Combining body mass index with other measurements and tests would lead to better care and outcomes, experts say

An alternative to BMI for diagnosing obesity could prevent misdiagnosis in millions of people worldwide, according to doctors who found it more accurately distinguished healthy people from those with harmful excess body fat.

Medical experts have long considered body mass index a blunt instrument for defining obesity, leading to concerns that substantial numbers of people with excess body fat are missed while others who are healthy are wrongly diagnosed.

The new approach, which combines BMI with other body measurements and organ function tests, suggests BMI alone misses obesity in 5-9% of adults, while wrongly diagnosing the condition in as many as 3%.

“This misclassification can account for tens of millions of people, so the inaccuracy of BMI is a big problem at scale and also for individuals,” said Francisco Rubino, a professor of metabolic and bariatric surgery at King’s College London.

Country is in the middle of worst measles outbreak since 1991, with more than 5,400 cases nationally

The United States could lose its measles elimination status this week, an event likely to cement health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s legacy of meddling in vaccine policies amid the worst outbreak of the virus in the US in 35 years.

If the US loses its measles-free status, it would join Canada and several European and Asian nations that had eliminated the disease only for it to return.

“That is a tremendous step backwards,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center, an attending physician in the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a prominent critic of Kennedy.

A panel of eight independent experts will consider the epidemiological evidence in Washington DC, part of a group called the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional branch of the World Health Organization (WHO). The PAHO director will make the final call.

Lauren Weingarten says that the time period after she was raped was a blur; she felt like she was in a new body as her mind processed what had been done to her. She doesn’t remember when the shooting pain in her pelvis started, just that it was suddenly there.

At first, she didn’t want to deal with it because it reminded her of what happened. No one was talking about the kind of pain she was experiencing. It was embarrassing to even acknowledge.

She avoided leaving her home, fearful she would collapse from an unpredictable pain attack. She was urinating over 30 times a night. Eventually, it interfered with her life so significantly that she had no choice but to seek help from a physician. But when she finally worked up the courage to talk about her debilitating symptoms, Weingarten said she was dismissed. So she went to another doctor. And another. But her problems kept being minimized, and the pain stayed.

Finally, years later, Weingarten met a woman doctor who took her seriously. This doctor said that pelvic pain is common for survivors of sexual assault, and referred her to pelvic floor physical therapy, a practice Weingarten had never heard of before. She went on to need several procedures, and still deals with pelvic pain today.

“The assault left me disabled,” Weingarten said. “It’s heartbreaking to think that all of this is because somebody made the decision to rape me, and yet I’m the one who has to deal with this constant physical reminder — something that I have to live with for the rest of my life.”

Now Weingarten is a victim advocate who leads workshops and support groups for survivors of abuse and sexual violence. She began hearing similar experiences of physical pain after assault being brushed aside. When she decided to share her experience with her online community, she was overwhelmed with comments and private messages thanking her for talking about a taboo subject.

Sexual assault is a disabling experience, but usually the conversation is restricted to mental health, not physical changes. Pelvic pain can impact anyone, but biases about women’s health can lead patients with vulvas to get dismissed more frequently. Studies show the physiological origins of gynecological pelvic pain are poorly studied and frequently overlooked by doctors in favor of blaming mental illness; the medical establishment also has a long history of gaslighting women about their health.

The Trump administration is waging a concerted attack on the nation's responsibility to protect the public against toxics and radiation, deliberately ignoring that cancer that kills more than 600,000 Americans every year, according to a new analysis released today by NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council).

The Trump Administration’s Pro-Cancer Agenda details how this administration has undermined protections from cancer, all to help the chemical, oil, coal, and nuclear industries. Americans could face an extraordinary increase in exposure to carcinogens as a result.

MAHA.

These days, we know where almost everything comes from. Everyday items like food, clothes and pens all carry labels listing where things are grown, manufactured or even designed.

So why is it so hard to find where prescription drugs are made?

That question set off a 14-month investigation into where our medications are made, how the FDA polices drug manufacturers and what happens when inspectors report issues inside factories.

The vast majority of prescriptions filled in the United States are for generic drugs, which are often far cheaper than brand-name alternatives.

For years, Congress, doctors and watchdog groups have questioned the quality of generic drugs made overseas. India produces about half of all generics used in the U.S., but the labels on pill bottles often don’t list where a drug is manufactured. Inspection reports describe unsafe manufacturing conditions at generic drug factories, but the Food and Drug Administration redacts the names of the medications made in those factories. That means if drugs made in errant factories wind up in your medicine cabinet, you’d have no way of knowing.

