Category: 8. Health

New research reveals that social isolation and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the aging of the brains of older adults, regardless of whether they contracted the virus, highlighting the urgent need for protective strategies beyond infection control.

Study: Accelerated brain ageing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Image Credit: Shyntartanya / Shuttertock

In a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications, a group of researchers tested whether the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, with or without severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, accelerated biological brain aging in middle-aged and older adults.

The study sought to distinguish the impact of infection itself from the effects of pandemic-related social disruption on brain aging.

Background

Every three seconds, someone worldwide develops dementia, yet scientists still debate what hastens cerebral aging. The advent of COVID-19 raised concerns, as SARS-CoV-2 affects both gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Yet millions who never caught the virus endured isolation and missed care during lockdowns, stressors that also erode brain resilience.

Cross-sectional snapshots lack pre-pandemic baselines, making it impossible to distinguish between biological and social damage. Identifying the primary driver is crucial for predicting dementia and informing protective policies. The complexity of mental health outcomes during the pandemic, including variable findings across populations, has also made interpretation challenging.

Further research is needed to clarify causality and identify modifiable risk factors for aging populations worldwide.

About the study

Investigators mined the United Kingdom Biobank (UKBB), a cohort with multimodal MRI. Separate GM and WM brain age models were trained on 15,334 healthy adults scanned before March 2020. From 1,865 imaging-derived phenotypes (IDPs) summarizing structure, diffusion, and T2 signals, principal component analysis (PCA) extracted 50 components. Elastic net regression accurately predicted chronological age, yielding a mean absolute error (MAE) of nearly three years; test-retest reliability was demonstrated by an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.98.

a A brain age prediction model was trained using 20-fold cross-validation on healthy participants with a single pre-pandemic scan (training set). The model was applied to an unseen set comprising the Pandemic group (G1) and the No Pandemic group (G2). G1 was further subdivided into Pandemic–COVID-19 (G3) and Pandemic–No COVID-19 (G4). b Imaging-derived phenotypes (IDPs) were extracted from grey matter (GM) and white matter (WM) across scan times. Separate prediction models were trained by tissue type and sex using pre-pandemic data, and then applied independently to scans from different time points to estimate brain age gap (BAG). Statistical analyses assessed pandemic- and infection-related effects using longitudinal data. 

The models were applied to 996 volunteers, who underwent two MRI sessions. Controls (n = 564) were scanned twice before the pandemic, whereas the pandemic cohort (n = 432) underwent one pre- and one post-restriction scan; 134 of them had laboratory-confirmed coronavirus disease 2019. Of the COVID-19 cases, only 5 out of 134 participants (<4%) required hospitalization, indicating that the cohort was almost exclusively comprised of mild cases.

Groups were balanced for demographics, body mass index, vascular risk, education, income, and deprivation score. Only inter-scan intervals ≥ 24 months were accepted to reduce noise. An adjustment for the inter-scan interval was incorporated to minimize confounding by time between scans.

The primary endpoint was the rate of change in brain age gap (RBAG), calculated as RBAG = ΔBAG / Δtime (months per year). Permutation-based analysis of variance with false discovery rate (FDR) correction was used to test the effects of pandemic exposure, infection status, sex, chronological age, and socioeconomic adversity. All MRI acquisitions used identical Siemens scanners and standardized protocols across four sites.

Study results

The predicted brain age at the first MRI session was statistically indistinguishable among the three cohorts, including pre-pandemic controls, pandemic participants without SARS-CoV-2, and pandemic participants with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, confirming a balanced baseline neuroanatomy. When the same volunteers returned a median of 2.7 years later, the brains of people who had lived through lockdowns appeared to be more advanced in age.

After adjusting for inter-scan interval, sex, body mass index, and cardiovascular risk, their brains looked 5.5 months older than those of controls, yielding Cohen d values of 0.61 for GM and 0.70 for WM.

Importantly, SARS-CoV-2 infection itself did not account for the surge in cases. Pandemic volunteers who never caught the virus aged at the same pace as their infected peers, and both subgroups differed significantly from controls once FDR correction was applied.

