A woman’s suicide risk may be influenced by the suicidal intention of her female first degree relatives, with sex specific effects of a shared familial environment and possibly other social factors having a key role, finds a large population study published in the online journal BMJ Mental Health. While genetic factors strongly influence a person’s risk of suicide, they don’t fully explain the observed sex differences in suicidal behaviours, whereby males die by suicide more often than females, but females attempt suicide around twice as often as males, say the researchers.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine Joe C. Wen School of Population & Public Health have identified how the hormone asprosin influences long-term weight change among postmenopausal women in the United States. The findings suggest that the fasting-induced hormone may play a significant role in shaping body composition and long-term weight stability, offering a promising target for tailored obesity prevention strategies.

Low-cost infection prevention and control measures present a valuable opportunity to mitigate the spread of Klebsiella pneumoniae, according to a new study led by researchers at Boston University School of Public Health and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Published in the journal PLOS Global Public Health, the study utilized whole genome sequencing to assess the effects of a bundle of IPC measures on an outbreak of K. pneumoniae infections that led to sepsis in a Zambian neonatal intensive care unit, and found that these measures successfully disrupted a large and long-running bacterial outbreak. However, the preventive measures did not eliminate the outbreak entirely. While K. pneumoniae transmission was initially contained, some of the bacteria reemerged along with new strains, sparking additional infections throughout the neonatal unit. 

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more common in health care, from managing records to assisting with medication decisions, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai are asking an important question: How well does AI hold up when the workload gets intense at health system scale? A new study, published in the March 9 online issue of npj Health Systems [https://doi.org/10.1038/s44401-026-00077-0], suggests that the answer depends less on the AI itself and more on how it’s designed. The investigators found that health care AI systems work far better when tasks are distributed among multiple specialized AI “agents”—software systems that can perform complex tasks, learn, and adapt—rather than relying on a single, all-purpose agent. This multi-agent approach kept performance steady even as demands increased, while dramatically reducing computing costs and delays, say the investigators.

A study from community researchers partnering with Rutgers Health faculty and staff offers an in-depth look at the pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum experiences of women of color in New Jersey – finding both meaningful progress and continued inequities persist in the state’s maternal care.