Popular weight loss drugs including Ozempic and Wegovy will carry a new warning about a possible rare side effect that can sometimes lead to permanent vision loss, U.S. health regulators announced Monday.

The Food and Drug Administration said the risk will be added to the labeling of all GLP-1 drugs, the blockbuster medications used to treat obesity, diabetes and several other medical conditions. The class includes a dozen injectable or pill-based drugs, including widely used brands like Zepbound and Mounjaro.

The eye condition, known as non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, can cause significant vision loss. The problem, which has been reported with all GLP-1 drugs, is caused by decreased blood flow to the optic nerve, although the underlying cause isn’t understood, the FDA said.

More people recognize opioid overdoses, but education about stimulant overdoses hasn’t been as clear-cut

Overdoses involving stimulants are on the rise in many parts of the country, according to recently available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but experts say recognizing and responding to them is more complex when compared with opioid overdoses.

“The rate of overdose decline was not nearly what we expected” in California, said Dr Taylor Nichols, an emergency and addiction medicine physician based in Sacramento.

Nichols said that stimulants “filled the gap” left by declining fentanyl overdoses. Methamphetamine and cocaine are the most common illicit stimulants.

Kim Polk was 51 when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

“I didn’t think I would live to be 60,” Polk said.

It was 2009 when doctors told her the cancer was stage three.

“When the doctor told me there was a six percent survival rate, I thought, you know, I’m done for,” Polk said.

But Polk fought it, and today, she’s here to tell her story.

“Here I am, 15 years later. And I’m healthy as a horse,” Polk said.

Polk had a hysterectomy and received chemotherapy, including a chemo infusion clinical trial at a hospital in Colorado.

Then, in 2012, Polk, who lives in Wyoming, heard about a phase one clinical trial happening at the University of Washington in Seattle.

“So my husband and I booked a flight and we went, and that’s how I got into it,” Polk said.

The trial was for an experimental cancer vaccine that targets ovarian cancer.

“What this vaccine is aimed to do is to eradicate any cells left in your body that have that malignant potential,” said Dr. Nora Disis.

Disis is director of the Cancer Vaccine Institute at UW Medicine, which has been a pioneer of researching cancer vaccines.

"The vaccine has already been through earlier trials, where the results were quite promising for preventing disease recurrence. So this trial is formally asking that question," Disis said.

They’re now entering a second phase of a clinical trial for an ovarian cancer vaccine, similar to the one Polk took part in. This phase is specifically seeking ovarian cancer patients who are in remission, among other factors.

The vaccine targets a specific protein linked to ovarian cancer cells.

“The way that the vaccine works is it starts the immune response at that protein, but creates a commotion in the tumor that causes the immune response to extend to other immunogenic proteins that are expressed in the cancer,” Disis said.

That protein, known as CA 125, is one of the strongest indicators of ovarian cancer cells, according to Disis. The vaccine being researched enables the body’s immune system to attack that specific protein and stop the cancer from coming back.

Exposure to a new generation of allegedly “safe” plasticizers is linked to lower birth weight and fetal development complications, which could cause serious health problems later in life, a new peer-reviewed study found.

As the health risks in exposure to common phthalate plasticizers became clear over the last few decades, industry began switching to a new type of chemical, called Dinch, that it claimed was a “high safety”, nontoxic alternative. It is widely used in soft plastic food packaging in the United States and European Union, and is found in children’s toys, medical devices, some textiles, flooring and other consumer goods.

But it may not be as safe as industry has claimed, the New York University Langone Health analysis of federal US health data suggests. There is a dearth of research into Dinch health risks, though what exists points toward the chemicals being hormone disruptors that can impact kids’ development.

At the risk of giving it more publicity than it deserves, I want to bring attention to Biohacking Cancer: A Clear, Strategic Guide to Helping Your Body Heal. I am convinced this book is AI slop presented as medical facts by a quack falsely presenting herself as an oncologist.

I have serious concerns about the author's medical credentials, the scientific credibility of the book's cancer-related claims, and the lack of apparent independent review by qualified oncology physicians. To be clear, she is not a physician, and she has no formal training I can find in oncology.

What concerns me most is that the book currently has a five-star rating based on a very small number of reviews that seems to be from friends and family following the release of a new book. They're potentially giving vulnerable cancer patients a false sense of medical credibility. I don't think the reviews accurately reflect the content and hide the potential significant harm.

