The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s state of uncertainty is threatening preventive health care in the country, according to a former member.
Under the Trump administration, the USPSTF has published significantly fewer recommendations — with their last being in August 2025 — and two meetings were canceled by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A major question is whether USPSTF will undergo an overhaul of its members as the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) did.
Former task force members have warned that such a fate could have adverse

When we become physicians, our first act is to take the oath “First, do no harm,” one of the guiding principles for everyone in health care.
But if we were doing something every day that causes harm through downstream health effects, without even realizing it, we would want to ameliorate that.
This is how I have come to see our consumption of medical plastics.
Climate change and plastic toxicity are both large players in a “polycrisis.” Health care is intimately involved with both.
Use of plastics in medicine has grown exponentially. Advancements in health care, such as dialysis, have made us

A new analysis of colorectal cancer trends in the United States reveals a troubling shift in disease burden.
Overall incidence decreased steadily since 2013, due largely to declines among adults aged 65 years or older.
However, incidence among those younger than 65 is on the rise, the Colorectal Cancer Statistics 2026 report shows. The most dramatic spike is occurring among those aged 20 to 49 years.
Incidence of cancers in the distal colon and rectum, generally considered more difficult to treat and cure, also is increasing after decades of decline.
“The landscape of colorectal cancer is

PHILADELPHIA — Children with shellfish allergy had reduced odds for outgrowing this allergy if they also had asthma, oral allergy syndrome or allergic rhinitis, according to study findings presented here.
These data were presented at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting.
“These findings underscore the importance of incorporating shellfishspecific IgE levels alongside key demographic and atopic risk factors to more accurately identify children who may have outgrown shellfish allergy and to guide individualized decisionmaking in clinical practice,” Mahboobeh

PHILADELPHIA — Among children with exacerbation-prone asthma receiving placebo vs. mepolizumab, a significant link emerged between greater baseline airway resistance and an elevated risk for exacerbation, according to data presented here.
This finding was presented at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting.
“We found that greater baseline airway resistance (R5-R20), a marker of small airway dysfunction, was associated with increased exacerbation rates during the trial for participants receiving placebo, but not mepolizumab,” Courtney Gaberino, MD, clinical

Anifrolumab yielded positive outcomes, including remission in 26% of patients, at 6 months across a real-word, multicenter cohort of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, according to data published in The Lancet Rheumatology.
“Understanding the onset of action of a therapeutic agent in routine clinical practice is essential,” Chiara Tani, MD, from the rheumatology unit at the University of Pisa in Italy, and colleagues wrote. “Anifrolumab, a fully human monoclonal antibody targeting the type I interferon receptor, represents a novel therapeutic approach for the