Mind & body, in brief

About 1.1 million people died of liver disease caused by hepatitis B in 2024, 17% more than in 2015, says WHO's 2026 mid-term progress report. [1]

Hepatitis B is a virus that infects the liver, and 240 million people were living with a long-lasting infection in 2024. [1]

Most of the deaths come from liver scarring and liver cancer, and WHO says these are the result of infections caught 20 to 30 years earlier. [1]

New long-lasting infections fell by 32% between 2015 and 2024, to about 0.9 million a year, largely because 84% of babies now get three vaccine doses. [1]

When someone catches it matters a great deal. Hepatitis B caught as an adult often clears on its own. Hepatitis B caught at birth or in early childhood tends to stay. [3]

In Western Europe, where most new infections are in adults, fewer than 1 in 100 become long-lasting. [2]

Most long-lasting infections start in the first five years of life, many of them passed from mother to baby at birth. [1]

So since 2009 WHO has asked for every baby to get a first vaccine dose within 24 hours of birth, and by December 2025 118 of 194 countries did this for all newborns. [1]

In 2024 only 45% of newborns worldwide got that dose on time, against a target of 90% by 2030. [1]

In the WHO African Region only 17% did, 20 of its 47 countries do not give the birth dose at all, and the region had 68% of the world's new infections. [1]

In 1992, 9.75% of people in China carried the virus. After China made a dose within 24 hours of birth routine, only 0.3% of children under five carried it by 2020. [2]

In October 2025 the Maldives became the first country confirmed by WHO to have stopped mothers passing HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B to their babies. [4]

The virus keeps a copy of its genes inside the nucleus, the control centre, of liver cells. [2] The drugs do not act on that copy, so the virus can come back after treatment stops. [2]

Only 27% of people with long-lasting hepatitis B had been diagnosed by the end of 2024, and only 4.3% were being treated. [1]

In 2016 all 194 WHO member countries promised to end viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030, and a Nature Reviews collection on that goal says the burden is still growing. [5]

Why it matters. The next WHO progress report is due in 2028, and the number to watch is birth-dose coverage in the African Region, which stood at 17% in 2024. [1]

WHO's 2026 progress report says syphilis is rising, and faster than before. [1] Japan recorded 14,829 cases in 2024, almost 18 times the 827 it recorded in 2011. [1] England had over 9,500 infectious syphilis diagnoses in 2024, its highest since the 1940s. [1] Syphilis rates in the European Union more than doubled between 2015 and 2024. [1] Syphilis is a bacterial infection passed on through sex and from mother to baby, and it is treated with penicillin. [1]

Why it matters. WHO names repeated shortages of the penicillin used to treat it, and falling condom use, among the reasons. [1] Screening of pregnant women for syphilis reached 75% in 2024. [1]

Ceftriaxone is the injection doctors use first for gonorrhoea, a common infection passed on through sex. [1] Several countries, mostly in Asia, now report that 5% or more of gonorrhoea samples resist it, WHO's 2026 report says. [1] WHO estimated 82.3 million new gonorrhoea cases a year among adults aged 15 to 49 in 2020. [1] It has no newer global estimate, because many countries do not report the infection at all. [1]

Why it matters. When the first drug stops working, doctors have to fall back on others. The missing counts mean nobody can say exactly how fast resistance is spreading.

Almost everyone with hepatitis C, a virus that damages the liver, can be cured with 12 weeks of pills, WHO says. [1] Deaths from it fell 12% between 2015 and 2024, to about 240,000. [1] But only 36% of the 47 million people carrying the virus had been diagnosed, and only 20% were treated. [1] About 0.9 million people caught it in 2024, only 8% fewer than in 2015. [1]

Why it matters. The cure exists, so what decides who dies is whether anyone tests for the virus. In 2023 Egypt became the first country WHO placed in its gold tier on the way to ending hepatitis C. [1]

