Medical Xpress news

Medical Xpress / Evidence suggests chatbot disclaimers may backfire, strengthening emotional bonds

Concerns that chatbot use can cause mental and physical harm have prompted policies that require AI chatbots to deliver regular or constant reminders that they are not human. In an opinion appearing in Trends in Cognitive ...

Feb 18, 2026 in Psychology & Psychiatry
Medical Xpress / Big data and human height: Scientists develop algorithm to boost biobank data retrieval and analysis

Extracting and analyzing relevant medical information from large-scale databases such as biobanks poses considerable challenges. To exploit such "big data," attempts have focused on large sampling algorithms that model individual ...

Feb 18, 2026 in Health informatics
Medical Xpress / Brainwaves of mothers and children synchronize when playing together—even in an acquired language

Interbrain synchrony is the simultaneous activity of neural networks across the brains of people who are socially interacting—for example, talking, learning, singing, or working together. Having brains that are thus synchronized ...

Feb 18, 2026 in Neuroscience
Medical Xpress / Menopausal hormone therapy not linked to increased risk of death, study shows

Menopausal hormone therapy (commonly known as hormone replacement therapy or HRT) is not associated with an increased risk of death, finds a Danish study of over 800,000 women published in The BMJ. The findings support current ...

Feb 18, 2026 in Endocrinology & Metabolism
Medical Xpress / Booster shots reduce the risks of COVID-19 deaths, study finds

Booster vaccines reduced the risk of COVID‑19-related hospitalization and death, according to a new study of over 3 million adults who had the autumn 2022 vaccine in England. The research, led by the universities of Bristol ...

Feb 18, 2026 in Vaccination
Medical Xpress / Senescent cells after pregnancy may fuel postpartum breast cancer spread

Postpartum breast cancer is diagnosed five to ten years after giving birth. It is associated with a higher risk of metastasis and a lower survival rate compared with women who have not been pregnant or those diagnosed during ...

Feb 18, 2026 in Oncology & Cancer
Medical Xpress / Bone marrow cell atlas created for improved leukemia research

What do healthy bone marrow cells in children look like? For the first time, researchers have mapped this out. Scientists at the Princess Máxima Center examined nearly 91,000 individual bone marrow cells from healthy children. ...

Feb 18, 2026 in Immunology
Medical Xpress / Daily exercise and protein drinks may cut care needs for dementia patients, study finds

A simple combination of daily physical exercise and protein-rich nutritional drinks appears to offer significant health benefits for people with dementia. In a new study from Karolinska Institutet, not only did the participants' ...

Medical Xpress / Existing hospital analyzers offer a low-cost method to screen for fake vaccines

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10.5% of medicines worldwide in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or are falsified (i.e., fake). These medicines and vaccines fail to prevent and treat the ...

Feb 18, 2026 in Vaccination
Medical Xpress / Scalable human neuron networks reveal brain-like rhythms and how drugs reshape them

An EEG (electroencephalogram) is a painless test that uses small sensors placed on the scalp to measure the brain's electrical activity. It provides a real-time readout of brain "waves"—rhythms generated by large groups ...

Feb 18, 2026 in Neuroscience
Medical Xpress / How a parent's concern may help flag a child's sudden severe illness in over 90% of cases

A parent's intuition about their child's condition is a significant medical indicator. A new study from the University of Oulu and Oulu University Hospital shows that even comprehensive digital symptom questionnaires may ...

Feb 18, 2026 in Pediatrics
Medical Xpress / Study splits schizophrenia genetic risk into two pathways, one shared with bipolar disorder

A new study by researchers at King's College London has split schizophrenia risk into two genetically distinct pathways. One is characterized by a shared genetic risk with bipolar disorder and associated with higher educational ...

Feb 18, 2026 in Genetics