a new way of generating a renewable and expandable supply of the progenitor cells that give rise to macrophages.

Scientists have demonstrated a non-invasive technique that uses light to reveal the hidden contents of chicken eggs, potentially helping to curb the meat industry's practice of killing billions of male chicks at birth.