Chronological age amplified vulnerability, as in controls, with each birthday adding about three brain age days. However, under pandemic conditions, the slope more than doubled to seven days in GM and eight days in WM; the number of infected individuals increased to nearly ten days per calendar year. As the vast majority of infections were mild, the study could not robustly assess whether disease severity (e.g., hospitalization or symptom duration) modulated RBAG.

Sex differences were evident, as under identical pandemic exposure, male brains aged 33% faster than female brains in GM; for WM, the difference was similar in pattern but did not reach statistical significance. The interaction for sex was significant for GM (FDR p = 0.008), but not for WM.

Socioeconomic adversity further widened the gap. Participants reporting low employment security, poor self-rated health, or low household income accumulated between 1.5 and 5.8 additional months of brain aging during follow-up relative to the most advantaged peers, and interaction terms between deprivation indices and pandemic status remained significant.

Cognitive change was selective rather than global. Standard memory and language scores stayed stable across groups, yet only volunteers who experienced COVID-19 displayed slower Trail Making Test (TMT) performance.

Completion times increased by 6–9% for numeric (TMT A) and alternating alphanumeric (TMT B) versions, and higher RBAG correlated with slower TMT A speed (r = 0.23, p = 0.004), indicating that infection-associated neuroinflammation may potentially convert silent structural vulnerability into measurable executive decline.

It should be noted, however, that the study demonstrates association rather than proven causation in this mechanistic link.

BAG estimates remained orthogonal to chronological age; the test-retest ICC stayed 0.98; and MAE for age prediction never exceeded 3.1 years. Mixed effects models that simultaneously entered deprivation, sex, infection status, and chronological age still attributed a substantial proportion of explained RBAG variance to pandemic exposure (approximately 46%, as per supplementary data), underscoring the dominant role of social disruption.

Continued follow-up will reveal whether the observed structural shifts endure or reverse as normal social activities resume.

The study authors note that longer-term follow-up and additional data, including more direct measures of psychological stress, are needed to clarify the persistence and mechanisms of these effects.

Conclusions

To summarize, the COVID-19 era accelerated biological brain aging by roughly half a year in under three calendar years, irrespective of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Older age, male sex, and socioeconomic disadvantage heightened vulnerability, while measurable cognitive decline emerged only when infection layered neuroinflammatory stress atop socially driven tissue changes.

Importantly, these findings should be interpreted in the context of certain limitations, including the predominance of mild COVID-19 cases in the cohort and the lack of pandemic-period mental health data.

These results indicate that protecting brain health in future crises will require more than just infection control; strategies must also mitigate the effects of isolation, unemployment, and healthcare disruptions to prevent silent neural aging and, ultimately, dementia. Community outreach and mental health care play a crucial role in reinforcing resilience.

New reporting in The Cancer Atlas, Fourth Edition, showed that an estimated 50% of all cancer deaths worldwide are attributed to modifiable risk factors, including tobacco and alcohol use, infections, excess body weight, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, ultraviolet radiation, environmental pollutants, and occupational exposures. The report also found sharply rising rates in lung, colorectal, and breast cancers in lower-income countries; increasing rates of colorectal cancer among young adults in high-income countries; and continuing lack of universal health coverage, which, if implemented worldwide, according to the report, could save more than 7 million lives by 2030.¹ These findings were presented during The Cancer Prevention Research Conference 2025, held in London on June 25 to 27.

“We cannot have 10 million [people] dying worldwide, 618,000 in the United States alone. By working together to find ways to prevent cancer and detect it earlier, it can make a difference.”

