Mind & body, in brief

Consultants in England will strike for two days from 06:59 GMT on 25 November, the British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors' union, said on Monday. [1][2]

Consultants are the most senior doctors in a hospital. On strike days they will cover emergencies only, the way hospitals run on Christmas Day. [1][2]

NHS leaders say non-urgent outpatient appointments, planned operations and follow-up visits will be postponed. [2]

The BMA says consultants' pay has fallen by a quarter since 2009-10 once rising prices are counted. [2] It also wants their working week cut from 40 to 35 hours, the BBC reports. [1]

Consultants got a 3.5% pay rise this year. [1] The union called last week's offer of 2.4% for next year the last straw. [2]

In the July ballot 76% of those who voted said yes, on a turnout of 51.5%, just above the 50% the law requires. [3]

Only 18,069 of the BMA's 35,067 consultant members voted, and England has 66,759 consultants in all. [3] The UK government says that means about one in five NHS consultants voted to strike. [1]

Consultants earn an average of 152,000 pounds a year, counting overtime and awards. [2] Basic pay runs from 113,500 to 150,500 pounds. [1]

Health secretary Yvette Cooper called the strike irresponsible. [1] A source at England's Department of Health said the shorter week the union wants would cost taxpayers over 2 billion pounds. [2]

More than 6 million patients are waiting for more than 7 million treatments in England, says the NHS Alliance, which speaks for health service leaders. [2]

Consultants last struck in 2023, for nine days. [2] Resident doctors, the doctors still in training, ended more than three years of strikes with a deal in June. [2]

When resident doctors struck for five days last December, thousands of planned and outpatient appointments were cancelled because senior doctors were moved to cover emergencies. [7]

On some past strike days hospitals ran faster: with consultants at the front door, decisions came quickly and fewer patients were admitted, trust leaders told the BBC. [4]

Why it matters. The strike is four weeks away and the union's mandate lasts a year from July, so the next test is whether talks with the Department of Health produce a better offer than 2.4% before 25 November. [2][3]

The Southern Health Trust in Northern Ireland plans to move births and inpatient maternity care from Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry to Craigavon Area Hospital from 23 November. [8] Its chief executive, Steve Spoerry, told the Stormont health committee the move is highly probable. [8] The trust has five empty consultant obstetrician posts and cannot staff day and night rotas at both hospitals. [8] Craigavon would take about 1,400 extra births a year. [8]

Why it matters. Families in Kilkeel would add about an hour to the trip. [8] One Newry mother in premature labour was sent to the Ulster Hospital instead, because Craigavon had no room that night. [8]

Medicare, the US government health plan for people over 65, has proposed paying for remote monitoring only when someone at the doctor's own clinic does it. [9] Remote monitoring means devices such as blood-pressure cuffs send readings to a care team, and nurses call when numbers go wrong. [9] Most clinics hire technology companies to do this. [9] The plan follows reports by government auditors in 2024 and 2025 that raised fraud concerns. [9]

Why it matters. Caroline Pearson of the Peterson Center on Healthcare says rural patients would be hit hardest, because rural clinics rarely run their own programmes. [9] Humana, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and Sutter Health, which runs its own programme, largely back the change. [9]

53% of women aged 18 to 49 in US states that ban abortion say they would not know where to get one if they needed it, up from 43% in 2024. [10] That is from a survey by KFF, a US health research group, of 3,538 women this spring. [10] Nationally the share rose from 26% to 32%. [10] Abortion pills can now be prescribed online and posted even into ban states, but only 8% of women there know this. [10]

Why it matters. 12% of women now know someone who struggled to get an abortion because of state rules, up from 8%. [10] 59% worry the bans could make a future pregnancy less safe. [10]

Adults with poorly controlled asthma in Cleveland, Ohio, reported far fewer symptoms a few months after their gas stoves were swapped for electric ones. [11] A gas flame gives off nitrogen dioxide, a gas that can set off asthma. [11] The 85 people reported gains two to three times as large as asthma medicines usually bring, Science News reports. [11] The work was led by Ashwini Sehgal of Case Western Reserve University. [11] They also reported fewer emergency visits. [11]

Why it matters. The project was meant to follow 1,200 homes for a year, until the Trump administration ended its government grant early. [11] With no comparison group, the next step is a trial where some homes wait six months for their stove. [11]

Colon and rectal cancer is being found more often in US children and teenagers, though it is still very rare. [12] Among 10- to 14-year-olds the rate went from 1 in a million in 1999 to 6 in a million in 2020, an analysis of US health agency data found. [12] Researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio studied 84 patients aged 21 or under. [12] Eight in ten were found after the cancer had spread, against six in ten across all ages. [12]

Why it matters. 75% of them had back or belly pain first, a symptom that usually has a commoner cause. [12] Nobody knows yet why the rate is rising; gut bacteria, processed food and childhood antibiotics are being studied. [12]

People with schizophrenia who took antipsychotic medicines died at about two-thirds the rate of those who did not, a review of 68 studies covering 1.42 million people finds. [13] Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness that can bring hallucinations and false beliefs, and antipsychotics are the main medicines for it. [13] The same review linked them to more cancer, 41% higher, more broken bones, 35% higher, and more lung infections. [13]

Why it matters. The studies watched patients rather than testing the medicines against a dummy pill, so they show links, not proof. [13] The authors, writing in Molecular Psychiatry, say several estimates rest on only a few studies. [13]

Four US medical groups, including the American Heart Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, published guidance on Monday for women's heart care across life. [14] It is built around four stages: periods, pregnancy, perimenopause and menopause. [14] Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women, and US trials have had to include women only since 1993. [14] The guidance names perimenopause, roughly age 45 to 51, as the stage when changes in cholesterol can be early signs of heart risk. [14]

