A widely-used, inexpensive gout drug could reduce heart attacks and strokes in people with cardiovascular disease, according to a new Cochrane review.

A fundamental rethink of how the NHS trains its future workforce is urgently needed, according to a new paper from the Higher Education Policy Institute (www.hepi.ac.uk), Rethinking Placement: Increasing Clinical Placement Efficacy for a Sustainable NHS Future (HEPI Report 194).

The rate of high blood pressure (hypertension) in children and adolescents under 19 has nearly doubled, increasing from about 3% in 2000 to over 6% in 2020.

More than 9% of children and adolescents have masked hypertension — high blood pressure that only shows up with out-of-office tests, meaning hypertension could be undetected during regular checkups.

Nearly 19% of children and adolescents with obesity have hypertension, eight times higher than the prevalence of hypertension in those considered a healthy weight.

Approximately 8% of children and adolescents now have prehypertension, a warning sign of potential progression to hypertension, which could lead to serious health issues, including cardiovascular and kidney disease, if not addressed.

The authors say these findings underscore the pressing need for improved screening and coordinated diagnostic standards to tackle the rising tide of childhood hypertension globally.

The rate of children and adolescents experiencing high blood pressure worldwide nearly doubled between 2000 and 2020, according to a new meta-analysis published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal.

Headache disorders affected almost 3 billion people worldwide in 2023—nearly one in every three people, a figure unchanged since 1990—and ranked sixth among causes of health loss, according to new research to be published in The Lancet Neurology. The analysis is part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2023 study and estimated health loss from migraine, tension-type headache, and medication-overuse headache from 1990 through 2023. 

Mayo Clinic researchers have developed a new tool that can estimate a person's risk of developing memory and thinking problems associated with Alzheimer's disease years before symptoms appear. The research, published in The Lancet Neurology, builds on decades of data from the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging — one of the world's most comprehensive population-based studies of brain health.