Almost six in 10 commercially insured patients in the United States had at least one chronic condition in 2024, according to a new report from FAIR Health.
The findings follow other new data showing heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the country, underlining the need for greater chronic disease prevention.
The data “reinforce what many clinicians observe: chronic disease is now the norm rather than the exception,” Lenny Powell, DO, an osteopathic physician specializing in geriatrics and gerontology, and an associate professor of medicine at Rowan-Virtua School of

In 2008, Japan introduced the “Metabo Law,” short for the Metabolic Syndrome Countermeasures Promotion Act, which included “Specific Health Checkups” and “Specific Health Guidance.”
This was a public health effort to raise awareness of the connection between obesity, waist circumference (WC) and CVD. Women were advised to maintain a WC less than 90 cm, or 35.4 in, and men were advised to maintain a WC less than 85 cm, or 33.5 in.
I caught up with emergency medicine and lifestyle medicine physician Minako Abe, MD, DipABLM. Abe grew up in Japan and came to the

Patients receiving hemodialysis continue to face unacceptably high mortality rates and experience significant treatment burden. One intervention with the potential to improve patients’ outcomes is time on treatment.
Routinely providing 4-hour dialysis treatments is a high-impact strategy to improve survival, reduce ultrafiltration risk and positively affect myriad quality outcomes. Unfortunately, this strategy is consistently underutilized.
This article explores evidence regarding the effect of treatment time on clinical outcomes and provides practical steps for implementation of longer

The Association of Black Cardiologists launched a campaign to improve heart health education in “cardiovascular deserts,” underscoring results of a survey showing some Americans have low awareness about cholesterol and CV health.
The survey found that 45% of people in the southern U.S. were unaware of the difference between good and bad cholesterol and about one-quarter who were aware could not distinguish between them; only 36% knew their own cholesterol levels; about one-quarter have to travel 10 miles or more to see a heart specialist; 22% reported not being able to secure a

Patients with depressive symptoms and asthma had elevated levels of serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor in association with asthma severity, according to data published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.
Yet patients with major depressive disorder often have lower serum BDNF levels, suggesting a different biological basis for depression among patients with asthma, Hiroshi Iwamoto, MD, PhD, associate professor, Hiroshima University Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences, and colleagues wrote.
“Depressive symptoms are frequently observed in patients

After initiating GLP-1 therapy, people purchased food that was lower in calories, sugar, saturated fat and carbohydrates and less likely to be ultraprocessed, researchers reported in JAMA Network Open.
By contrast, people who did not initiate GLP-1 therapy often displayed the opposite trends in food purchasing, according to the researchers.
“While [GLP-1] effects on appetite and satiety are well established, much less is known about how they influence everyday food choices,” Kathrine Kold Sørensen, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Copenhagen University Hospital – Steno Diabetes Center

WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — In this expert perspective from Hawaiian Eye 2026, John D. Sheppard, MD, MMSc, FACS, discusses a corneal esthesiometer developed by Brill Engines to detect neurotrophic keratitis.
According to Sheppard, of Virginia Eye Consultants, the noncontact esthesiometer can be placed on a slit lamp and reach quantitative levels up to 6° of sensitivity.
“We can quantify not only the extent of the disease but asymmetry, where underlying occult herpetic conditions may be discovered before surgical disasters occur,” Sheppard told Healio. “I’m excited about awareness, diagnosis and new

WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — In this expert perspective from Retina 2026, Sharon Fekrat, MD, FACS, FASRS, discusses a real-world retrospective analysis of the Vestrum Health Retina Database of patients with retinal vein occlusion.
Fekrat, of Duke University School of Medicine, said the data demonstrate that retinal vein occlusion is a chronic disease.
“Eyes with retinal vein occlusion often require treatment and anti-VEGF pharmacotherapy for many years, much longer than we initially thought,” she told Healio.

Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, was shot and killed by federal agents while trying to protect a woman being pushed to the ground. For many in health care, this story hit hard. It felt immediate and personal.
In my medicine group chats, which usually focus on shift swaps, schedule screenshots and jokes after long nights, this story kept coming up. These are not places where people often discuss current events.
Yet this time, those who rarely post quietly shared the link. Sometimes they did not add any comments at all, just a simple note that read, “This one

In veterans with deployment-related distal lung disease, a significant link was observed between carbon-based pigment fraction in lung tissue and higher reported burn pit smoke exposure, according to data published in Scientific Reports.
“Our findings suggest that lung deposition of anthracotic dust from burn pit smoke exposure may play a role in deployment-related distal lung diseases,” Jeremy T. Hua, MD, MPH, assistant professor and occupational pulmonologist at National Jewish Health, and Cecile Rose, MD, MPH, professor of medicine and occupational pulmonologist at National Jewish Health,