An analysis led by Mass General Brigham investigators found slower aging in older adults after two years of a daily multivitamin, with greater benefits for those who began the trial with accelerated biological age

Women with certain cardiometabolic risk factors, including type 2 diabetes and high waist circumference, face a greater increase in risk for liver fibrosis than men with the same risk factors. The study, just published in JAMA Network Open, is one of the first to explore sex differences in cardiometabolic risk factors for liver fibrosis, a condition on the rise globally. Data came from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The researchers included data from 5,981 U.S. adults, representative of the U.S. population with an average age of 47, collected between 2017 and 2020. They analyzed whether the link between liver fibrosis and key cardiometabolic risk factors differed by sex, including waist circumference, high blood pressure, diabetes or pre-diabetes, high triglycerides, low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and the presence of two or more of these factors. In their statistical analysis, the researchers controlled for age, race, ethnicity, smoking and alcohol intake to rule out the influence of those factors. Overall, women faced similar or lower baseline rates of liver fibrosis compared with men. However, when certain risk factors were present, women’s fibrosis rates tended to increase more sharply than men. For example, high waist circumference was associated with an increase in fibrosis rates from 0.8% to 9.2% in women (about 11-fold), compared with an increase from 4.4% to 17.0% in men (about fourfold). Type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes was linked to a 2.8-fold increase in fibrosis rates among women, versus a 1.4-fold increase among men. Having two or more cardiometabolic risk factors was associated with an 8.4-fold increase in women, compared to a 2.6-fold increase in men. The findings underscore that maintaining good heart and metabolic health has implications well beyond heart disease prevention.

A new national study evaluating a landmark U.S. transplant policy change finds that efforts to correct the harms of race-based kidney function equations are associated with increased kidney transplantation rates among Black patients. The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, underscores how reparative strategies that address the harms of race-based algorithms in medicine can help save lives. 

State-level abortion restrictions have shifted the landscape of care and the experiences of people traveling for abortion care after the June 2022 Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision. A new, qualitative study published JAMA Network Open takes a deeper look at the experiences of people traveling from U.S. states with abortion restrictions or bans to Illinois, a state where abortion remains legal.

About The Study: In this systematic review and meta-analysis, digital media use was consistently associated with risks to child and adolescent health and development, particularly for social media. These findings highlight the need for targeted, multifaceted policies and interventions to mitigate potential harms from digital media exposure. 

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that people in states with abortion bans face limitations to obtaining abortion care out of state and should be supported through policy change, visible information and resources, and charitable and interpersonal social support systems. 

About The Study: The findings of this cohort study in Taiwan suggest that positive associations were observed between maternal prenatal acetaminophen prescriptions and offspring’s attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in the full cohort but not in the sibling-matched analyses. A substantial divergence in associations in the sibling bidirectional analyses indicates unaddressed sources of bias and prevents firm conclusions from being drawn using the sibling design. 

About The Study: In this randomized clinical trial, a low-cost digital intervention increased expectation to adopt health behaviors among adults using glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs), with effects persisting for 2 weeks. These findings suggest a potential role for the written microsteps intervention plus short video boosters as adjuncts to pharmacotherapy. Longer trials are warranted to determine whether the behavioral expectations stimulated by such interventions may lead to sustained behavior change.