— William L. Dahut, MD

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In addition, the report details the growing magnitude of the cancer burden throughout the world, with an estimated 19 million new cases of cancer, excluding nonmelanoma skin cancer, as of 2022, and close to 10 million cancer deaths. In addition, according to the report’s authors, without global cancer control, the worldwide cancer burden is expected to increase by about 74% from 2022 to 2050 as a result of population aging and growth, with a ballooning cancer incidence to 33 million and 18 million cancer deaths.¹

Report Methodology and Highlights

The Fourth Edition of The Cancer Atlas is a collaborative effort by the American Cancer Society and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), and was developed with contributions from more than 70 leading experts and scientists from 35 institutions worldwide. The report is divided into three parts: Risk Factors, The Burden, and Taking Action, and it includes additional chapters to address emerging topics in cancer development, such as alcohol consumption, climate change, and building health-system resilience in conflict-impacted countries.

Additional findings from The Cancer Atlas follow:

• Lung cancer continues to be the most commonly diagnosed cancer and leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide, with about 2.5 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths in 2022.
• Cervical cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death among women in 29 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In many of these countries, less than 10% of women between the ages of 30 and 49 have ever had cancer screening, compared with more than 80% in most Western countries. Coverage of the highly effective human papillomavirus vaccine varies widely, from just 3% in Central and South Asia to 86% in Australia and New Zealand.
• Cancer deaths are disproportionately higher in many low-income countries largely because of the inaccessibility to care. More than 90% of the population in low- and middle-income countries lack access to safe and timely surgical care; and 23 low- and middle-income countries with populations of over 1 million, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, do not have access to radiotherapy.
• Liver cancer is the sixth most frequently occurring cancer in the world and the third largest contributor to cancer mortality, with an estimated 870,000 new cases and 760,000 deaths in 2022. Major risk factors for the disease include hepatitis B virus infection, which accounts for more than half of all liver cancer cases occurring each year worldwide; hepatitis C virus; aflatoxin B1; alcohol and cigarette consumption; excess body weight; type 2 diabetes; and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease.
• Worldwide, the average annual cancer incidence among children younger than age 15 is 150 cases per million people; and among adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19, the average annual incidence is 200 per million people. Less than 1 in 10 children with cancer survives 5 years after diagnosis in some countries in East Africa.
• Indigenous populations continue to experience inequities in cancer care and poorer outcomes, including a higher incidence and lower survival for cancers such as lung, liver, and cervix. In addition, screening rates for cervical cancer among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in Australia are only half of those of non-Indigenous women.
• Although advancements in cancer treatment and diagnostics have resulted in increasing numbers of cancer survivors worldwide, inequity in access to prevention strategies, screening, timely diagnosis, and effective treatment have led to worse survival outcomes, especially in low-resource countries.

A Call to Action

“The purpose of The Cancer Atlas is to make it easier for folks to work together on things that we can make an impact on,” said William L. Dahut, MD, Chief Scientific Officer for the American Cancer Society, during a press briefing announcing the release of The Cancer Atlas, Fourth Edition. “And while there is a lot of incredibly concerning information in The Cancer Atlas, we know that if we work together—our nonprofits, our government agencies, our worldwide leaders, our industry partners—there are things we can do to make an impact.”

Dr. Dahut continued: “And the status quo is unacceptable. We cannot have 10 million [people] dying worldwide, 618,000 in the United States alone. By working together to find ways to prevent cancer and detect it earlier, it can make a difference.”

DISCLOSURE: Dr. Dahut is Chief Scientific Officer for the American Cancer Society.

REFERENCE

1. The Cancer Atlas, Fourth Edition, published by the American Cancer Society and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Available at https://canceratlas.cancer.org/. Accessed July 1, 2025.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) hospitalizations led to poorer outcomes and a higher risk of cardiovascular events than influenza, urinary tract infection (UTI) or fracture hospitalizations in older adults.¹

“Unlike other respiratory viruses, immunity against RSV tends to decline relatively quickly. This means that a previous infection will not afford the same long-term protection as it might for influenza or COVID-19,” corresponding author Chris Verschoor, PhD, HSN, Foundation Research Chair in Healthy Aging at Health Sciences North Research Institute, said in a statement.² “Our findings reinforce the importance of RSV vaccination in older adults and suggest that monitoring for signs of heart disease following an RSV illness may be pragmatic.”

