Medical Xpress news

Medical Xpress / Reported 2025 drug overdose 'spike' was an illusion, new study finds

In June 2025, several mainstream media outlets reported a surge in U.S. drug overdose deaths in early 2025 that was based on data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

1 hour ago
Medical Xpress / Why anti-cancer drugs do not always live up to expectations

For more than a decade, a class of drugs called BET inhibitors has been tested in cancer trials with high expectations. The biology looked promising. Many cancers depend on oncogenes that "Bromo- and Extra-Terminal domain" ...

1 hour ago
Medical Xpress / Mental and physical illnesses go hand in hand. A new genetic study explains why

For centuries, mental illness and physical disease have been viewed as two distinct categories, each with its own field of study, its own doctors, and its own menu of treatments. New University of Colorado Boulder research ...

12 hours ago
Medical Xpress / Why smoking may raise dementia risk: Lung exosomes could disrupt brain iron balance

The correlation between smoking and neurodegeneration is well-documented, with one study from 2011 finding that heavy smoking in midlife was associated with a greater than 100% increase in risk of dementia, Alzheimer's and ...

12 hours ago
Medical Xpress / Cancer risk is significantly higher for adults who have never married, finds large study

Adults who have never been married face a significantly higher risk of developing cancer than those who have been married, according to a large U.S. study of more than four million cases. The increased risk spans nearly every ...

20 hours ago
Medical Xpress / Little-used cholesterol test could prevent more heart attacks and strokes

A routine blood test taken by millions in the U.S. each year to measure "bad" cholesterol is not the best measure to guide treatment and prevent heart attacks and strokes, suggests a new Northwestern Medicine study published ...

17 hours ago
Medical Xpress / Extra chromosomes may seed childhood leukemia years before disease, study suggests

B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia is the most common form of childhood cancer. In this type of cancer, which affects blood cells, one of the most common abnormalities is the presence of cells with an excess of chromosomes ...

15 hours ago
Medical Xpress / Mapping mutations at scale in a single gene reveals new neurodevelopmental condition

The ability of different genetic variants—changes to one or more building blocks of DNA—to cause disease, and to what extent, has historically been opaque. Geneticist and Crick group leader Greg Findlay has pioneered a new ...

16 hours ago
Medical Xpress / Long-term excess weight, not one-time BMI, can better predict cardiovascular risk

Obesity is a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease, but people's weights can shift over time, and little is known about the cumulative impact of excess weight. New research from investigators at Mass General Brigham ...

16 hours ago
Medical Xpress / Are we ever truly free to make decisions? New study tracks a universal process in the brain

Imagine you're in line at your favorite bakery, deciding whether to have a doughnut or a tart. You weigh them up, the doughnut wins, and you settle on that. By the time you're at the front of the line, however, only tarts ...

21 hours ago
Medical Xpress / A wearable ring could help assess your cardiovascular health while you sleep

Consumer wearables have become everyday tools for monitoring sleep and physical activity. Researchers at the Centre for Sleep and Cognition at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (NUS Medicine) have now shown that their ...

19 hours ago
Medical Xpress / Tau seeds spread through connected neurons in people with Alzheimer's disease, new research shows

Researchers have discovered the mechanism by which neurofibrillary tangles spread through the brain of Alzheimer's patients is via connected neurons, and these findings reveal a major disease etiology that could lead to new ...

19 hours ago