The 95-95-95 goals mean 95% of people with HIV know it, 95% of those are on treatment, and 95% of those have the virus held down. [1] Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe have all reached them, WHO's 2026 report says. [1] WHO places them in the part of Africa with the world's highest HIV burden. [1] Worldwide the figures in 2025 were 88%, 89% and 95%. [1]

Why it matters. It shows the goals can be reached where HIV is most common. It also shows what is at stake as donor money for HIV falls. [1]

A review published on 22 September 2026 in Communications Medicine looks at what the body's antibodies do against dengue, a virus spread by mosquitoes. [7] Dengue comes in four types, and between 100 and 400 million infections happen each year. [7] Antibodies from a first infection can protect, but they can also help a second, different type get into cells and make illness worse. [7] The authors say nobody yet knows which antibodies reliably mean a person is protected. [7]

Why it matters. This is the problem every dengue vaccine has to solve. The three licensed dengue vaccines, Dengvaxia, Qdenga and Butantan-DV, are all built to protect against all four types at once. [7]

Chinese researchers counted 24,330 dengue cases in mainland China in 2024, against 247 in 2004. [8] Their paper, accepted by Scientific Reports on 2 September 2026, used monthly counts from 2004 to 2024 from China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention. [8] Big surges came in 2014, 2019, 2023 and 2024, and cases peaked every year between August and November. [8] Of six forecasting models tested, one mixing statistics and a neural network predicted the peaks best. [8]

Why it matters. A forecast that sees a surge coming gives hospitals and mosquito-control teams time to prepare. The authors warn the model may not work in other countries. [8]

WHO's regional polio bulletin counted 51 cases of wild polio in 2025, 31 in Pakistan and 20 in Afghanistan, in an issue dated March 2026. [16] It lists these two as the only countries where wild polio is still endemic, meaning it never stopped spreading. [16] Sewage testing found the virus in 726 samples in 2025, 651 of them in Pakistan. [16] By 8 March 2026 one new case had been confirmed, in Sindh province in Pakistan. [16]

Why it matters. Finding the virus in sewage shows it is spreading in places where nobody has yet been paralysed. Across the region the same bulletin also counted 40 cases in 2025 of polio that came from vaccine virus rather than wild virus, 30 of them in Yemen. [16]

Most vaccines against breathing infections are injected, and they build defences in the blood but not in the nose and throat, where these germs first land. [9] A team gave mice an injected COVID-19 vaccine, AstraZeneca's AZD1222, together with a nose spray of interferon alpha, a natural alarm signal. [9] The spray carried no part of the virus. [9] Vaccine-trained T cells, a kind of immune cell, then gathered in the nose and throat, the paper published on 18 September 2026 reports. [9]

Why it matters. Defences in the nose could stop an infection before it starts and before it is passed on. [9] So far it has only been shown in mice.

Some vaccines, including Ebola and HIV vaccines, use a virus called adenovirus 26 as a carrier to bring their instructions into the body. [10] Researchers feared that antibodies from catching this virus naturally would weaken such vaccines. [10] A study of 21 trials with 3,851 people in 15 countries, published in npj Vaccines in May 2026, found the effect was too small to matter. [10] A COVID-19 vaccine using the same carrier, given one to 12 months earlier, did not weaken a later RSV vaccine built on it. [10]

Why it matters. Antibodies to this carrier are more common in Africa than in the US or Europe. [10] The authors say the vaccines can be used in countries where these antibodies are common. [10]

Women with inflammatory bowel disease, a long-term illness of the gut, are told to keep taking their immune-calming drugs in pregnancy. [11] These drugs cross the placenta. [11] A Dutch study compared 137 babies of these mothers with 103 other babies. [11] Their vaccine responses were about as good, published in npj Vaccines in June 2026, though some had low levels of one antibody type. [11]

Why it matters. It answers a worry for mothers who need these drugs to stay well in pregnancy. The authors say the babies' low antibody levels need follow-up. [11]

