Mind & body, in brief

On 30 September Tennessee, a US state, gave Christa Pike two doses of pentobarbital, the sedative it uses to execute people, and she did not die. [1][2]

Witnesses heard her snoring 40 minutes after the drug was given, and officials gave up after about an hour. [3][4]

Pentobarbital slows the body, including the nervous system, and a big enough dose kills by stopping the breathing, then the heart. [5][6][7]

It does that by acting on the breathing centre at the base of the brain, in the brainstem. [6][7]

In 15 horses put down with pentobarbital into a vein, the thinking brain went silent within 52 seconds and the brain was dead within 73 to 261 seconds. [8]

The heart's electrical signal lasted longest in those horses, 5.5 to 16 minutes after the drug ended. [8]

Her lawyers say the IV lines were badly placed or her veins burst, so the drug went into the tissue under her skin instead of her blood. [9][10]

Joel Zivot, an anaesthetist advising her lawyers, says the drug level in her blood never got high enough to stop her breathing. [5][10]

Medical experts told the New York Times the drug may also have been degraded, and the state has not answered that claim. [11][5]

Her lawyer counted at least seven needles in her left arm during an hour-long search for a vein, and one came out bent. [12][10]

She is unconscious and on a ventilator, a machine that breathes for her, while doctors clear the drug from her body. [10][9]

Governor Bill Lee has halted executions in Tennessee for the rest of 2026 and ordered an independent review. [1]

Why it matters. Watch the independent review Governor Lee ordered: whether it blames the IV lines or the drug decides what Tennessee changes before executions resume. [1][11]

The US Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs health care for former soldiers, said on 28 September that patients must sign forms before some psychiatric drugs. [18] Veterans under 30 must sign before getting antidepressants, after a talk on risks, benefits and stopping safely. [18] A signed form is also needed when opioids and benzodiazepines, a class of calming pills, are prescribed together. [18] Opioids directly slow the brain's breathing centre, making it answer less to rising carbon dioxide. [7] On their own, benzodiazepines are much less likely than opioids or barbiturates to cause an overdose. [7]

Why it matters. The rules start in 2027 in a service that gives mental health care to nearly 1.7 million veterans, and medical groups fear the forms will make treatment look shameful. [18] A separate study of 1.58 million veterans with depression found the share getting no recommended treatment rose from 6.7% in 2011 to 10.2% in 2025. [24]

Health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo said on 1 October that 4,018 people had died among 8,300 Ebola cases since 15 May. [30] It has become the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record. [30] Soldiers searching for weapons burned a camp near Bunia that held a centre for infected patients, and 19,000 people fled. [30] At least 50 health workers have died, and some say they have not been paid for August or September. [30]

Why it matters. A UN coordinator says every lost centre means starting again, with money and staff already short. [30] Mobile labs in Butembo now return test results in six hours instead of 72. [30]

A study in JAMA Network Open on 2 October followed nearly 230,000 people aged 13 to 25 on Medicaid, US public health cover, diagnosed with opioid addiction from 2016 to 2023. [19] About half saw a clinician, and of those in care about 1 in 6 got medicine. [19] Just 1 in 32 stayed on medicine for six months. [19] In a Massachusetts study of 11,649 young people, those who stopped buprenorphine within three months had a 76% higher overdose risk than those who kept taking it for a year. [20]

Why it matters. US federal law makes under-18s fail twice at recovery without medicine before they can start methadone, and fewer than 10 minors got it in the whole study. [19] Poisonings, including overdoses, are the third biggest killer of Americans aged 19 and under. [19]

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the national disease agency, reported on 27 August that pharmacies dispensed more buprenorphine from 2019 to 2021, then less every year through 2025. [21] Buprenorphine is an approved medicine for opioid addiction that cuts opioid use and deaths. [21] Rates stayed higher in country areas than in cities. [21] Hospital emergency departments gave it more often, though less in country areas. [21]

Why it matters. In 2024, 54,045 people in the US died from overdoses involving opioids. [21] The CDC says more prescriptions, more pharmacies stocking it and more treatment in emergency departments could cut overdose risk. [21]