Here's my ask: If you care about cancer patient safety, help bring transparency to this book. Read the available material, investigate the author's credentials, scrutinize the medical claims, and leave an honest, independent review.

Cancer patients deserve informed decisions, qualified medical guidance, and hope grounded in science. They shouldn't have to sort through AI slop and artificially inflated ratings to find it.

Meta says it removes content that could cause imminent physical harm – but nearly half a million members have joined a group that regularly promotes misinformation

MD Anderson spending $3.4 billion to expand.

they found that money after they laid off people even though they blame insurance on high cost. Aren’t you glad it didn’t affect them?

Expansion

On Thursday, Nov. 5, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) announced that an infant has died of measles amid the ongoing outbreak in the southwestern region of the state.

This marks the first measles-related death in the state in more than 35 years.

“It is with a heavy heart we are reporting the first death of an infant connected with a measles outbreak in Wisconsin in many years. My heart is broken for the family,” DHS Secretary Kirsten Johnson said in a release. “Any death of a child is a tragedy and even more so when it is related to a vaccine-preventable disease. Measles can cause serious illness and death, and it is important for all Wisconsinites to evaluate their risk and take steps to protect themselves and their family.”

There have been at least two more measles-related deaths reported this week.

On Wednesday, Nov. 4, the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH) confirmed that an unvaccinated resident died after contracting measles — the sixth person in the state to die of the infectious disease this year.

Additionally, on Monday, Nov. 2, the New York State Department of Health and Lewis County Public Health announced in a joint statement that a child died of measles, marking “the first known measles-associated death in New York State in more than 30 years.”

Measles cases in the U.S. have hit a 35-year high as vaccination coverage drops well below levels that would help halt the spread of the virus. As of Oct. 30, there have been 4,852 confirmed cases of the wildly infectious illness, per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. That more than doubles the number of cases in all of 2025. And in 2024, there were only 285 cases.

The research team analysed Global Burden of Disease data from 1990 to 2023 and estimated that disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), that is, years of healthy life lost, were 16% higher among males than females in 2023.

In most countries, social and structural determinants of health, such as employment and education, strongly influence life expectancy and disability in men. Marginalisation, for example through incarceration or homelessness, further exacerbates these disparities.

The authors say that, although biology plays a role, several causes of adverse health in men are preventable. These preventable factors include social expectations of what it means to be a man, male-dominated power systems, and commercial influences.

Even so, policy attention has been limited: the first dedicated national men’s health policy was not adopted until 2008 in Ireland, and only a handful of countries have followed. The authors suggest this ongoing neglect has created a gap, one that companies and influencers in the manosphere can exploit to shape how men’s health is understood and addressed.

In response, the Series calls for men’s health to be embedded in existing structures, such as universal health coverage and health and social policies at all levels. It also urges better data – advancing men’s health requires the collection and analysis of intersectional disaggregated data so that structurally marginalised men are made visible and their needs addressed.

Professor Vittal Katikireddi, Professor of Public Health & Health Inequalities at the University of Glasgow, and an author of the study, said: “While men’s health is surprisingly poor, these poor health outcomes occur most often among men experiencing poverty, discrimination or other forms of social disadvantage. This research demonstrates the need for men’s health to be addressed within health policy, alongside broader efforts to improve the health for everyone.”

The authors also stress that attention to men’s health issues should not be viewed as a competition with efforts to improve women’s health or address wider gender injustices. They say progress is more likely when men’s health is framed as contributing to shared public goods, such as economic security and social cohesion, rather than as a separate claim on investment.

"A group of Facebook users says Meta was aware of receiving user data from hundreds of medical providers without users' knowledge or consent.

Users recognized at least 664 hospital systems and health provider websites from which Meta received patient information..."

An infant in Wisconsin has died in connection with an large, ongoing measles outbreak, the state health department said Thursday. The death marks the first measles-related death in Wisconsin in more than 35 years and the third reported in the US this week.

Amid a surge in early onset cancer, the Trump administration has taken more than 500 actions to systematically dismantle protections against carcinogens once in place across the federal government, an October report alleges.

The Natural Resources Defense Council report, and comments from current and former officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, bring into focus how myriad changes in federal rules or protocol will dramatically increase the public’s exposure to carcinogens. These are taking effect at a time when some forms of early onset cancer are spiking by about 30% per decade.

MAHA.