Verschoor and colleagues conducted a retrospective cohort study of adults aged at least 65 years hospitalized with a diagnosis of RSV, influenza, UTI, or fracture between 2011 and 2020 in Ontario, Canada. They measured outcomes including subsequent heart failure, myocardial infarction, stroke, or atrial fibrillation (AF) events up to 1-year post-discharge, as well as in-hospital and acute outcomes.

The investigators identified cardiovascular events in 18.5% (n = 474/2558) of patients who had an RSV-related hospitalization, compared to 17.7% (n = 2961/16,688), 12.1% (n = 8908/73,587), and 8.4% (n = 941/11,262) of patients initially hospitalized with influenza, UTI, or fracture, respectively.¹

They conducted matched analyses which revealed that RSV hospitalization was associated with a greater rate of subsequent heart failure events relative to influenza (HR, 1.65; 95% CI, 1.14–2.38), UTI (HR, 1.92; 95% CI, 1.28–2.88) and fracture (HR, 1.81; 95% CI, 1.41–2.31) hospitalizations.¹

This was similar for those without a pre-existing cardiovascular condition and those with at least 1, although differences between RSV and influenza were not significant (HR, 1.42; 95% CI, 0.93–2.16 and HR, 1.02; 95% CI, 0.83–1.25, respectively) in those with at least 1. In these patients, Hazards were significant when compared to UTI (HR, 2.51; 95% CI, 1.52–4.15 and HR, 1.48; 95% CI, 1.19–1.85, respectively) and fracture (HR, 3.74; 95% CI, 1.97–7.08 and HR, 1.56; 95% CI, 1.14–2.14).¹

Patients hospitalized for RSV also had a higher rate of AF compared to those hospitalized for fracture (HR, 1.50; 95% CI, 1.08–2.08). In those without a pre-existing cardiovascular condition, the rate in patients with RSV was 2.61 (95% CI, 1.29–4.91) times higher than those with UTI and 2.29 (95% CI, 1.14–4.58) times higher than those with fracture. Patients with RSV also had higher rates of stroke, although the limited incidence resulted in wide confidence intervals.¹

For secondary outcomes, patients with RSV had increased 30-day mortality, higher rates of ICU admission, and longer hospital stays compared to other groups. The odds of ICU transfer were especially elevated for patients with RSV, regardless of cardiovascular history. Compared with patients who had a UTI or a fracture and no pre-existing cardiovascular conditions, the likelihood of ICU admission was significantly higher (OR, 4.63; 95% CI, 3.26–6.58 and OR, 3.75; 95% CI, 2.60–5.42, respectively). Thirty-day mortality rates were also generally elevated among patients with RSV, ranging from 1.49 to 3.98. Lengths of stay were approximately 11% to 32% longer for patients with RSV, except in the case of fracture, where stays were shorter regardless of cardiovascular status. The 30-day readmission risk was higher for patients with RSV than for those with fractures (OR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.08–1.71), but lower than for those with UTIs (OR, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.59–0.90).¹

“In summary, our findings further substantiate the importance of RSV as a significant cause of short- and long-term health outcomes in older adults, and in particular, the rate of heart failure. Given the variable nature of RSV testing over the past two decades, we cannot conclude that our findings are generalizable to all older patients hospitalized for an RSV illness. Nonetheless, increased monitoring in-hospital and routine follow-up with older RSV patients for cardiovascular symptoms indicative of decompensation (e.g., dyspnea, arrythmia, weight gain, etc.) may be beneficial to mitigate long-term outcomes. Although RSV infections are less common than influenza in older adults, they remain a substantial source of economic burden to healthcare systems. Our findings underline the importance of robust and effective public health strategies regarding RSV vaccines,” Verschoor and colleagues concluded.¹

REFERENCES

1. Verschoor CP, Cerasuolo JO, Caswell JM, et al. Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV)‐Related Hospitalization and Increased Rate of Cardiovascular Events in Older Adults. J Am Ger Soc. Published online July 23, 2025. doi: 10.1111/jgs.19591

2. How does infection with respiratory syncytial virus affect the health of older adults? News release. Wiley. July 23, 2025. https://newsroom.wiley.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2025/How-does-infection-with-respiratory-syncytial-virus-affect-the-health-of-older-adults/default.aspx

Up to 85,000 new mothers in England may have been impacted by postnatal depression last year, according to new analysis.