Researchers led by Cecilia Mascolo at the University of Cambridge used 18 months of data from a common sleep app, covering 32 cities in 12 countries and an average of 98,000 people a night. [31] The app counted coughs while people slept. [31] Days with more fine particle pollution brought more night-time coughing, even at levels below the World Health Organization's guideline. [31] Coughing rose 13% during the Los Angeles wildfire smoke. [31]

Why it matters. The link held after the team allowed for flu season and weather, which also raise coughing. [31] Most pollution research counts only symptoms bad enough to see a doctor, while a night cough costs sleep without ever being recorded. [31]

About a third of people with schizophrenia are not helped enough by antipsychotic drugs. [32] In a trial published on 3 October, 39 such hospital patients completed five days of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a weak electric current passed through the scalp twice a day, or a fake version. [25] The fake ran the current for 30 seconds and then switched off. [25] Symptom scores fell more with the real current. [25]

Why it matters. Gains in quality of life were not clear enough to count, and the authors call for larger trials. [25] A 2025 review of 78 trials found no clear benefit from this kind of electrical stimulation in such patients. [32]

In a trial in Molecular Psychiatry, 60 people with depression got a seven-electrode tDCS set-up at 4 milliamps, the usual two-pad set-up at 2 milliamps, or a fake. [26] Symptoms halved in 15 of 20 on the stronger set-up, 9 of 20 on the usual one and 4 of 20 on the fake. [26] Many people in the strongest group could tell their current was real. [26] In a separate trial of 34 teenagers in hospital with depression, tDCS did no better than a fake. [27]

Why it matters. tDCS is cheap and can be used at home, which is why it is being tested, but its benefit for depression is not yet established. [26] In the teenagers' trial, side effects came in nearly half of sessions in both groups, mostly mild. [27]

In sleep apnoea the airway keeps closing during sleep, cutting oxygen and breaking up sleep. [33] A year-long trial in The American Journal of Medicine enrolled 180 people with moderate or severe sleep apnoea and high blood pressure. [34] Each used either a CPAP machine or a mouthpiece that repositions the jaw to open the airway. [34] CPAP pushes air through a mask to hold the airway open. [34] People wore the mouthpiece a median 5.5 hours a night, against 4.9 hours for CPAP. [34] Blood pressure fell by 2.3 points with the mouthpiece and 1 point with CPAP. [34]

Why it matters. Harvard Health says CPAP should still be the first choice, while many people cannot stand it. [34] A separate study of 104 patients found both lowered heart rate by similar amounts, and a review warns the mouthpieces can shift the teeth over time. [35][33]

A study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine followed 64,743 adults in the UK, average age 62, who wore wrist trackers for a week. [36] Over about eight years, 1,697 of them died. [36] People taking under 5,000 steps a day at a brisk pace had a death risk close to people taking 5,000 to 7,500 at a slow pace. [36] The lowest death rates were at 7,500 to 10,000 steps. [36]

Why it matters. The authors name about 30 minutes a day at 90 to 100 steps a minute as a promising target. [36] Matthew Ahmadi, one of the researchers, told NPR his team wanted to know whether people who fall short of 7,000 steps a day can still gain. [37]

Barbara O'Neill, 73, calls herself a naturopath, a practitioner of natural remedies. [38] An Australian health complaints body permanently barred her from providing any health services in 2019. [38] She has claimed that cancer is a fungus that bicarbonate of soda can treat. [38] She is due to speak at events in the UK and Ireland in October, including a five-day retreat in Cheshire costing 700 pounds. [38]

Why it matters. Scientists and doctors led by David Robert Grimes of Trinity College Dublin wrote to the venues calling her a leading source of medical misinformation. [38] The ban covers only Australia, and her husband Michael says it has serious legal flaws. [38]

Hugo Flint Cahan, 34, was strangled by another patient at Newham Mental Health Centre in east London in January 2023. [22] The coroner, the official who investigates sudden deaths, found that neglect contributed to his death. [22] Night staff were asleep or on their phones, skipped checks on patients and then falsified the records. [22] The coroner has now warned that more deaths may follow unless staffing is fixed. [22]