There is no Lyme disease vaccine for people. [12] Lyme disease is a bacterial infection spread by tick bites. [12] Researchers tested one experimental vaccine with different helper ingredients, called adjuvants, that shape the immune response. [12] In mice, the best mix kept protective antibodies for up to nine months, published in npj Vaccines in May 2026. [12]

Why it matters. The choice of helper ingredient changed how strong and how lasting the protection was. It has only been tested in mice so far. [12]

Nipah is a virus that spreads from fruit bats and can inflame the brain. [13] In a 2018 outbreak in Kerala, India, 17 of 19 confirmed patients died. [13] A 2026 review in Frontiers in Drug Discovery says several vaccine candidates have reached early human trials, but none is licensed. [13] Outbreaks are small and hard to predict, which makes vaccines hard to test. [13]

Why it matters. WHO lists Nipah among the top-priority germs that could cause a pandemic. [13] In 2024 two people died in two separate Kerala cases, and a mobile lab was sent to test for the virus while contacts were traced. [13]

Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, or TTP, is a rare blood disorder in which tiny clots block small blood vessels. [14] It happens when an enzyme called ADAMTS13 is missing, usually because the body's defences attack it. [14] Without treatment it is usually fatal within days. [14] A 2026 review says a lab-made version of the enzyme has changed treatment for people born without it. [14]

Why it matters. People with the inherited form used to need regular plasma infusions. Relapse is still a risk, so patients need follow-up for years. [14]

Doctors at Northwestern University in the US kept a 33-year-old man alive for 48 hours with his lungs removed, a study reported in early 2026. [15] Flu and pneumonia had so damaged his lungs that they were a source of infection. [15] A machine outside his body added oxygen to his blood and kept it moving through his heart. [15] He then got a double lung transplant and was alive two years later. [15]

Why it matters. His doctors judged the lungs would not heal and were feeding the infection, so they took them out. [15] It shows how severe flu can become.

Researchers in Italy tracked the gut bacteria of 43 babies through their first year of day care, a study in Nature reported in January 2026. [15] Babies began sharing bacteria about one month after starting. [15] Babies with a brother or sister got more of their bacteria from that sibling than from their parents. [15]

Why it matters. Day care spreads useful bacteria as well as illness. What this means for a child's health is not yet known. [15]

A political declaration from the UN's fourth meeting on long-term illnesses and mental health, held on 25 September 2025, set three 2030 targets. [17] They are 150 million fewer tobacco users, 150 million more people with high blood pressure under control, and 150 million more with mental health care. [17] It says 1.3 billion adults have high blood pressure and only one in five has it controlled. [17] WHO's Bahrain office called the declaration historic. [18]

Why it matters. The targets give numbers that countries can be checked against by 2030. The same declaration counts 1.3 billion tobacco users and more than 7 million deaths a year from tobacco. [17]

WHO's Eastern Mediterranean office marked 19 years of the International Health Regulations, the global rules for reporting outbreaks, in Cairo on 9 July 2026. [19] It said the region's average readiness score fell from 68% in 2022 to 65% in 2025. [19] Nearly 115 million people in the region need humanitarian aid, almost half of the world's total. [19]

Why it matters. WHO said long wars and people forced from home let disease spread fast there. [19] It said skills built during COVID-19 are being lost as money shrinks. [19]

The Ig Nobel prizes, for research that makes people laugh and then think, were held in Zurich, Switzerland, in September 2026. [6] It was the first time in 35 years outside the US, because some winners feared US visa checks. [6] The physics prize went to a splash-free urinal built on a stream angle under 30 degrees. [6] A study defining kissing won too, suggesting apes have kissed for about 21.5 million years. [6]

Why it matters. Last year only six of ten winners came to the ceremony, and four stayed away over travel to the US. [6] The medicine prize went to a late researcher who studied the airflow of nose-blowing. [6]