The illness can be “truly devastating” when left untreated, potentially leading to the “unnecessary” deaths of women and sometimes their babies, the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) warned.

Postnatal depression is a condition that can develop after childbirth.

While many women may feel tearful or anxious after giving birth, this does not usually last for more than two weeks.

Persistent feelings of sadness, low mood, a lack of interest in things and a lack of energy could indicate postnatal depression.

Other symptoms can include trouble sleeping, withdrawing from other people, problems concentrating and scary thoughts, such as thinking about hurting your baby.

Using Office for National Statistics data which shows there were 567,708 live births in 2024, RCPsych estimates between 56,000 to 85,000 mothers – or between 10% to 15% – may have experienced postnatal depression.

The college highlights that maternal suicide is the leading cause of death in women from six weeks to a year after birth and also said prenatal mental illness – conditions that develop during pregnancy – can put unborn babies at risk of premature birth or low birth weight.

RCPsych is urging women and their partners to seek support for these treatable conditions.

Dr Trudi Seneviratne, consultant perinatal psychiatrist and immediate past RCPsych registrar, said: “Women can experience an enormous amount of change, including increased stress factors when they become pregnant, and this may negatively affect their mental health.

“Postnatal depression is far more common than many people realise and can have a devastating impact on mothers, babies and families if left untreated.”

Treatment for postnatal depression can include talking therapies or antidepressants.

Dr Seneviratne stressed that medics are trained to ensure medication is safe to take when pregnant or breastfeeding, and warned that the risks of untreated depression outweigh the risk of antidepressants.

“Mothers who receive talking therapy and other forms of care from mental health services will often be able to recover, but some might be so unwell that they need medication, including antidepressants,” she said.

“Medication helps save lives. The dangers of untreated depression far outweigh the risks of antidepressants.

“The unnecessary deaths of mothers and sometimes their babies that result from failure to treat these conditions are truly devastating.

“Doctors are trained to ensure that the medication they prescribe is as safe as possible to take while pregnant or breastfeeding. Medication should be reviewed regularly, and any side effects closely monitored.

“For children to thrive, they need as good a start in life as possible, and this is important not only for the child and their mother but also communities and society as well. We all have a role to play in ensuring mothers and their partners feel confident seeking support when they need it.”

A new study has found that the bone fracture protection women get from menopausal hormone therapy (MHT, also known as HRT) disappears within a year of stopping treatment.

In the new study, published in Lancet Healthy Longevity , experts from the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham, also found that in most cases, stopping treatment is then followed by some years of elevated fracture risk compared to women who have never used MHT. Fracture risks then falls to be similar to, and then lower than women who have never used MHT.

The study was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) SPCR.

During menopause, all women experience a drop in hormone levels, particularly of oestrogen. This can cause a range of distressing mental and physical side effects, requiring use of MHT. However, oestrogen deficiency in women also leads to increased age-related bone weakening. Previous studies have confirmed a protective role of the oestrogen component in MHT treatments, and MHT is known to decrease fracture risk when it is being used.

However, MHT is also associated with increased risk of breast cancer and blood clots, so long-term MHT use is not recommended. For women using MHT to counteract increasing bone fragility, it is, therefore, important to know the strength and persistence of any protective effect after stopping treatment. Detailed information on this aspect from past studies has been unclear – covering only the first couple of years, and also being somewhat conflicting.

In this new study, experts used data for 6,000,000 women from around 2,000 GP surgeries in the UK, which allowed them to follow-up of fracture risk levels for up to 25 years. The researchers identified all women with records of first fracture (cases) and matched each to a number of women of the same age and from the same practice, but without record of fracture (controls). They then compared the MHT use in cases before their fracture with the MHT use among their matched controls.