Why it matters. He said the findings closely match an inquest at the same trust in 2021, whose fixes do not appear to have worked. [22] The trust has sacked one staff member and must reply by 19 November. [22]

In August 2025 the parents of Hobie Harrison, 30, asked Norfolk Police in England to check on him after he stopped answering. [23] Call handlers suggested a locksmith instead of mental health services. [23] Officers went the next day and found him dead in his flat in Norwich. [23] He had threatened suicide before. [23]

Why it matters. The police watchdog has criticised the force for not asking more questions about the risk he faced. [23] The force says it followed Right Care, Right Person, a policy that sends officers to welfare calls only when a life is in immediate danger. [23]

For nearly 50 years the US government has said disabled people should live, work and learn in the most integrated setting possible, not in institutions like nursing homes. [39] A federal judge has now removed that wording from rules under Section 504, a civil rights law against disability discrimination. [39] The US Justice Department had declined to defend its own rules in a lawsuit brought by several states. [39]

Why it matters. Jennifer Mathis of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law says protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the US Supreme Court's Olmstead ruling still stand. [39] Bruce Darling of the Center for Disability Rights says the right now exists on paper and may not be enforced. [39]

Since June 2019, children aged 3 months to 5 years in Ghana's Northern Region have been given malaria medicine once a month in the rainy season. [28] Researchers compared 10 years of clinic data with the trend projected without it, allowing for rain and temperature. [28] Malaria deaths were an estimated 80.3% below that projection, and hospital admissions 23% below. [28] In household surveys, children's odds of malaria infection were about 40% lower. [28]

Why it matters. The authors say the projection is uncertain, so the figures suggest the programme helped rather than prove it. [28] Malaria kept falling even as fewer children slept under treated bed nets. [28]

A trial in northern Nigeria split 20 areas between normal vaccination services and a strategy called NutriVax. [29] NutriVax gave children aged 6 to 23 months a monthly ration of a fat-based nutrient supplement after routine vaccine visits. [29] Children in NutriVax areas had twice the odds of a card-confirmed first measles jab. [29] Coverage rose about 20 percentage points more than in the other areas. [29]

Why it matters. Infection and hunger feed each other in young children: infections cut how much food the body takes in, and hunger weakens the immune system. [29] The authors say the approach could be used in similar places. [29]

Cannabis compounds can bring on anxiety and panic in people, depending on dose and setting. [40] Researchers gave mice cannabinoids and watched cells in the central amygdala, a brain area that handles threat. [40] Higher doses made the mice avoid threats more and drove up the activity of one group of amygdala cells. [40] Those cells were needed for the extra avoidance, but not for freezing in place. [40]

Why it matters. It shows one route by which cannabis could make some users more fearful, though so far only in mice. [40]

Fear and anxiety after an operation are common and slow recovery. [41] Researchers in China gave mice a running wheel before abdominal surgery that was paired with a frightening cue. [41] Mice that had run showed less fear and anxiety afterwards. [41] The effect ran through a circuit from the motor cortex, which controls movement, to the thalamus, a relay deep in the brain, driven by the chemical messenger norepinephrine. [41]

Why it matters. It was seen in male mice only. [41] The authors suggest the circuit as a target for treating distress after surgery. [41]

A meta-analysis, which pools earlier studies, found people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) had a thinner cortex, the brain's outer layer, in parts of the cingulate cortex and one frontal area. [42] People on medication or with other conditions showed extra thinning. [42] The thin areas matched maps of genes for signalling between nerve cells, mostly through glutamate, a chemical messenger. [42]

Why it matters. One of the clusters showed signs that positive results were more likely to be published. [42] The authors call the findings ideas to test, not proof. [42]

Researchers compared brain scans of 1,982 people with major depression and 5,160 without, aged 12 to 75. [43] Males with depression had smaller brain volume and a thinner cortex in adolescence. [43] Females showed the biggest differences in late adulthood. [43] Both patterns lined up with how much sugar, oxygen and blood those brain areas use. [43]

