Related updates
Why did a big clinical trial that tested an anti-inflammatory drug fail to reduce heart events? Why did another pivotal trial of lowering Lp(a) fail to reduce heart events? In this edition of Ground Truths I’ll offer some explanations and introduce some new and relevant information. In part, this is about relying on surrogate endpoints like increased blood levels of interleukin-6 or Lp(a), which have been generally r
Sarah Urbut is a physician-scientist at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Research Institute. She and her colleagues published a landmark paper in Nature on patient health journeys for 3 different cohorts—the Mass General Brigham patients, the UK Biobank, and the All of Us research program—with a cumulative 683,000 individuals, 348 diseases, and up to 52 years of follow-up. Integrating electronic m
“The future of biology is programmable.” To give you a sense of how important this topic is, Patrick Hsu is the first guest we’ve had back to Ground Truths since the podcast began a few years ago. Nearly 2 years ago we spoke about digital biology but so much has happened since to help unravel the complexities in the language of life. Patrick is a co-founder and core investigator at the Arc Institute . His work is at
This week Tony Wyss-Coray and I published an invited review paper in Nature Medicine entitled “Biological Aging Clocks in Health and Disease.” The concepts and content of the paper may be difficult to understand for people not working in life science, but they are groundbreaking and have exciting implications for the future of medicine. So this edition of Ground Truths is intended to make all of the progress comprehe
In the journal Cell , a team of >80 researchers from 4 continents reported on the discovery of a 14-protein blood test which paved the way for predicting and preventing lung cancer more than 5 years before it would be diagnosed. Current efforts in cancer are largely directed to therapy and early detection, with only a very limited foray to prevention. In a recent Ground Truths , I reviewed the emerging potential for
For decades now, it’s been fairly well established that once you turn 40 you should start paying more attention to your body. That’s when women are supposed to start getting mammograms and men are supposed to start paying a bit more attention to their prostates. Over the next decade, you’ll start getting colonoscopies, and from then on out, it feels like a gradual march of doctor’s appointments and tests until your b