Why it matters. Sadiya Khan of Northwestern University, who led the writing, says women see many different doctors with no shared plan. [14] The guidance asks each one to carry warnings forward, such as high blood pressure in pregnancy. [14]

Adults in Stockholm with long COVID were 14% more likely to develop high blood pressure than others, a study of more than 1.2 million people aged 18 to 65 finds. [15] Long COVID means symptoms that last for months after the infection. [15] The link held even when the first illness was mild enough to stay out of hospital. [15] Anyone who already had high blood pressure was left out. [15]

Why it matters. High blood pressure is one of the main heart risks that can be changed, the researchers write. [15] The study used health records only, so it could not measure blood pressure or show what causes the link. [15]

In one emergency department in Singapore, 13 radiographers screened 2,496 X-rays for broken bones over three months, first alone and then with an AI program. [16] Radiographers are the staff who take X-rays; here they also gave the first reading. [16] They were right 97.6% of the time alone and 98.0% with the AI. [16] The AI on its own found 75.6% of fractures, against 91.6% for the radiographers. [16]

Why it matters. With the AI they fixed 11 mistakes and made one new one. [16] The program gave no answer on 8.8% of scans, which the authors in npj Digital Medicine say mattered as much as accuracy. [16]

About 23% of 11,380 Australians with depression fit a proposed type called circadian depression, a study finds. [17] Circadian means tied to the body clock, the roughly 24-hour timer that sets when we sleep and wake. [17] People in this group tended to be night owls, slept longer when depressed and felt tired in the mornings. [17] They reported less benefit and more side effects from two common kinds of antidepressant. [17]

Why it matters. People recalled their own symptoms and no one's clock was measured, so it is not yet clear this is a separate type. [17] Everyone in the study had European ancestry. [17]

32% of 995 US adults aged 18 to 29 have used AI chatbots such as ChatGPT to look up drugs or alcohol, a study in JMIR Formative Research finds. [18] Nearly half of them did so at least once a month. [18] Most wanted to know the risks, and about half asked about particular drugs, including doses. [18] They rated the chatbots 3.66 out of five for trust. [18]

Why it matters. Nobody yet knows how accurate the answers are, which the authors say is their next question. [18] Mireia Triguero Roura of Rutgers University, the lead author, warns that wrong answers could lead to risky use. [18]

A computer program called BREST-AI predicts a woman's chance of breast cancer in the next three years from a mammogram that showed no cancer, researchers report in npj Breast Cancer. [19] A mammogram is an X-ray of the breast. [19] It learned from scans of 58,591 women. [19] In a UK test it scored 0.751 on a scale where 0.5 is a coin toss and 1 is perfect, beating an older tool, Mirai, at 0.700. [19]

Why it matters. A risk score like this is what screening would need to call some women back more often than others. [19] In a smaller US test the gain over Mirai was not clear. [19]

Dengue, a virus spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, has taken hold in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's southernmost state, which has a temperate climate, a study in Nature Communications finds. [20] The mosquito spread across the state's towns from 2015 to 2023. [20] By 2023 nearly half of its towns had 20 or more cases per 100,000 people a year. [20] Brazil had 70% of the world's reported dengue cases in 2024. [20]

Why it matters. Most people in the state have never had dengue, so few have any protection from an earlier infection. [20] The authors call for more mosquito control and watching in newly hit areas. [20]

US adults who use cannabis on 16 or more days a month report loud snoring or stopped breathing in sleep more often than non-users, 55.2% against 44.3%, a study in Sleep Health finds. [21] These are signs of sleep apnoea, when the throat closes during sleep. [21] The link held after allowing for body weight and tobacco smoking. [21] Trouble sleeping is one of the main reasons people give for using cannabis. [21]

Why it matters. People were asked what others had seen, not tested, so the study shows a link, not a cause. [21] The American Academy of Sleep Medicine already advises against cannabis for sleep apnoea. [21]

Adding testosterone to hormone therapy after menopause raised bone density in the lower spine, while oestrogen alone only held it steady, a small study of 51 women finds. [22] Each woman tried both treatments for at least a year. [22] Sona Davis of the University of Southern California presented it this month at the Menopause Society's meeting in San Diego. [22] It has not yet been checked by other scientists in a journal. [22]

Why it matters. Denser bone is not the same as fewer broken bones, and the study did not count fractures. [22] Larger and longer trials are still needed. [22]

Men from India's Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, groups long held down by the caste system, use more tobacco than upper-caste men, a study in Scientific Reports finds. [23] It used three national health surveys, from 2005-06 to 2019-21. [23] The gap narrowed considerably over those years. [23] Household wealth, schooling, type of work and reading newspapers explained much of it. [23]

Why it matters. The authors call for help aimed at poorer communities, health teaching in their own culture and support to quit. [23]

Trypophobia, a strong dislike of clusters of small holes such as a lotus seed pod, is driven mainly by disgust rather than fear, a 2026 review concludes. [24] Geoff Cole of the University of Essex first suggested in 2013 that it was a fear of venomous animals. [24] After looking at the experiments since, he now favours a defence against disease, since hole clusters can look like skin sores or parasites. [24]

Why it matters. In one test pupils narrowed at hole images, which goes with disgust, while fear widens them. [24] By some estimates about one in six people have it, and for some it brings panic attacks. [24]

Older adults in China who did more kinds of mental activity kept their thinking better than expected for their age and schooling, a study in npj Aging finds. [25] It followed 3,293 adults aged 60 and over from 2011 to 2020. [25] Social activities helped up to about three kinds, then levelled off. [25] The social link showed in men but not in women, though more women took part. [25]

Why it matters. The study watched people rather than testing activities, so it shows a link. [25] The authors say activity came before the better scores, which fits the link running that way. [25]