Why it matters. The authors say males and females may have different periods when the brain is most vulnerable to depression. [43]

Researchers trained a computer model on brain MRI scans from six groups of people to estimate body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight against height. [44] The model tracked BMI changes over 2.3 years, especially gains. [44] Its brain readings picked out heart, metabolic and lung disorders better than BMI itself. [44] The signal came mostly from white matter, the brain's wiring, in the cerebellum, corpus callosum and brainstem. [44]

Why it matters. The authors say this hints that metabolism and brain structure are linked by shared processes. [44] The model worked less well on outside data than on its own groups. [44]

Researchers at Beijing Normal University had two groups learn physics ideas from video lectures cut up and shuffled out of order. [45] Learners needed enough pieces before their understanding matched the experts' version. [45] Brain scans showed two regions, the posterior cingulate cortex and the precuneus, taking turns. [45] Learning from the jumbled order worked at first but held up less well in later tests. [45]

Why it matters. The authors say it shows both how the brain rebuilds order from fragments and a later cost of learning that way. [45]

Intravenous thrombolysis, a clot-dissolving drug given into a vein, is a standard treatment for strokes caused by a blocked artery. [46] Records from two hospitals in Malaysia's national stroke registry covered 1,011 patients from 2014 to 2023. [46] Success, meaning only mild symptoms a day later, came in 37.8%. [46] The median time from stroke to injection was 192 minutes. [46]

Why it matters. Younger patients, milder strokes and blockages in small vessels did best. [46] Real-world results like these are rare from lower- and middle-income countries, the authors say. [46]

Researchers followed 16,780 people aged 45 and over in China from 2012 to 2020. [47] Heart and metabolic diseases, and depression, were each linked to more disability in everyday tasks and less chance of recovering. [47] People with several such diseases plus depression fared worse than the two risks added together. [47]

Why it matters. The authors say treating physical and mental health together may reduce disability in ageing populations. [47]

Researchers ran visual estimation tests and changed how confident people felt, sometimes with false feedback. [48] People spent more attention on things they already judged well, and less on those they judged poorly. [48] That made good judgments better and poor ones worse, which lowered accuracy overall. [48] A model treating the feeling of being right as a reward matched the results. [48]

Why it matters. The authors say an inner reward, the sense of being competent, can bias attention in ways that both help and hurt. [48]

Researchers measured hearing in nine wild-caught rodent species that are not closely related. [49] They recorded the brainstem's electrical response to sounds. [49] Species that live in groups or pair for life heard quieter tones and clicks than species that live alone. [49] Group-living species also showed stronger signs of combining sound from both ears. [49]

Why it matters. The authors suggest living together may have favoured better hearing for communication. [49]

Researchers built a computer model that estimates the Alzheimer's-type tau protein in the brain from FDG-PET, a scan of how brain areas use sugar. [50] It was trained on 1,088 people, from normal ageing to dementia. [50] It sorted low from high tau stages with 79% to 95% accuracy. [50] It also worked in a mixed group of clinic patients, most of whom had no tau scan. [50]

Why it matters. The authors say it gives a way to estimate tau across Alzheimer's and related disorders. [50]

Researchers at Singapore's National Neuroscience Institute screened the blood of 340 people for autoantibodies, immune proteins that target the body's own tissue. [51] Twelve were raised in more people with Parkinson's disease than in healthy people. [51] Their targets were also out of balance in blood or brain across 62 earlier data sets. [51] Those targets help control protein-making and blood vessel growth. [51]

Why it matters. The authors say they could become markers for diagnosis or leads for treatment, after more study. [51]

Falls are common in multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease that damages nerves. [52] Fourteen people with MS did walking and standing tests while thinking about something else, with visual prompts from an app called Just in Time Fall Prevention. [52] The prompts cut forward lean when standing up by 7.1 degrees and widened their stance by 8.1 millimetres. [52] Most said they would use the app if a doctor prescribed it. [52]

Why it matters. It was a small test of whether prompts change movement, not whether they prevent falls. [52]