Dr Yana Vinogradova, from the Centre for Academic Primary Care in the School of Medicine, and lead author of the study said: “The findings of our study confirmed that women on MHT show a progressively reducing fracture risk compared with women not using MHT. More importantly, we also observed a clear pattern of risk change after therapy was discontinued.

“For most women, the bone protective effect of MHT use disappears completely within about one year of treatment being stopped, then their fracture risk rises compared to never users, peaking after about three years, before declining to become again equivalent to never users – about 10 years after discontinuation – and then again continuing to decline relative to never users. So, even after stopping MHT, women should benefit from notably reduced fracture risk in their later decades.”

This observed risk pattern was the same for all menopausal hormonal treatments, but the level of excess risk depended on the treatment type and the length of past MHT use.

“Our comparative illustration of observed patterns of fracture risk for short and long use can help doctors and patients when discussing MHT treatment options, and to consider how fracture risk may change after stopping MHT use. Anticipating periods of increased risk might prompt doctors to check patients’ bone health at discontinuation, particularly for patients most at risk with other fracture risk factors such as smoking or inactivity.

“These novel findings may also usefully stimulate further clinical and biological research into these treatments,” adds Dr Vinogradova.

Walking more could reduce your risk of dementia, depression and dying from cancer, as well as being good for your heart, according to research. And you may not need to walk as far as previously thought to reap those benefits.

The NHS recommends a brisk 10-minute walk every day. Many people aim to walk 10,000 steps, but struggle to achieve it. Now researchers have calculated that even 7,000 steps could be enough to protect health.

Scientists examined data from more than 160,000 adults and found that walking 7,000 steps a day was associated with a reduced risk of a number of serious health conditions and death.

Whereas previous studies have mainly examined the links between step count and heart health or overall death rates, this systematic review and meta analysis, published in the Lancet Public Health, sought to comprehensively examine how taking more steps per day could reduce the risk of a range of other health conditions as well.

Compared with those who walked 2,000 steps a day, the researchers found that achieving the 7,000 daily step target was linked to a 37% reduction in risk of dying from cancer, while the risk was 14% lower for type 2 diabetes, 38% for dementia, 22% depression and 28% for falls respectively. It was also associated with a 25% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and a 47% reduction in overall risk of dying.

Although step count does not measure the quality or intensity of exercise, the findings underscore the importance of being active. There is a “return on investment” with every additional 1,000 steps taken and even 4,000 steps per day reduced the risk of disease, compared with very low activity levels, the researchers observed.

Although the risk continues to decrease above 7,000 steps, the rate at which it reduces that risk starts to slow. Melody Ding, professor of public health at the University of Sydney and lead author of the research, said that those who already walked 10,000 steps should not go back to 7,000, but that 7,000 was a more practical target for those who were currently inactive.

“Those who are currently active and achieving the 10,000 steps a day, keep up the good work – there is no need to modify your step counts. However, for those of us who are far from achieving the 10,000 targets, getting to 7,000 steps/day offers almost comparable health benefits for the outcomes we examined.”

Responding to the findings, Dr Daniel Bailey, reader in sedentary behaviour and health at Brunel University of London, said the research helped ”debunk the myth that 10,000 steps per day should be the target for optimal health.

“The real-world implications are that people can get health benefits just from small increases in physical activity, such as doing an extra 1,000 steps per day. To achieve the best reductions in risk, aiming for 5,000-7,000 per day can be recommended, which will be more achievable for many people than the unofficial target of 10,000 steps that has been around for many years.”

Dr Andrew Scott, senior lecturer in clinical exercise physiology at the University of Portsmouth, pointed out that not all activity was captured by step counts. “The steps per day is useful when people’s exercise is weight-bearing, however cycling, swimming and rowing are not well-represented by the steps-per-day model.”

June Davison, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: “We know that regular walking is one of the easiest ways to help maintain a healthy lifestyle and reduce your risk of heart disease.

“Adults should aim to build up to a total of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity every week, but getting active isn’t always easy. Incorporating activity snacks, such as walking while taking phone calls, or taking a brisk 10-minute walk during your lunch break, can all count to reduce your chances of developing heart disease.”