Aghorn pleaded guilty and paid a $1 million fine after a worker and his wife were killed by toxic hydrogen sulfide in 2019. Regulators are still finding violations at its facilities.

CVS Health, the largest US healthcare conglomerate valued at $117bn, has announced its plans split off its pharmacy chain from its health insurance and benefits businesses, ending an era in which healthcare companies grew into vast conglomerates.

In their announcement on Wednesday, CVS Health said they will split off its 9,000 pharmacies, in-store clinics and mail order prescription business into a business named CVS Pharmacy.

A second company will keep the name CVS Health and house the major insurer Aetna and the giant pharmacy benefits manager Caremark, along with other businesses that provide home visits and primary care to older people.

The company has come under pressure from lawmakers and regulators over concerns that the healthcare giants, including CVS Health, UnitedHealth Group and Cigna, have become too dominant, leading to higher medical costs. The three companies control roughly 80% of the market. CVS Health in particular generated over $400bn in revenue last year.

A New Jersey-based drug company is recalling thousands of bottles of medication for high blood pressure after they failed to meet federal quality standards.

The recall affects bottles of Olmesartan Medoxomil, Amlodipine, and Hydrochlorothiazide manufactured by Macleods Pharma USA and distributed nationwide.

It covers 3,528 30-count bottles from lot 12251163A and 216 90-count bottles from lot 12251163B; both lots expire 31 May 2027.

A person in Washington state has died from complications of the bird flu, the first such U.S. death in a year.

The Yakima County resident, who had previous health conditions, was exposed to avian influenza at a dairy with infected cattle and had been hospitalized. The person died Sunday, county health officials said.

Two other U.S. deaths have been tied to bird flu since it became a national public health concern in 2024. The first, announced in January 2025, was an elderly person in Louisiana who had a version of bird flu known as H5N1. The other, in Washington state, died in November 2025 from a rarer version called H5N5.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a generic version of the world’s only twice-a-year shot to prevent HIV — a big step toward making the drug available inexpensively and more quickly in 120 low- and middle-income countries.

The announcement was made on Monday morning by the manufacturer and organizations that helped to speed up development of the medication, called lenacapavir.

The drug is expected to cost $40 a year per person in the countries where it will be available, the same price as daily preventive pills available now. But the shots are much more convenient than the pills because they’re needed much less frequently and they nearly eliminated new infections in two groundbreaking studies of people at high risk.

The groups are the American Heart Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. The most striking change in their guidance is how it treats periods. It recognizes menstrual cycle patterns as a female-specific vital sign for heart health. Heavy or irregular bleeding can be an early marker of cardiovascular risk, for example as a sign of polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, the condition long known as polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS.

Pregnancy gets the same treatment. The groups describe it as a biological stress test that can unmask heart risk that was there all along. High blood pressure in pregnancy, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, preterm birth, a small baby or stillbirth are now listed as female-specific risk enhancers, and the 2026 American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology cholesterol guideline includes pregnancy-related factors in women’s risk assessments.

“Women experience their healthcare across clinical specialties, but it often is fragmented or disconnected,” said Sadiya Khan of Northwestern University, who chaired the writing group. The guidance, she said, recognizes that women’s heart health is shaped by transitions men never go through: periods, pregnancy, perimenopause and menopause.

The framework splits a woman’s life into four stages defined by hormones: the years around the first period, roughly ages 8 to 15; the years of regular cycles, roughly 15 to 44; perimenopause, roughly 45 to 51; and postmenopause. Each stage comes with its own warning signs, and the guidance asks pediatricians, gynecologists, obstetricians and cardiologists to pass what they learn along instead of starting from scratch. The guidance came out alongside a presidential advisory that sets out the life-stage framework and a science advisory calling for specialized women’s heart centers.

The second finding is about a gap that already exists. Only about 60% of US women who had blood pressure complications in pregnancy get follow-up care for their blood pressure within six months of giving birth, and the groups call for immediate action on that. Cardiovascular conditions now account for more than a third of maternal deaths in the United States.

The guidance also calls perimenopause a cardiovascular turning point, when cholesterol and metabolism can shift, and notes that postmenopause can make up as much as 40% of a woman’s life. Most heart attacks, strokes and heart failure in women happen in those years, and the groups say more than 80% of them are preventable if action is taken early. That fits a pattern our readers have followed, from postpartum depression and later heart disease to endometriosis symptoms doctors miss and which form of hormone therapy is safest.