CLEVELAND, Ohio (Oct. 30, 2024)—Many studies suggest that an earlier age at menopause is more detrimental to a woman’s health, leading to an increased risk for adverse health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, and depression, among others. However, a new study is linking a later age at natural menopause with a greater risk for asthma. Results of the study are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society.

As multiple health threats from climate change break dangerous new records, the 2024 Report of The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change calls for the trillions of dollars spent funding fossil fuels to be redirected and used to drive a rapid and fair transition to a net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) economy, instead of harming the health of billions of people across the world.

Just one or two sessions of physical activity at the weekend—a pattern of exercise dubbed ‘weekend warrior’---may be just as likely to lower the risk of cognitive decline, which can often precede dementia, as more frequent sessions, concludes research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Physical activity of any intensity after a diagnosis of dementia is associated with around a 30% lower risk of death, finds research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Lifetime cannabis use is associated with several changes in brain structure and function in later life, suggests an observational study, but these associations may not be causal, finds a genetic analysis of the same data, published in the open access journal BMJ Mental Health.

New Haven, Conn. — Almost half of the world’s population is at risk of malaria infection, with children and pregnant women at the highest risk of getting sick and dying from the disease. Current methods to detect this potentially deadly infection rely on obtaining an invasive blood sample, and each test has significant limitations that restrict their utility.

In new research published in Nature Communications, Yale School of Public Health epidemiologist Sunil Parikh, MD, MPH, and colleagues from Cameroon and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences present a new noninvasive test that could dramatically alter the global malaria testing landscape by providing reliable, safe, and sensitive testing to low- and middle-income countries that have been plagued by the deadly mosquito-borne disease.

In a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, researchers at the University of California, Irvine and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities reveal a link between olfactory loss and inflammation in 139 medical conditions. The researchers say loss of smell is an early sign of numerous neurological and bodily diseases.