A new study from Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University found that geographic location remains an important factor in access to donor lungs in the United States, even after recent updates to the national lung allocation system changed how donor lungs are distributed. 

The study, published in CHEST, evaluated early experience under the lung Composite Allocation Score (CAS), a system designed to prioritize transplant candidates based on factors including medical urgency, projected post-transplant survival and biological compatibility.

More than a decade after removal of an adenoma—a precancerous mass—from the colon, alterations to the gut microbiome and metabolites remain and may drive heightened risk of colorectal cancer (CRC), according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study also found that diet and physical activity were more closely tied to the abundance of these CRC-associated gut microbes in people with a history of adenoma than in adenoma-free individuals, suggesting lifestyle may play a particularly important role in shaping these microbes in this high-risk group.

A new Mass General Brigham-led study using AI to analyze electronic health records found that long COVID may be twice as common as current estimates, affecting more than 18 million Americans. The findings reveal major gaps in diagnostic coding-based surveillance, with more than 10 million cases likely uncounted and prevalence continuing to grow over time.

About The Study: This national analysis of Medicare beneficiaries undergoing cholecystectomy between 2020 and 2023 had 2 principal findings. First, the use of robotic-assisted cholecystectomy continued to increase substantially. Second, despite its growth, robotic-assisted cholecystectomy remained associated with higher risk-adjusted rates of bile duct injury compared with laparoscopic cholecystectomy, while differences in overall complication rates between approaches were small. 

Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have found evidence that people who fall at the extreme high or low ends of certain traits, such as cholesterol, blood glucose, height, and age at menopause, are more likely to have a simple genetic explanation than previously thought. Their findings, reported in the May 27 issue of Nature [https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10516-5], may lead to new insights into the causes of common diseases. Many traits linked to human health are considered “polygenic,” meaning they are shaped by the combined influence of many common genetic variants, each contributing only a small effect. But the new study explored whether individuals with extreme trait values may instead be influenced by rarer genetic variants that have a much larger impact. The researchers say this possibility could help explain why some individuals develop unusually high or low levels of traits associated with conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.