The Medical News

1. Semaglutide’s heart benefits may partly involve reduced inflammation

   A prespecified analysis of 17,604 SELECT participants found that higher baseline hsCRP was associated with greater risks of major cardiovascular events and death in people with overweight or obesity and established cardiovascular disease. Semaglutide produced rapid and sustained reductions in hsCRP, with changes emerging before substantial weight loss, although the study could not establish whether reduced inflammation directly mediated its cardiovascular benefits.

2. Disrupted brain-immune signaling may help drive neurodegeneration

   A Cell perspective argues that neurodegeneration can emerge from disrupted communication between neural and immune networks, with peripheral immunity, microglia, and gene-regulatory programs all shaping disease processes. The authors propose that restoring immune homeostasis and recalibrating neuroimmune circuits could create new therapeutic and diagnostic opportunities, while emphasizing that many mechanisms remain unresolved in humans.

3. These simple fitness tests revealed which older adults had the lowest death risk

   Objective fitness tests in 13,423 Taiwanese adults aged 65 years or older linked better balance, agility, lower-body strength, and cardiorespiratory fitness with lower all-cause mortality over a median seven years. A multidomain fitness index showed the strongest association, suggesting that simple performance tests may add useful information to conventional geriatric risk assessment.

4. A two-year diet trial challenges the idea that weight loss is the only result that matters

   In the two-year DELISH randomized trial, adults with obesity achieved modest, sustained weight loss with either an adapted Mediterranean-style program or a commercial weight loss program. The Mediterranean-style intervention produced greater improvements in self-reported diet quality, while 24-month weight loss did not materially differ between groups.

5. Researchers followed children for a decade to see whether screen time really mattered

   A large Scottish birth cohort found that screen use showed limited and inconsistent associations with children’s emotional, behavioral, and social development from ages 5 to 15. Very high gaming in adolescence stood out, while several other associations weakened after adjustment, sensitivity analyses, or correction for multiple testing.

6. A childhood shaped by sugar rationing was linked to mental health more than 50 years later

   UK Biobank researchers examined whether sugar rationing during pregnancy and the first two years of life was associated with adult sweet-food preferences, sugar intake, brain structure, anxiety, and depression.

7. A striking immune cell pattern emerges around a person’s 100th birthday

   Single-cell immune profiling found that CD4 cytotoxic T lymphocytes become more abundant around age 100, showing stepwise differentiation and substantial clonal expansion. Ex vivo experiments also revealed cytokine plasticity within individual clones, supporting the hypothesis that these cells adapt to persistent antigens during healthy aging, although their direct role in longevity remains unproven.

8. Historic redlining continues limiting healthy food access, study finds

   Bad housing, high crime and poor schools are more important than transportation or income when it comes to accessing healthy food in neighborhoods historically subjected to "redlining" - the now-illegal practice once used to refuse loans, insurance or mortgages to people in certain neighborhoods that were disproportionately inhabited by racial and ethnicity minorities.